On-Page SEO

Search Engine Optimisation can bring organic visibility and this begins with on-page SEO. Optimising your web pages and posts will ensure potential customers find a way to you. The process of on-page optimisation aims to rank individual web pages and earn more relevant traffic in search engines. This method is connected to your sites content, ensuring when a prospective customer begins a search, your site stands a greater chance of being noticed.

The Right Foundations

To begin on page optimisation, you must know  your meta tags from your keywords and image alt tags to internal links. These components (among others) when refined with care can enhance the user experience and signal to search engine algorithms that your page is an authoritative source. It’s valuable and worth presenting on the results pages.

A Balancing Act

As your focus turns to ranking in search, it’s easy to become preoccupied with the factors that cause a website to rank. Yet, the key to great on-page SEO is to blend the technical elements of SEO with user experience. Content relevance, load speed and mobile friendliness are equally important for keeping visitors engaged once they arrive at your website.

Your optimisation efforts don’t just want to increase traffic, it’s about driving the right traffic. You need to monitor analytics tools such as Google Analytics to monitor what’s working and the journey a user takes from the search engine through your website.

Crafting an On Page SEO Strategy

Every optimisation effort needs a plan. To make the most of SEO, it’s helpful to adopt a methodical approach to implement best practices.

Keyword Research

Keywords can guide users towards your content. Without them, the chances of search engines recognising and ranking your content are significantly reduced. Conducting thorough keyword research gives you the information you need to anticipate the search terms potential customers are likely to use, ensuring your content is aligned with their search.

Long Tail Keywords

While phrases or ‘long-tail’ keywords may have less search volume, they often have a higher conversion value. They help you target a more specific audience, reducing competition and yielding visitors who are more likely to become customers.

Intent Analysis

Understanding the intent behind search queries is as important as selecting the right keywords. Are users looking to make a purchase, find information, or compare options? Crafting content that meets these needs will boost both your ranking and your relevancy.

Content Creation

For a page to be properly optimised, it must be populated with good content. Information that’s relevant, engaging and problem focused. Not only should the content be optimised, but it should speak directly to the needs of your audience.

Pillar and Cluster Content

Organising your content into pillar pages and clusters can strengthen the on-page SEO of your site. Pillar pages act as topical overviews and are linked to multiple related clusters, allowing search engines to understand the structure of your content and the depth of your knowledge on a subject. You can also create what is known as a content hub or knowledge base. This is an in depth resource section divided into categories and sub-sections including quality articles and guides.

Including Multimedia

Incorporating images, videos, and infographics not only makes your content more consumable for users but also provides additional opportunities for keyword optimization in alt tags, captions, and filenames.

Technical SEO and On-Page Optimisation

While content often takes the spotlight, technical SEO is the unsung hero that ensures your page can be found and understood by search engines. It works in harmony with your written content and multimedia.

Site Structure

A well-organised site structure ensures that both users and search engine crawlers can navigate your website easily. Clear hierarchies, logical page grouping, and an intuitive link structure all contribute to a positive user experience, a critical component of on-page SEO.

URL Optimisation

URLs should be user-friendly, composed of plain language with relevant keywords, and provide a clear path to the content of the page. Avoid complex strings of characters or parameters that could be confusing or off-putting to a user. If you use WordPress, make sure the permalink structure is correct, so it shows the title of the page rather than a string of numbers.

Page Load Speed

When visitors want information quickly, every second counts. Page load speed is a critical factor in user satisfaction and an increasingly important ranking factor. Optimising images, leveraging browser caching, and employing a content delivery network (CDN) can all help to speed up your site. If your site doesn’t load within a couple of seconds, a user will often bounce back to the search engine results pages which can affect rankings if lots of people do this.

Mobile Optimisation

As more people browse, shop and search for information on mobile devices, make sure your content is responsive. The page should adapt to the size of the screen, being easy to view on smartphones and tablets.  

Schema Markup

Schema markup is a shared vocabulary of tags that are added to your HTML code to improve the way search engines read and represent your page in the search engine results pages (SERPs). It can enhance your rich snippets, increasing the visibility and click-through rates of your pages.

Link Building – Making Connections

High-quality backlinks are the online equivalent of word-of-mouth referrals. They are critical signals of trust and authority to search engines and can significantly impact your on-page SEO.

Internal Links

Strategic internal linking not only helps users to navigate your site but also spreads the power of backlinks throughout your pages through link authority, improving the ranking potential of each page they link to.

External Links

When influential sites link to your content, it’s a vote of confidence in the eyes of search engines. Earning these backlinks should be a central part of your on-page SEO strategy.

The Guest Blogging Debate

For many years, guest blogging was a popular tactic for earning backlinks, but the focus should always be on the quality of the content and the relevance of the link, not simply the number of backlinks.

The primary focus of on-page SEO should be serving the needs of your audience. In addition to this, remaining up to date with the latest SEO trends and best practices will help you refine your approach and adapt to any new algorithm changes.

Regular Audits

Conducting regular SEO audits can identify areas of your on-page SEO that require attention. Checking for broken links, analysing page performance, and reviewing keyword rankings are all part of maintaining a healthy and effective SEO strategy.

The Human Element

SEO is about connecting with people. The best SEO strategies are those that recognise the human element and seek to provide value and a great user experience.

The SEO journey is undoubtedly complex, but its bursting with potential. Business owners who take the time to understand and apply SEO principles will be able to attract the right traffic and convert this traffic into paying customers.