If you’re like most business owners, you’ve heard of on-page SEO – and yet, you don’t really know what it means and how it can impact your business. After all, you’re not a programmer or an SEO expert.
But considering that on-page SEO is a critical factor in the success of your website, it’s something you can’t afford to ignore. Without it, your site can easily get lost in an already noisy marketplace.
The good news is that with some basic knowledge, you can improve your on-page SEO – giving your website more influence on search engine results. Here’s what you need to know to get there:
What Is On-Page SEO?
First, ‘on-page’ simply refers to the elements on your website, like copy, images, video, meta tags, and HTML code. On-page SEO is the act of optimizing those elements in order to boost your rankings in organic search results.
Why Does It Matter?
Because when you improve your search engine rankings, customers are more likely to find and click on your site when they’re searching for the types of products or services you sell. The endgame here is to get on the first page of Google’s search engine results. Why?
Report after report shows that most people don’t click past the first page of results. Some say that number is 75%, while others put it at 92%. But the bottom line is that if you’re on page two or three of Google’s search engine results, you can kiss a whole lot of prospects good-bye. Solid on-page SEO, on the other hand, can help you achieve first-page rankings.
How Can I Improve On-Page SEO?
There are a variety of areas you can focus on, a few of which include:
- If you’re serious about SEO, you need to know what keywords and key phrases your audience is using. Use online tools, like Google AdWords Keyword Planner and Google Suggest, for research.
- High-quality, relevant copy. This serves multiple purposes. First, authoritative content ranks better. Second, it will improve the ‘dwell time’ of your page. This is simply the length of time a visitor spends on your page. And third, Google takes this ‘dwell time’ into account, which means it impacts your rankings. So if people are going to your website and immediately clicking off due to poor content, it will affect your rankings.
- Keyword density. Don’t cram 100 keywords on a page. This can actually diminish your rankings. However, do sprinkle your keywords (as well as variations of them) throughout the page’s copy and in subheads. Put them in the title tag (the headline that displays in the top bar of Internet browsers) as close to the beginning as you can. Use them in the alt text of a page’s image, as well as in the URL for that page.
- Images, videos and infographics. Enhancing copy with different types of media throughout your site can better engage visitors. This, in turn, can increase time spent on your site, impacting rankings.
- SEO-friendly URLs. Shorter URLs (i.e. website addresses) are ranked better by Google. So go with com/products rather than yourwebsite.com/categorya12/articleandtitlehere.
- Responsive design. Google is actually penalizing websites that aren’t optimized for tablets and smart phones. Don’t be one of them! Make sure your site is optimized for all devices and computers.
- Site speed. Site speed is simply how fast pages on your site load. The faster the better. Not only can site speed impact your rankings, but also your user experience, as well.
Don’t have the time to invest in on-page SEO efforts? Turn to the search engine marketing experts at Qiigo. We can do it for you, helping you boost your ranking results and generate more interest in your site. Call us today at (888) 673-1212 to find out how.
