On-page SEO is central to any successful digital marketing strategy. It essentially defines how brands distinguish themselves on the web and attract the right visitors. As you can imagine, on-page SEO is vastly broad. It can be challenging to bring all aspects together, especially if you’re just getting started with search engine optimization.
This quick guide covers what you need to know about getting the most from your on-page SEO strategy. Use it as a checklist for how well your current efforts measure up to industry standards and best practices.
Brief Overview of On-page SEO
SEO is all about optimizing your online presence so it ranks higher in organic search results. There’s no better place to start than with your web pages — thus the name ‘on-page.’ The main goal of this process is to establish your brand and then make sure it is visible and findable by the right people on the web.
On-page SEO optimizes both the content and HTML source code of the web page so that it tells search engines about your website and how it provides value to its visitors.
How is it different from off-page SEO?
It differs from off-page SEO in that it focuses on pages that are within your control and optimizes them for improved rankings and visibility. This covers important considerations like content relevance and readability, keyword optimizations, interlinking, image optimizations, and so on. Off-page SEO, on the other hand, focuses on improving the authority of your website through quality backlinks.
Will on-page SEO still be Important in 2022?
Definitely! In fact, on-page SEO will always be important, or at least for as long as people will go online to search for a product, service, or relevant piece of information. A well-executed on-page SEO strategy will result in a number of advantages, including improved site visibility, better organic traffic flow, SERP rankings, and optimized conversions. What could be more important for your website?
On-Page SEO Checklist
While this is not an exhaustive list, it’s still comprehensive enough to cover all the important aspects of on-page SEO. Let’s dive in!
Google Search Console Setup
Google Search Console is one of the most powerful tools in your on-page SEO arsenal. Even better, it’s free! It is designed to monitor the performance of our website in Google search and provide important insights like web page indexing status, website errors, page experience scores, and lots more.
Google Analytics Setup
Google Analytics is another free, yet powerful tool that greatly improves on-page SEO. It’s main function is to provide insight on how people are finding and interacting with your site. These insights include traffic source, traffic origin, the device used to access your website (desktop or mobile), bounce rate, page views, conversions, and more.
Concise Page Titles and H1 Tags
Page titles and H1 tags are how web crawlers are able to identify what a particular web page is all about. This makes them among the critical considerations in on-page SEO. You’ll want to create unique and keyword-optimized page titles so they immediately stand out to the search engine bots. As much as possible, make sure they’re descriptive too and flawlessly capture the main subject matter of the page.
Useful, Timely Content
There’s no SEO without content — but it’s not just any kind of content. First it must be relevant to the reader. No one wants to land on a web page and spend the next 20 seconds looking at content that is irrelevant to their query. Second, it must be keyword optimized. This is how people will find that web page in the first place. Third, it must be timely, meaning the content shouldn’t be outdated. Information changes all the time and search engines reward web pages with timely content with better rankings.
SEO-friendly URLs
Every web page has a unique URL (Uniform Resource Locator) — think of it as the address of that page on the web. Best practices require these URLs to be short and descriptive. Where possible, make sure they contain the primary keyword for that page. For example, on our SEO page, the URL is ‘expert-seo-services.’ When Google crawlers see this, they automatically know that this page is all about SEO services.
Meta Descriptions
Meta descriptions are the small snippets of text that appear below the page title on a search engine’s results page (SERP). They are important because they give readers an idea of what to expect from that page. Meta descriptions must be concise (usually no more than 160 characters) and contain at least one primary keyword. It’s also ideal to include a compelling call to action so readers are encouraged to click and visit your website.
Optimized Images
Images are a must-have in every website. They complement text and often convey ideas more easily. Because of their importance, optimizing them to rank on SERPs is paramount. Optimizing images means using descriptive file names and utilizing ALT tags so that search engine crawlers can index the images. As a rule, avoid using heavy images as they can impact the site speed and effectively ruin user experience.
Schema Markup
Schema markups help improve how search engines and online users see your page, especially in SERPs. They enhance the rich snippets under page titles, which in turn, can get you that coveted click to your page.
Interlinking
Linking to other pages on your website ensures that Google bots can easily find all your website’s pages. They’re also great for improving how your website visitors navigate through the site and quickly find the information they need. Beyond internal linking, it’s also important to include some outbound links in your website. By linking out to other sites in your industry for reference or citation, you can improve your overall site authority and ultimately, ranking.
User Experience
Website user experience refers to how easy it is for users to interact with your website. This includes critical considerations such as mobile-first design, simple navigation, fast loading speed, bite-sized paragraphs, and clear, consistent calls to action.
Tulumi Does Professional On-Page SEO
With so many aspects of on-page SEO, it can be a huge challenge to bring them all together under a cohesive strategy — and yet you need to properly do them all if you are to get any meaningful results. Tulumi can help! We are the premier digital marketing agency in Orlando, Florida. Talk to us about your on-page SEO and broader digital marketing needs today. This way you get to focus your time on actually running your business and improving its profitability. Call now at (800) 481-1720 or email us at Email hello@tulumi.com to get started.
