Gone are the days when you used to sprinkle a few focus keywords here and there and expect to get your desired results. Nowadays, considering the high competition, you need to amp your on-page SEO game and stay unique to gain a competitive edge.While on-page SEO doesn’t require many technical skills, you shouldn’t underestimate the amount of effort it takes to get your website to rank high on Google. Here’s a complete on-page SEO guide full of expert tips and actionable techniques that you need to help you achieve your goals.
So, let’s dive right into it!
What is On-Page SEO?
On-page SEO refers to the practice of optimizing the content on your website to help search engines recognize your data better and give you an upper hand over the rest of your competitors. You need to fully understand what on-page SEO optimization is to become successful with it. Below are some tips to help you create and optimize your site for on-page SEO.
Follow these tips to ensure that your page gets a better ranking on the search engine results pages
1. Publish Relevant Content
If the keyword is about PPC advertising, make sure the content is focused only on PPC advertising. Make it compelling and relevant enough — something that provides a solution to a reader’s problem. Keep in mind that you are attracting not just users but also search engines. The trick is to provide the exact information your audience needs. By publishing great content, you help your site rank better and keep more users at the same time.In addition, make sure that you add visuals to keep audiences glued to your site. And don’t forget to optimize your images and videos. Add infographics, if possible especially if you plan to include stats.Add a table of content so your content is easier to navigate. Use attractive headings and avoid writing long paragraphs. For the focus keywords, place them in the first two paragraphs of your content.
2. Use Outbound Links
External links are your gate to success. They help Google see that your page is written with the audience in mind. It’s an effective way to back up your claims too. It helps you gain more credibility and positions you as an industry expert. However, keep in mind to always go for high authority links to increase your chances of getting better rankings on the Google results page. Link only to websites that publish professional and engaging content. As much as possible, link to websites that are experts in the field.
3. Optimize Title and Meta Description
The title should contain the focus keyword. Keep it short and yet on point. It should instantly tell the audience what to expect when they read your article. For the meta descriptions, they should contain 140-160 characters. Think of them as a short summary of the article. It should clearly describe what your content is about. Write it in a way that entices readers to click on your site.
4. Use Concise and Descriptive URLs
Writing short and descriptive URLs including the keyword and possibly along with other relevant keywords is a good idea. Avoid using random words or phrases in the URL. It should only include words that describe what the article is about. Writing concise and descriptive URLs helps the search engine understands the relevance of the page to the keyword searched by a user.
5. Write Only Original and Unique Content
Your goal for each content you publish is to attract prospects and keep customers. Another objective is to get better rankings in search engines. You can achieve this by publishing original content. A rule of thumb: Avoid rehashing posts over and over again as it defeats the purpose of writing unique content. Understand the buyer’s journey when planning content for your site. At the beginning of your customer’s journey, they likely are not aware of what your company offers. Create awareness and focus on creating content about your products and services. Make sure that you focus on the pain points of your buyers. The next step is to create content providing different solutions to the buyers’ problems. Make it a point to always provide detailed and valuable solutions to make them likely to purchase something — either a product or a service. As much as possible, focus only on your customers or prospects. Publish high-quality and engaging content to also get better rankings in search engines. The point here is to add quality content that makes it irresistible to stop scrolling.
6. Add Internal Links
Before your content gets ranked in the search engines, it will need both internal and outbound links. Google will recognize your page as a high-quality page when it’s linked to high authority sites and when you add internal links. Any link from one page found on your site to another on the same website is called an internal link. Internal links can help Google find out the structure of your website. It allows you to let readers know of the most important pages on your site. If your site has a lot of internal links, Google will think it’s important. Outbound links also count. This also increases the time a reader spent on your website. If you are finding it hard to find internal linkings, it’s never a bad idea to plan the content ahead of time and find ways you can use to link one post to the other.
7. Optimize your Images
Incorporate the keywords when optimizing images for your on-page SEO. The caption should clearly say what the photo is about to help Google understand the image. First, choose a professional and high-quality photo to attract a user. Make sure the file size is reduced to improve your site’s speed. If you do not own the rights to the photo, use only non-copyrighted images. Should you modify them, ensure that modification is allowed. if you will publishing several images, opt for a plugin like ShortPixel for WordPress that instantly compresses 50 images without losing its quality to make loading speed faster. Avoid overstuffing it with keywords to not get penalized by Google.
8. Improve your Page Load Speed
Think about this scenario: a user needs an immediate solution to a problem so they search it up and find your website. They decide to visit a webpage from your site but get frustrated because of the slow loading time. Part of on-page SEO is to improve the speed of your webpages. If it takes more than 3 seconds for your webpage to load, expect your visitor to leave. You just lost a prospect. Slow webpage speed can hurt your engagement and conversion. Do not confuse site speed with page speed though. The latter is how quickly your content and media load when someone visits a page on your website. Factors that influence the page speed include videos, images and other media, plugins, themes, coding and scripts. Speed is an important ranking factor both for mobile and desktop. In addition, it can influence how a user views your brand. It is like that they will think of you as unreliable or unprofessional. To test the speed of your webpage, use Google PageSpeed Insights. It lets you measure the speed of both mobile and desktop devices.
A few things you can do to improve speed:
Compress and optimize all of your images : Enable browser caching Cache your webpagesEliminate unnecessary plugins.Advanced tips:Use Schema Markup A new form of on-page SEO is schema markup. It’s a code that you put on your webpage to help Google return informative results for the visitors. It will tell Google what the content means. For example, a user searches for Sarkar SEO. When Google sees this, it will produce results with Sarkar SEO in the content. If you have the right schema markup around Sarkar SEO, Google will know that Sarkar SEO is a website name and it will then produce better results for the user.
9.Here are few Schemas you can use for your content:
FAQ markup, Review markup, Product markup, How-to markup For WordPress users, use Rank Math or Yoast for adding schema markup to your pages. Optimize your Page for Featured SnippetsThose answers that show up near the top of Google’s search results are called featured snippets. This short yet relevant answer is taken from one of the top-ranking pages on the SERP. To increase your chances, make it to the top
10. Make sure to also know how to answer the query.
Take advantage of the snippet shown and improve it. Why On-Page SEO is Extremely ImportantSome tools you can use for on-page SEO include Yoast, Ahrefs SEO Toolbar and Webmaster Tools, Short Pixel and Rich Results Test. If you want the best ranking on the SERPs, take time to work on your on-page SEO and our SEO guide for 2021. Keep in mind that it helps search engines understand your page and content better. While it’s important to have relevant and compelling content for your readers, it is just as important to make them relevant for search engines. Do you need help with your on-page SEO? Our team knows everything about on-page SEO basics and other SEO techniques that help you increase conversions. Get in touch with us today!
