93% of online experiences begin with a search engine. More than 3.5 billion Google searches occur in a day. The majority of these searchers only click the top results, with 75% of them not going beyond page one of the search results. This tells you that if your website isn’t number one, two, or three, you just missed out on a third of potential traffic. That’s why you should focus on improving your ranking. This is where on-page SEO comes in.
You probably know by now how massive of an impact a successful SEO strategy can bring to your business. You might already even have one in place, though you’re still struggling to yield results. Or, perhaps, you recently built a new website and your next move is to create an on-page SEO campaign. Whatever the case is, we’re here to help you implement seven on-page SEO tactics that will boost your ranking. Before we can explore each of them, however, let’s talk a bit about on-page SEO.
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What Is On-Page SEO?
There are actually two buckets of SEO: On-page and off-page. While both share the same goal of improving a website’s search ranking to earn organic traffic, their strategies are exact opposites. Whereas the latter helps your site rank better through off-site tactics, such as link building and social media marketing, on-page SEO is all about your website and web pages. Publishing relevant, high-quality content is central to on-page SEO. It ensures search engine bots and visitors that your website has a high level of E-A-T (expertise, authoritativeness, and trustworthiness), which is a top-ranking factor of Google. Other on-page strategies include optimizing your keywords, headlines, HTML tags, images, and site speed. Mixing these aspects together will impress Google, leading it to improve your visibility in the search results. When you do on-page SEO properly, you’ll be seeing a significant boost in traffic and a rise in your search presence. Of course, this means more leads and conversions, too.
Ways to Improve Your Ranking Through On-Page SEO
Ready to learn some of the most effective on-page SEO strategies? Let’s dive in!
1. Target the Right Keywords
Keywords play a vital role in on-page SEO. In fact, Google uses them to determine whether your content is relevant or not. The more relevant they are, the higher your chances are of ranking well. Make it a habit to do extensive keyword research before you can craft your content. That way, you’ll know which keywords, short-tail and long-tail, to use. For existing posts that need further keyword optimization, simply find ways to incorporate more high-value keywords. Go through your past content, look for poor-quality keywords, and swap them for your new ones that bring more value and relevance.
2. Create Content Regularly
What’s better than creating quality content? Creating quality content on a regular basis! By frequently publishing content that’s engaging, recent, and pertinent, driving more traffic to your website won’t be a problem anymore. Besides, creating content is the only way to show up in search results.
Here are three reasons why:
- Google LOVES websites that publish fresh content consistently
- The more content you have for your audience, the more opportunities they have to discover you
- More content means more keywords to target
Keep in mind that content isn’t just limited to blogs and articles. It can also be in the form of videos, podcasts, and infographics. Instead of sticking to writing alone, consider mixing it up. It’s all about being diverse. You might also want to focus on publishing local content constantly, especially if you’re a small business that targets folks within your area. Let’s say you run a family pastry shop in Fort Lauderdale. Your blog posts don’t necessarily have to tackle everything about your dishes. You can write about Fort Lauderdale, from the latest news surrounding it to anything popular about the city. Get your readers hooked by posting about the city’s beautiful beaches, the gondola rides on the canals, or even the historic riverfront deemed as the “Venice of America.”
3. Optimize Your Images
Adding images is always a good idea to make your web pages more visually appealing. However, not all images are meant to enrich your on-page SEO. Others can actually hurt your ranking. We’re talking about those images that aren’t optimized enough, as they tend to slow down page load times. And, nobody likes sites that take too long to load. Not even Google is a fan.
To optimize your images, follow these steps:
- Compress your images to reduce file size using tools like TinyPNG, RIOT, or ImageOptim
- Resize your images before exporting or uploading
- Know the right file type to use. JPEG should be your best bet, except when you’re using images with a transparent background. PNGs are ideal for images that don’t have a ton of color, and GIFs should be reserved for thumbnails or entertainment purposes
- Use an image caching service to reduce page load times
Optimized images won’t only make your web pages look more attractive, but they will also speed up load times, resulting in a better user experience, which happens to be another ranking factor.
4. Make Your Website Mobile-Friendly
With billions of people spending hours browsing online on their smartphones every day, Google has developed the mobile-first concept, where crawlers will prioritize mobile-friendly websites by ranking them higher. There are many reasons why mobile responsive sites are now dominating search engines. For instance, they make it easy for users to fill out a form on any mobile device. Slow loading pages would no longer be an issue as well.
Below are quick tips to optimize your website for mobile:
- Pick a mobile responsive theme or template
- Strip back your content by removing large chunks of text and shortening all forms
- Avoid flash and pop-ups
- Use a large and clear font
- Keep images as light as you can
- Make sure your links aren’t too close together
- Test your site’s mobile friendliness by trying out different device sizes from your desktop
5. Write Attention-Grabbing Headlines
Writing compelling headlines is another on-page SEO strategy that can improve your ranking. No matter how well-written your content is, you might find it hard to get searchers to click on your link if your title is too bland or boring. Your headlines should be able to spark interest and curiosity in order to stand out in search results. Just be sure that you don’t use clickbait headlines. Otherwise, you’ll lose the trust of your audience. Worse, you’ll lose them forever.
6. Use Clean Meta Descriptions
Meta descriptions are there to help Google and searchers understand what the content’s about. In short, they’re there to generate clicks from search engines. While no rules are set in stone here, you’ll want your meta description to be as concise and clear as possible. Oh, and you should definitely include your keywords, too.
Here are five ways to optimize your meta description:
- Keep it up to 155 characters
- Use your focus keyword
- Use active voice and make it actionable
- Include a call to action
- Make it actionable
7. Speed Up Your Pages
Three seconds. That’s all it takes for most users to wait for a web page to load until they leave and move on to another one. Indeed, site speed is extremely crucial when it comes to on-site SEO. If your website is taking so long to load, Google will likely punish you with a poor ranking, seeing that users aren’t satisfied with the experience you’re providing. As mentioned earlier, optimizing your images can make a difference in your site speed. Besides that, here are other things you can do:
- Leverage browser caching
- Eliminate unnecessary code
- Enable compression
- Reduce redirects
- Remove render-blocking JavaScript
- Use a Content Delivery Network (CDN)
Continue Reading: How SEO and content marketing go hand-in-hand
Ready to Improve Your Ranking with On-Page SEO?
Securing the top spot on the search engine results page can be a challenge, but following these on-page SEO tactics religiously will make the task much easier for you. Before you know it, you’ll notice a huge boost in your rankings, traffic, and conversions!
