“How long will it take to improve search engine ranking?” – This million dollar question haunts every business owner. But unfortunately there is no magic button you can press to get your website to the top position.
However, we cannot undermine the business owners’ concern to improve their web rankings. According to a survey by Infront Webworks, Google’s very first SERP (Search Engine Result Page) gets about 95% of web traffic.
Well, this might immediately remind you of PPC (Pay-Per-Click). Several website owners spend a lot of resources on PPC to quickly occupy the top ranks. While this can definitely lead to greater visibility for your website in a short amount of time, advanced users often tend to avoid the promotional pages, preferring to check the organic results.
An interesting observation from New Media Campaigns shows that organic SEO results are clicked 8.5 times more often than paid search results. Despite this, 87% of search engine dollars (roughly $10 billion) is spent on PPC and only 11% (roughly $1 billion) is reserved for SEO efforts. This means that the 5x more effective strategy, SEO, only gets 1/8th of the resources spent in the market!
While PPC can improve rankings instantly, SEO helps maintain rankings, and at a lower cost. For this reason, we firmly believe that PPC has not affected the relevance of SEO.
While we mentioned earlier that there’s no magic, there are certainly a few strategies you can employ to improve your organic ranking. One of them is improving your on-page SEO.
# How to improve on-page SEO?
On-page SEO refers to the optimization of web pages to improve the website’s search engine rankings, thereby increasing organic traffic. But sometimes SEO best practices suggested by random practitioners can be misleading. No worries. We’ve got you covered. Our in-depth guide will walk you through some on-page SEO tricks recommended and practiced by the experts at a top SEO agency that you must follow if you want to improve your website’s visibility on Google.
1. Generate quality content
Content is the heart of on-page SEO. Google always prioritizes quality content. Informative and user-friendly content automatically attracts more audiences and thereby ranks higher.
The first step in creating quality content is choosing relevant topics and keywords. The tips below will help you generate great content:
keyword optimization
With a wealth of complex algorithms, Google is constantly improving its understanding of searcher intent. It no longer just relies on popular keywords but delivers high-quality content that caters to users’ demands. One of Google’s main goals is to improve the user experience. Old-school SEO strategies like keyword stuffing are penalized by Google’s Penguin algorithm. Because of this, it’s important to learn ideal keyword density before writing any content.
In addition, the Panda algorithm ranks a website based on content quality, and pages with quality content are generally rewarded with higher ranks.
Our suggestion is to do some keyword research and incorporate long-tail keywords. These keywords are more specific and closer to the search queries. Also, make sure that the keywords appear naturally or organically in the content and don’t appear forced.
Add relevant, engaging, and quality visual content
Visuals register more effectively in the human brain. Our brain can process images over 60,000 times faster than text. Additionally, a study by Venngage shows that images can increase the desire to read content by a whopping 80%.
When uploading visual content, make sure to optimize it properly. For example, compress the image without sacrificing quality and ensure that it does not take long to load. While JPGs are used for high-quality images, PNGs are ideal alternatives for logos, icons, etc.
Also, use alt tags (alternative text) to give search engine spiders a clue as to what the image is about. Below we will discuss image alt text in detail. So read on.
Add compelling CTAs
Include Calls-to-Actions (CTAs) to direct visitors to the product and deal pages. This can effectively help to get more conversions and thereby increase ROI (return on investment).
Page content is central to all on-page SEO processes. Other on-page SEO elements come from the page content, so invest enough resources and time to develop and optimize them.
2. Site Architecture Elements
Site architecture elements identify the components of your website and individual pages. How you structure the website helps Google crawl the pages and content.
Page URL
Page URLs should be easy for readers and search engines to understand. These are also important for maintaining site hierarchy when creating subpages, blog posts, and other types of internal pages.
https://moz.com/blog
In this URL, blog is the subdomain and moz.com is the domain. Check out the following tips for writing SEO-friendly URLs:
Remove unnecessary or extra words
If possible, use “https” because Google uses it as a positive ranking factor.
Internal links
Internal linking refers to the act of hyperlinking to other pages on your website. This is important for on-page SEO because internal links drive traffic to other web pages on your site and signal to Google that your site is helpful and valuable. However, make sure that the links are relevant to the topic of the content, as stuffing irrelevant internal links will spoil the user experience.
As we mentioned before, improving the user experience is a key concern for Google and should be yours too. Therefore, only link to the pages that can really help readers learn more about a specific niche. Only then can you expect to drive more traffic to those sites. If the users find the linked pages irrelevant, they leave the page, which increases the bounce rate. Plus, it negatively impacts your brand.
Check out the blog and learn how to audit internal links – https://www.searchenginejournal.com/audit-internal-links/304303/
website speed
Did you know that around 40% of consumers wait no more than three seconds for a page to load (Source: Hoboweb)! This speaks volumes about the importance of optimizing page speed to improve user experience and increase retention rate. You can check website speed using Google’s PageSpeed Insights tool.
Code optimization is a popular strategy to speed up loading time. You should remove all newlines and unnecessary spaces and indent the code. It’s also good practice to put JavaScript files in the footer of the webpage so that they load in the background without delaying the content’s appearance on the webpage.
Mobile responsiveness
With mobile devices generating approximately 51.51% of global traffic (source: Statista), it has become crucial for business owners to develop mobile-friendly websites.
It is important to choose the right website design, theme and content layout that is easy to read and navigate on the mobile devices. If you are unsure about the mobile responsiveness of your site, use Google’s mobile testing tool.
3. HTML Elements
HTML elements denote the elements in the source code of a website. (Quick tip: To check the source code, right-click the page > View page source)
title tag
The title tag, or page title, is a short description of any webpage that is displayed at the top of the browser window. The title is the first clue to the search engine and visitors as to what they can find on the page. Here are a few best practices for optimizing the title tag:
– Keep it under 70 characters. Longer titles may be truncated in search results.
– It’s better not to stuff the title with keywords as it gives a spammy and cheesy reading experience.
– Make sure the title is relevant to the page.
– When writing the title, do not use all capital letters, as this will make it difficult to read.
meta descriptions
The meta description is a short and concise page description that appears under the title in search results. It can affect click-through rate (CTR) since a memorable and relevant meta description has a better chance of driving traffic than a random and random one. Therefore, it is important to optimize the metadata.
Here’s how to create an appropriate meta description:
– Write a compact description that shows the USP of your product or service.
– Make sure the meta description is no longer than 160 characters.
-Avoid using characters like “-“, “+” or “&”.
-Include the entire keyword or keyword phrase.
Image alt text
Image alt text is SEO for the images. This helps Google to accurately index the image content. Even if the image doesn’t load due to a technical error, Google can still read the alt text and help rank the page.
When adding image alt text, keep the following points in mind:
– Make it specific and descriptive.
– Make sure it is relevant to the context of the image.
-Keep it under 125 characters.
– Use keywords sparingly and don’t stuff them. Of course, if these don’t go together, try using semantic keywords or the most important terms in a long-tail keyword.
We understand that there is a lot of work to be done when it comes to optimizing your website. That is why we recommend you to outsource SEO services from a reputable SEO agency.
Diploma
After finalizing your SEO plans, implement these strategies on your website. Remember that SEO is not a do-it-and-forget-it deal. Therefore, you need to constantly monitor and change the existing SEO strategies to keep your page relevant at all times.
I hope our guide has helped you understand how to use advanced SEO tactics to gain a competitive edge. If you still have any questions, please feel free to contact us.
