7 Ways to Improve Your On-Page SEO

If you want to improve your websites search engine rankings, a good place to start is with On-Page SEO. On-page factors are those you control on your website. This includes what a user sees when they visit your website, and how the website performs from a technical perspective. In this article, we will look at 7 common areas that will improve your SEO.

Content & keywords.

You should create web pages around the keyword and phrases that you want to rank for. If your chosen keywords are in line with your company mission statement and service offering, then this should be easy to do. Make sure you use your keyword in your page title and at appropriate points in the text. Remember the aim is not to stuff the keyword in just for the benefit of the search engine. Use your keyword or synonyms naturally within the text to ensure the reader understands the main topic of the page. An SEO expert could help you further optimise your pages to increase its search engine visibility.

Site structure.

A good site structure will help your visitors to navigate your website easily. It will also show Google which pages of your website are most important and therefore which ones it should rank. It may not seem necessary to consider this when you first build your website, however as your business and website grow, site structure becomes more important. Having good foundations will help your website perform well in the long run. You should aim to organise your pages into categories and use internal linking to point to your most important pages. Make sure your menu is user-friendly and easy to follow. If a page or product on your website becomes obsolete, you should remove it and create a redirect to replacement content. A good web designer will be able to help you structure your website properly.

Mobile optimisation.

We have already stated that almost half of internet searches are now on mobile devices. In the last couple of years, Google has updated its algorithms to penalise sites that are not mobile-friendly. It also now increasingly uses mobile-first indexing. This means Google will crawl and index the mobile version of your web page rather than the desktop version and use this to determine where the page should rank. Make sure your website looks good and functions properly in all formats and test all pages and functions. Don’t leave it to your customers to find elements that don’t work. If you want to check how mobile-friendly your website is, Google offers a free tool to check – https://search.google.com/test/mobile-friendly.

Website and page load speed.

I am sure you have experienced the frustration of visiting a website that takes forever to load. If that’s your website, then don’t rely on your visitors waiting patiently; they are far more likely to click off onto one of your competitors’ sites. Google recognises that site speed and page load speed is important and has confirmed it is one of the factors it considers when ranking pages. The hosting you use can make a big difference and you often get what you pay for with this, so don’t just opt for the cheapest option. Images can also make a page slow to load if they have not been web optimised. There are also more technical elements of the website’s coding that can be optimised. We would recommend using a web developer skilled in site speed optimisation to make sure your website loads lightning fast.

Security.

Having a secure website is important for SEO, and it is important that your visitors feel that it is secure when they visit it. You shouldn’t just assume that your website is automatically protected. If your website gets hacked and used by spammers, you may lose your hard-earned rankings very quickly. The easiest way to stop this is by using secure usernames and passwords and only giving access to those that need it. Many website platforms also now offer two-factor authentication for further security. Ask your web developer to add an SSL certificate which will change their connection from HTTP to HTTPS (an encrypted connection). If users feel safe on your site, they will stay there longer. Google also uses HTTPS as a ranking signal. Pay attention to all these security factors and your SEO will improve.

Structured data.

This is a very technical element of SEO. It involves adding additional code to your web pages to improve how your site appears in Googles Search results. You may have noticed when searching the internet that some search results have more detail than others (i.e. images, information boxes, reviews, links to their social media etc). These are known as rich results and have been engineered to appear that way by a web developer. This is an effective way of dominating search results and increasing the number of clicks your listings get. Ask your SEO specialist to help you utilise structured data to improve your search engine listings.

User experience.

Hopefully, you now realise how critical user experience is for search engine optimisation. Many of the black hat tricks and shortcuts previously used in SEO are now banned by search engines and could harm your rankings. Google wants its search engine users to find the most relevant results, therefore if you focus all aspects of your website and digital marketing on the user experience, you will improve it and in turn your SEO. Ask your customers for feedback and look to continuously improve your website for the good of your visitors. This will lead to better search engine rankings, reduce your bounce rate, and bring you more customers as Google connects you with the most relevant traffic.

A fresh approach to on-page SEO.

FreshOnline specialises in search engine optimisation for WordPress websites. We have helped many small businesses across Sussex, Kent and London to climb up the rankings. We offer an SEO start-up package designed to kick start your search engine rankings. It includes many of the techniques described above. We can also offer longterm SEO management to ensure you maintain your hard earned positions.