So you’ve let me put together a strong SEO strategy with strong keyword research around user intent – Now what?
That’s where On-page SEO comes into play! The clues to a successful On-page SEO strategy has roots in Google’s original mission statement which is:
to organize the world’s information and make it universally accessible and useful.
– Google
That seems way too simple for how complicated people make SEO out to be but that’s what On-page SEO is – Organizing information to make it useful to the people who navigate throughout your website. Google scans, indexes, and ranks your website depending on the content on your website and how it’s presented.
On-Page SEO includes the following:
Inner Linking Structure
Linking to other pages on your website is important. Think about all those times you got lost clicking around Wikipedia reading about some random subject that you never thought you even cared about! That’s because Wikipedia does a very good job of Inner linking to all the different pages on their website to make it easy for users to find useful information (kind of like what Google said in it’s mission statement).
You could say that Wikipedia is the most resourceful website in the world and it’s organic traffic and clicks reflect that.
Anchor Text
When you link out to other pages on your website it’s called anchor text. Google looks at your anchor text to get clues on how to rank you. An effective anchor text strategy includes a variety of different words and not just those you want to rank for.
Use of Header Tags (h1-h5)
Header tags (like the one above) make it easy for Google bot and users to scan your website. People hate globs of text and often times when they see that they will just leave your website. Instead, users often times look at the headers in an article to see whether or not they should commit to the time it takes to read and then decide whether or not to continue reading!
Title Tags
Title tags are the first thing people see upon completing a Google search. Think of them as clickable headlines that tell people whether or not they’ve found the right search result. Because this is the first thing people see it’s extremely important to optimize them in a manner that gets peoples attention or they will go to another search result.
Meta Descriptions
Meta descriptions are located just underneath the title tag and help people decide whether or not they will click through to your website or not.
Content-Length
The length of your content will also determine how Google ranks you and whether or not people will share it on social media. Contrary to popular belief, people share longer-form content more than shorter form and the average first page Google ranking is around 1,800 words!
It’s important to have a mix of short and long content on your website. If you have too many short articles you won’t rank as well. This is because in the early days of Google people manipulated search engines by keyword stuffing 300-500 word articles that didn’t offer up any value.
Once you create content around the right keywords it’s time to format it in a way that keeps users on your website and navigating to other pages. Google’s ranks you according to how users interact with this content (among hundreds of other things) and it’s important to take this into account.
If you’ve already written and published content don’t panic! You can still go back and make the necessary changes to ensure your content is appealing to both search engines and people alike. While it can be more effective to plan for on-page SEO upfront it’s also an iterative process. Google and users love it when you regularly go back and update your content and that alone is a ranking factor in itself.
If you’ve already launched your website I can go back and do an audit to make sure correct on-page SEO standards are implemented. If you’re still in the content planning stages I can ensure that it’s structured in a way that Google will crawl, rank, and index your website efficiently so you outrank the competition.
Give me a call if you have any questions about On-page SEO or if you need help optimizing your content.
I want to help usher in and facilitate the adoption of a digitally-focused and decentralized world. Reach out, and let’s talk about your project!
Arash Ghaemi
GalaxyGrowth.io