Any business who is serious about developing business online knows you must develop your Search Engine Optimization, otherwise known as SEO. However, most business owners do not understand what SEO is or how to do it. At a high level, it consists of two primary areas, on page SEO and off page SEO. What is on site SEO and how can you leverage it to get a leg up on your competition?
Definition Of On Page SEO
On page SEO optimization is the practice of making your business's website effective for search engines for the targeted keywords and keyword themes that are relevant to your product and services. This includes the obvious elements, such as the content on your pages. It also includes technical elements, such as the coding of your site, the load speed, and URL structure, just to name a few.
Everything that is not comprised of what is on your website directly is part of off page optimization.
On Page SEO Techniques
The first step to developing your SEO is to complete your keyword research. Using a tool such as the Google Keyword planner, you want to look for keywords that are relevant to the product or service being featured on each page, then look for the most relevant keywords that have the best monthly search volume.
Once you have two or three keywords selected for each page, next you want to develop the content for those pages. It is important to write content that flows naturally and is designed to convert your visitors. Once you have this focus, you then ensure the keywords you are targeting are also part of the content.
Once you have they content developed, you want to work on tweaking the technical components of your website. No matter how fast your site loads, it can always be faster, and there have been positive correlations between how fast sites load with their ranking in search results and how well they convert.
On Page Optimization Best Practices
Understanding the basic techniques for on page SEO is the first step. Combine this knowledge with the best practices to develop strong on site signals.
- Keyword Usage: You want to use your targeted keywords for each page throughout the content. Usually you want to include the primary keyword in your page title and primary header. Use your secondary keywords throughout the content, and with subheadings.
- Develop Page Descriptions: Most SEO experts agree that the page description, also known as a meta description, do not directly influence search ranking. However, they do affect the click through of visitors from those search results to your website.
- Page URLs: Search engines no longer look at the primary domain to see if it is keyword rich. However, they do still look at the deeper URL structure to see what the page is about, primarily based on the keywords used in the URLs.
- Internal Links: Be sure to link to other pages in your site within the content. When you create links, be sure to use targeted keywords as your anchor text to help develop relevance in each of your pages. Also, be sure you use the full permalink for the URL rather than relative URLs.
- Optimize Your Images: Be sure to use appropriate keyword for the images you use on each page. Also, add ALT tags to every image you use on your site, describing the focus of each picture as it relates to the content of the page.
On Page SEO Checklist
It is time to get started on optimizing the pages of your site. Here is a checklist to help you get started:
- Use a well-developed title tag.
- Use header tags for headers, not as formatting tags. Use a single H1 tag, and use H2 and H3 tags in order down the page.
- Develop enough content for each page. The target should be at least 400-500 words per page.
- Add structured data to your pages to increase the information shown in the search engine results pages.
- Include an XML sitemap for the search engines as well as an HTML sitemap for users
- Optimize your images with keyword-focused file names and descriptive ALT tags.
- Add social markup, including Facebook graph and Twitter card meta tags.
- Externalize JavaScript and CSS by removing any unnecessary pieces of code from each page by setting up your CSS and JavaScript in external files.
- Add contact information to every page. Search engines look for signals that indicate trust and authority. Adding a prominent phone number and address provides this signal, as well as increases the likelihood of organic visitors to convert, which is what you really want anyway.
If you do not give attention to all the facets of proper search engine optimization, it can have a negative impact on your bottom line. Contact us to partner with a trusted firm that knows the ins and outs of how to get you more business by increasing your search engine visibility! You can also give us a call at (713) 857-8403.
Resources
On-Page SEO: Anatomy of a Perfectly Optimized Page (2016 Update). Retrieved September 29, 2016, from BACKLINKO, http://backlinko.com/on-page-seo
On-page factors. Retrieved September 29, 2016, from MOZ, https://moz.com/learn/seo/on-page-factors
Page speed. Retrieved September 29, 2016, from MOZ, https://moz.com/learn/seo/page-speed
Isca, F. (2016). On-page SEO best practices to follow for 2016. Retrieved September 29, 2016, from Weidert Group, https://www.weidert.com/whole_brain_marketing_blog/bid/123473/On-Page-SEO-Best-Practices-to-Follow-For-2014-Part-1
Clay, B. (2016, August 11). FRESH UPDATE! The always-up-to-date SEO checklist from Bruce Clay, Inc. Retrieved September 29, 2016, from Bruce Clay, http://www.bruceclay.com/blog/seo-checklist/
