On-Page Optimisation Best Practices

Have you ever put your time into creating some quality content and thought “Wow, this is really going to gain some attention”? 

Now don’t feel disheartened when I tell you that I tell you that it takes more than great content to improve your page’s search engine ranking and to earn more organic traffic. 

Creating great content is an important part of on-page optimisation (or on-site SEO) and more importantly, to appeal to your current and potential target audiences. But, there are a number of other elements that need regular attention to ensure that your content exists on search engine results pages. The good news is that on-site SEO is something that you have full control over and working on it regularly will make a huge difference.

But first, let’s discuss why on-page SEO is important.

On-page SEO helps search engines (most dominantly, Google) to understand your website, it’s content and it also recognises whether these are relevant to the searcher’s query. 

The process involves optimising the front-end (where the users interact with the site) and the back-end, (where data is organised and stored).

Let’s talk about on-site SEO elements and what you can do to optimise your site.

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Title Tags/ Page Titles

Titles (in general) are really important. In this case, they inform the visitor and the search engine what they will find on each page (imagine a library full of books). 

Keep the title relevant to the page and be sure to include the focus keyword (naturally) in the title on each page to make sure each site page ranks high. If your title has been packed with keywords in an unnatural manner, search engines will figure it out, and they will penalise you!

Keep your title at 60 or less characters to make sure that your title won’t be cut off in the search engine results page.

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Content Formatting – Body Tags and Headers

You may have seen body tags which look like this: 

<h1>, <h2>, <h3>

Body tags help you to organise your content for search engines and readers. They tell search engines what the most important parts of your content is. 

<h1> is the most important and as the number gets higher, the content is considered less important. Make sure to only have one <h1> tag on each page, otherwise Google, and readers, won’t know what the most important thing on the page is.

Include your keywords in your body tags and don’t repeat the same ones in your page title.

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URLs

Page URLs need to be simple for visitors and search engines to understand. 

You will notice that clear URLs work as a hierarchy, they almost resemble a map of where the visitor is going. They display the main topics covered on your site to guide visitors during their search.

On your URLs, only use one or two keywords and use HTTPS (if you can) which is an added layer of security for visitors that Google highly values, and is now a ranking factor.

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Extra for Experts: Look into developing a canonical URL strategy on your website.

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Meta Page Descriptions

I’ll be honest here, these aren’t official ranking factors but we all know that when you’re searching for the right site, the meta page description influences whether you click through or not. Now these are the short, but all-important descriptions that show under the title in the search engine results

Make people want to click through, make it interesting and include your keyword or keyword phrase.

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Internal and External Links

When you link internally, you are sending visitors to other helpful pages of your website. This keeps visitors on your site for longer and signals to Google that your website is valuable, which means, you guessed it, higher ranking.

On the other hand, there are external links and backlinks. An external link will link visitors to external websites. This is a good way to provide value because it helps your visitors check sources and find more valuable information. 

However, a backlink is when another website links to your website on their webpage. This gives search engines a signal of quality because it shows that your website is actually worth connecting with. 

Adding external links and gaining plenty of relevant backlinks is beneficial and it will support your content and in turn, it will raise your ranking. 

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General Website Structure and Crawlability 

When it comes to website structure, you want a search engine to be able to crawl through your website’s whole text content and understand what it is all about.

When is a website considered as crawlable? When the search engine is able to access and crawl content without facing issues like broken links or dead ends. Unfortunately issues like these would lead to the search engine being unable to access specific content which will not help your ranking at all.

 There are a number of ways to make sure that your website is crawlable. Focus on issues like:

• Creating a good website structure, again, focusing on internal linking. Search engines hate disorganised websites!
• Ensure that you have a logical URL structure (as discussed previously)
• It’s 2023, there is no excuse for your website not to be mobile/tablet friendly

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Quality Content

We wanted to discuss this subject last, because it is arguably the most important part of on-site SEO. Why? The content is why the website exists, to inform and assist your visitors.

• Always choose relevant topics and keywords. Keyword research is vital to this process. Use tools like Google Keyword Planner or opt for a paid option like Ubersuggest or Ahrefs.
• Use short and long-key tail words in your content as naturally as you can.
• Make sure that each piece of content is written for a specific target market and solve their problem.
• Link your content with relevant products and/or services with a call to action.

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On-page optimisation is, no doubt, a process that needs to be worked on regularly. Your website will be (or should be) getting regular updates with new content keeping it fresh and relevant. Therefore, ensuring that you work on your on-site SEO is an important process that will reap the benefits if done correctly.