Essential On-page SEO factors you need to know

Nowadays, to optimize the combination of factors that search engines consider important such as technical, on-page and off-page is crucial in succeeding in organic search today.

Google has released several updates to their search engine algorithm, of which Panda, Penguin and Hummingbird were the biggest over the past few years. However, on-page SEO hasn’t really changed all that much despite the updates of the search engine.

Well-optimized sites get more and more traffic over time, and that means more leads and sales. This is why SEO is important because searchers won’t be able to find your site, and all your hard work will be for nothing without good SEO strategies.

There is an increased focus toward off-page techniques – such as link building – and other technical elements over the years. Unfortunately, the reality is that if you don’t pay attention to the fundamentals such as on-page SEO, your off-page SEO won’t do much good.

This is why in order to be a great SEO practitioner, it’s important that on-page optimization should be constantly prioritized. Also, it’s important to make sure your on-page SEO knowledge is up to date because the search landscape is constantly evolving. 

We will cover what on-page SEO is, why it matters, and all those important on-page SEO considerations today in this post.

What Is On-Page SEO?

On-page SEO is important because it helps search engines understand your website and its content, as well as identify whether it is relevant to a searcher’s query.

There is a greater focus toward relevance and semantics in search engine results pages (SERPs) as search engines become more sophisticated.

Google, with its plethora of complex algorithms, is now much better at:

• Understanding what users are actually searching for when they type a query.

• Delivering search results that meet user intent (informational, shopping, navigational).

It’s essential to optimize your website and its content like those visible to users on your webpages such as text, images, video, or audio and elements that are only visible to search engines such as HTML tags, structured data, etc according to the latest best practices.

You’ll see a boost in traffic and a rise in your search presence If you put effort into on-page strategies.

This guide will walk you through all of those important elements of on-page SEO:

1) Site Speed

To ensure that inadvertent duplicate content does not slow the indexing down, examine your site to remove it. This makes perfect sense as the instant-gratification of the web has only made the web visitors more impatient.

Google cares about page load time (and has for a very long time). From the Webmasters Central Blog:

Matt Cutts announced that site speed will carry less weight than other key ranking factors, such as relevance, authority links and so on back in 2010. That’s no longer quite as accurate as nowadays, speed is essential, nearly as much as a cornerstone keyword phrase.

Studies show that a delay of a single second in page response time can yield a 7% reduction in conversions.

This is why site speed absolutely affects rankings, as asserted in this infographic by Kissmetrics:

Moreover, You can use Ubersuggest’s site audit tool to check your site’s load time, among a variety of related factors. Here’s how it works:

Step 1: Enter Your URL and Click “Search”

Step 2: Click “Site Audit” in the Left Sidebar

Step 3: Scroll down to “Site Speed”

The results above show that my site is in the “excellent” range for both as you’re shown the loading time for both desktop and mobile devices.

In addition to loading time, it also tests:

• First Contentful Paint

• Speed Index

• Time to Interactive

• First Meaningful Paint

• First CPU Idle

• Est. Input Latency

You don’t have to worry if your results aren’t optimal because there are many ways to increase your site speed. By using search engine content delivery networks, it’s the easiest way to increase your site speed but also often costs some money.

That aside, you could delete unused plugins for an instant speed boost if you’re a WordPress user.

2) Mobile Friendliness

Mobile-friendliness is another major SEO ranking factor. People use mobile devices rather than desktops to access the web, and that’s one reason there’ve been changes in how Google ranks search results.

If your site isn’t mobile-optimized, you risk getting needlessly under-ranked because according to Google’s mobile-first index, Google prioritized more on mobile-optimized sites first, rather than sites geared to desktop computers.

You also still have to look after user experience when people land on your site even though many of the SEO ranking factors we’ll look at in this article will help you lay the foundation for a good search engine ranking.

Things to look at include whether you:

• Have a responsive site that automatically resizes to fit the device

• Use large fonts for easy readability on a small screen

• Include accessible menus, so your site is easy to navigate

• Ensure that essential content isn’t hidden by ads

You may want to explore Google AMP (accelerated mobile pages) if you have the team, the time, and the energy. There have also been rumors that Google ranks sites built with AMP more highly than others since the pages that built with AMP load nearly instantly from mobile devices.

