The internet is the great equalizer. Anyone with a PC and an internet connection can put information out there for the world to see.
In reality, some are more equal than others on the internet and just because you can be seen, does not mean you will be.
The difference between those who get noticed and those who don’t can often be something as simple as onpage SEO.
I’m going to share some easy steps to optimize your page that you can start using immediately, but first, let’s take a moment to understand how onpage SEO works to improve your rankings.
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How Can Onpage SEO Help You?
Helping your page rank is just the end result of you making the work of Google’s search algorithm easier. As you may know, Google became the default search engine due to the high relevance of their results compared to their rivals.
To achieve highly accurate search results, Google ‘crawls’ all of the pages available to it. During this process, the program is looking for an indication of the page content, to decide which keywords it would match well with.
When Google gives you a page at number one spot, it has decided that it has the most relevant information for your search term.
Evidence suggests that Google gets it right as well – 75% of people click through and are happy with the top three search results.
Onpage SEO is optimizing the signposts the search algorithms are looking for to establish relevance. Clearly showing what your page is about makes it more likely your page will be picked as number one.
All this talk of algorithms might make onpage SEO sound difficult, but as you will see below, it is easy to incorporate into your content development strategy.
The Recipe For Onpage SEO Success
There is not a lot of secrecy or hidden tricks when it comes to onpage SEO. Google does tweak what it prioritizes from time to time, but the general recipe for success with onpage SEO is well established.
If you get started with the following optimizations, you will be well on the road to ranking success.
Start With a Keyword in Mind
Too many people jump straight in and start producing content without SEO in mind. If the goal is to rank well, you should ideally have a keyword in mind from the beginning.
Rather than guessing at your keywords later, this allows you to shape high quality content around your target keyword and tends to produce far better ranking results in the long run.
Use a Descriptive URL
A lot of people take a haphazard approach to the structure of the URLs on their website. This often results in messy, long or non descriptive URLs and for the purposes of ranking this is a big mistake.
You should establish a clear naming structure, that is descriptive in nature, not a generic ‘www.mysite.com/blog-54/2019.’
No one will ever search for that.
Instead, aim for a URL that gives a good indication of the content, like ‘www.mysite.com/onpage-seo-tips’.
3-5 words in a URL is where you want to be for the best results, as this also avoids the issue of URLs that are too long, which are also penalised heavily.
Use The Right <h> Tags
Heading tags are a piece of HTML code that indicates the title of your page or article.
Ideally, you should have your main title, that includes your target keyword, wrapped in H1 tags. This serves to highlight the main focus and relevance of your page.
This is done automatically by the major CMS’s like WordPress, but it is always worth double checking.
In particular, make sure there is only ever one H1 heading on the page. If you have subheadings, use a lower level heading tag to avoid confusion.
Optimize Images
Images are also indexed by search engines and they do this by looking at the file name and alt text of the image.
You want to ensure that you have at least one image on your page that has your target keyword in the alt text and filename.
In popular CMS’s like WordPress these can both be changed with a few simple clicks.
Internal and External Links
Both internal links to other pages on your site and external links to other relevant sites are a great way to establish the topic and authority of your pages information.
Don’t be afraid to link out to other, high quality sites.
You gain authority by association with good content. Aim for 2-4 external and at least 2 internal links per page to get started.
Title Tags
Your title tag is embedded in code at the top of your page and is what will be displayed as the main title in search results. It is also the text that will be shown as the title of the browser tab when someone opens your page.
Ensuring each of your pages has a descriptive and unique title tag helps with SEO, but it also gives a solid first impression and can improve click through rates.
Other Important Factors
Of course, it is not all about keywords and code. There are a range of other things you can do to improve your rankings, such as:
- Page Speed: The speed your pages loads improves the browsing experience and is also taken into consideration for ranking purposes.
- Readability: Breaking your text into short readable chunks and using subheadings liberally helps make your information more accessible to readers. This keeps them on your page longer which tells the algorithm that you have quality content.
- Responsive Design: Mobile friendly web pages are a must these days. Any page that is not optimized for mobile devices is ignoring a massive user base and will be penalized heavily in search rankings.
Getting Started Is Easier Than You Think
As you can see, just a few small changes to the way your content is structured, written and published can have a big effect on your page rankings.
The top results on Google are within your reach and all it takes is adding a few more steps to your content creation checklist.
If you have any questions just comment below or contact us and I’ll get back with you. And please share if you got value out of this article so that we can keep making more of it.
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