First, let’s quickly talk about what on-page SEO is. It’s how your website gets found by people searching online. If you want more visitors, you need good on-page SEO.
A keyword is a word or phrase that sums up your page’s content. It’s what people search for when looking for your business.
For example: A target keyword is a word or phrase that summarises the content of your page. It’s what your potential customers will type into their favourite search engine to find a business like yours.
Now, let’s get to the 10 tips:
- Keyword in title tag – Make sure you add your target keyword in the title tag of your page. This is one of the first things someone will see in the search results. Adding the target keyword at the start of the title tag helps your page stand out to a potentially interested customer. Your title tag can be up to 60 characters, with 50-60 characters being a good sweet spot.
- Target keyword in first 100 words – You should add your target keyword to the first 100 words on your page or blog post. This helps visitors and the search engines to understand the topic of your content. You can also add your target keyword a few more times naturally throughout your content. Don’t overdo this, as you’re not trying to completely fill your page full of the same words. For example, in a 3,000-word article, you wouldn’t want to use your target keyword more than 5-6 times.
- SEO-Friendly URLs – Make sure your pages and posts use simple SEO-friendly URLs. A shorter URL that includes your target keyword will tend to perform better in the search engines than a longer URL. For example, if your target keyword was “shoe repair”, then your URL would be better as /shoe-repair/ rather than /learn-more-about-our-shoe-repair-services/.
- Unique Meta Descriptions – Make sure that every page and post on your website has a well-written and unique meta description. These will be shown in the search engine results, as the descriptive text beneath the title of each result. Meta descriptions give you a perfect opportunity to encourage someone to click through to your page and read more of your content. You can use up to 160 characters here.
- Write for humans not search engines – Your content is going to be read and enjoyed by human beings, so make sure they’re always considered first. Yes, there are tips and tricks you can use to help the search engines understand your content better, but you must write for humans. If your content is written purely for the search engines, it will usually be harder for a human to read. This causes them to quickly click back in their browser and visit your competitor instead.
- Make your content engaging – The human eye can quickly get tired when reading large passages of text. There’s nothing worse than seeing 1,000+ words of content on a screen, without anything that breaks the content up. Make sure you utilize images, illustrations and videos to break up your content. You want to capture someone’s attention and keep them on your page. This has the added benefit of increasing dwell time, which is a metric that measures how long someone has stayed on a page after clicking through the search results.
- Consider search intent – Before you create content that targets a specific keyword, take a few moments to do some research. What sort of results are showing in Google for that keyword already? If you’re looking to write an article for your target keyword but none of the top 10 results in Google are blog articles, then the search intent suggests that people are not looking to read articles. Always make sure that the type of content you want to create is already ranking highly in the search engines!
- Internal Linking – Internal linking is one of the most important parts of on-page SEO. An internal link is a link that takes a user to another page or blog post on your own website. It’s perfect for linking them to further useful information on a particular topic. Every page or post of your website should utilize internal linking. This can help both your readers and also the search engines.
- Scout the competition – When you’re planning to write a new article, it’s crucial to check out your competition. Look at how many words are in the top 10 search results. If they average 2500 words, aim for the same in your article. This simple check can greatly improve your content’s quality and search engine ranking.
- Make sure your website loads fast! – Lastly, your website must load quickly. This benefits both your visitors and search engines. In today’s fast-paced world, slow websites can lose people’s interest quickly. Your site should load in under 2 seconds, ideally in under 1 second. Use GTMetrix for a speed test. If it takes longer than 2 seconds, it’s time to optimize.