3) Essential Tag Fundamentals

It’s still a good practice to pay attention to the meta tags even though the effect of the title tag or meta description has changed significantly over the past several years.

When it comes to on-page SEO, the major types of meta tags that you should pay attention to are: 

Title tags: Title tags define the title of your web page or document. They’re mostly used to display preview snippets of your web pages. It should be short, clear and descriptive but don’t duplicate content from the page content when you’re writing your title tag.

The ideal length is 50 – 60 characters. Google will only show the first 60 If your title tag exceeds 60 characters.

You can use Moz’s preview tool to preview how your title tags will appear in the search engine.

3.1) Meta description: 

This is how a meta description usually appears in the organic search listings:

Search engines use the meta description to gauge what topic you’re writing about and the exact audience that they should send to that page. So, make it descriptive and short – no more than 160 characters.

Stuffing keywords in your meta description would work against you. 160 characters are just not enough space for stuffing.  Instead, use synonyms or latent semantic indexing (LSI) of your main keyword to get on-page SEO in the meta description, keeping search engines happy.

Here are LSI keywords that you can use if your main keywords in the headline are “generate website traffic,”:

• get site visitors

• drive free traffic

• attract site visitors

• attract website visitors

It’s very important to be careful to never duplicate title tags or meta descriptions. Ubersuggest can also help with this. On the same results page (site audit) that displays site speed, you’ll see something that looks like this:

After that, you can examine any issues with your title tags or meta descriptions. For example, Neil Patel’s site has 8 pages with duplicate title tags. By clicking on the issue, you’re given the following:

You’re presented with a list of pages that share the same title tag as you click on each result in the Page URL column which is displayed in the second column:

It’s important to make the necessary changes unless there’s a good reason for it, such as using the same title for content in different languages (see above).

4) Optimized Content

Content is the essential factor of a thriving business and on page SEO is the backbone of content marketing. You’ve probably heard the saying, “content is king.” But, there is way more to successful content marketing than just “content.” You have to publish the kind of content that will drive traffic and grow your business.

Now let’s dig down and see what optimizing content for SEO really means.

Google’s search algorithm relies on keywords. These are the words and phrases searchers use when they’re looking for information. They’re also the words and phrases that describe the topics your site is about. That’s why it’s so important to use keywords in your content.

It’s crucial to be aware of one negative SEO ranking factor which is duplicate content. Fresh, original content is always the best when it comes to SEO. By using canonical URLs, you can tell Google which one of the content should be ranked as most authoritative if you have similar content.

4.1) Understanding LSI Keywords and SEO Ranking

SEO isn’t just about the main keyword. It’s also important to include terms related to the main terms people are searching for. These are called LSI (latent semantic indexing) keywords. They provide a kind of online word association to help Google know which results to show.

For example, using the right LSI keywords will tell Google that when searchers type in “mini,” your page is relevant to the car, rather than the skirt, and vice versa.

Content optimization includes optimizing for questions and natural language searches as it’s worth noting that as more people search by voice. That means some LSI keywords will be longer because people tend to speak differently than they type.

Think about it: Let’s say you own a restaurant. And half of your customers type the phrase “best restaurant near me.” But then people also search for “what’s the best restaurant in Montreal” when searching by voice.

Google’s result may show up differently even though both questions are targeting the same thing. One way of making sure your restaurant ranks for both sets of questions is using LSI keywords. You’re more likely to rank in your niche when you can give more help to Google understanding your content.

It’s crucial to know that keyword stuffing is outlawed because it will result in poor quality web pages and will hurt your SEO ranking.

Make sure you only include your keyword (and your LSI keywords) in a way that is organic and sounds natural once you’ve targeted your keyword.

4.2) Understanding Search Intent for Content Optimization

When it comes to optimizing content, search intent is also important. That means understanding what people are really looking for when they type in search keywords.

For example, let’s say you’ve identified “Florida real estate” as a keyword you want to rank for. You might think that writing content for people looking for real estate in Florida is a good idea. But if the people searching for that term also include realtors looking to sell in Florida, then your content won’t meet their needs, and your page won’t rank.

Google will pick up on the fact that your content isn’t matching their user’s search intent through a series of low click-through rates and high bounce rates (which we’ll discuss more in a moment).

Sometimes, it’s clear what people are looking for. For example, they’re likely trying to decide between buying a product if they use the word “compare”. Also, people that are looking to make a purchase will more likely use the word “buy”.

The keywords they use will change depending on whether they want to:

• Find a particular website (navigational)

• Get the answer to a question (informational)

• Research information before making a purchase (investigational)

• Make a purchase (transactional)

Well-optimized business sites will usually include content for each of those search types.

So how do you go about making sure your keyword matches user intent? Go straight to the source!

Open a Google search in your in-private browser and type in your keyword. See which results are currently ranking and determine whether or not your content would be a good fit. If not, you need to restart your keyword research. If so, take this opportunity to see why certain pages are ranking.

You can do a competitive analysis of the top 10 results in the SERP to see how you can make your content even better! Then you can fully optimize your content by making it an improvement over the current search results.

4.3) Is Content Length an SEO Ranking Factor?

In a word, yes. Google wants content to be quality and have some length to it. If a subject calls for depth, give it depth because writing more words just to stretch out the length is never advisable.

The research suggests that content over 2000 words gets more top ten positions in Google search engine rankings.

Of course, there will be some exceptions. Your content should be around the 2k word mark or more if you really want to be competitive on the SERP as a general rule of thumb.

Longer content attracts more links and shares too, which are 2 other important ranking signals we’ll cover shortly.

4.4) SEO Ranking Factors: Answer Boxes or the “Zero Position”

As Google’s increasingly delivering answers via answer boxes, it can be another aspect of optimizing for better search engine rankings. 

According to OptinMonster, they suggests that optimizing for answer boxes means:

• Answering questions

• Including the questions as headings with properly formatted title tags (more about that in the next tip)

• Ensuring that the answers are correct, relevant, and not too long

• Targeting content to keywords that already have answer boxes

• Adding lists or tables

There is one downside to the coveted “zero position” which is it sometimes hinders people from clicking through to your site.

They may have no reason to continue with the content since people get the answer to their question directly. That means you may have 100,000 people see your slot in the answer box, but only 10,000 actually click through to the article.

Even so, getting that zero position rocks because it means Google thinks highly of your content (which is always flattering) which results in getting way more brand recognition, and you’ll also end up with more traffic than you would have.

Plus, if you don’t get that spot, someone else will.

4.5) Using Video to Improve SEO Ranking

Video content will represent a whopping 80% of online traffic by 2021 according to Cisco.

Our roundup of video marketing stats shows that:

• People are watching video across all age groups

• Some 79% of people would rather watch a video than read a blog post

• People are using video to help them make purchase decisions (remember those transactional searches?)

This is why it’s a good time to include video in your content strategy. Video gets read, shared and linked to, providing plenty of signals to amplify your search ranking.

5) Image Optimization

Even though adding images is a good way to make your webpages more appealing, not all images are created equal as some can even slow down your website. 

Optimizing images properly will help you make the most of a valuable SEO asset.

Image optimization has many advantages, such as:

• Additional ranking opportunities (show up on Google Image Search).

• Better user experience.

• Faster page load times.

It’s very important to make sure to incorporate images that support your content and use descriptive titles and alt text because images shouldn’t be an afterthought.

Conclusion

On-page SEO is important if you want to increase your website’s chances of showing up in the search results.

Optimizing for on-site factors on a regular basis can help improve your rankings, traffic, and conversions.

Both B2B and B2C marketers are beginning to realize the need to implement basic SEO practices. You need to commit yourself to the process, not just to the results that you’re after.

You’ll learn a lot more with that mindset than you could ever learn just by getting the top rank in Google.

Source:

https://optinmonster.com/seo-ranking-factors/ 

https://neilpatel.com/blog/the-on-page-seo-cheat-sheet/ 

https://www.searchenginejournal.com/on-page-seo/essential-factors/