SEO On-Page Optimization: How to Increase Traffic to Your Web Pages
On-page optimization goes beyond adding Keywords and Keywords to rank on Google. For successful SEO on-page optimization, there’s a need for a clear hierarchy. The most important information should have the greatest visibility, and the least important information should have the least visibility. Because the average scan time of a user is 8 seconds, and only a few users read word by word. So, your on-page optimization process should be a natural practice of developing content, structuring and organizing it for search engines and humans to understand. READABILITY is important! The primary page elements such as headings, sub-headings, and content mark-up can be used to present a clear hierarchy of information. When you look at the components that make up the SERP, you’ll see that the primary elements are… How do you optimize the pages of your website to show up the way search engines want and also make it pleasing to humans? Let’s take a look at the page structure of your site. SEO On-page Elements & How to Structure Your Content Your page content structure is important because this is what the search engines pull out and display to searchers. Every page on your website should have a unique: Your page title and description should focus on the content. The description should summarize the content. And strategically place the keywords to increase its rankings on search engines. URLs Universal Resource Locator (URL) helps describe a web page to search engines. An SEO-friendly URL is important for proper crawling, indexing, and ranking and also for user experience. URL – best practices So that search engines can find consistent information patterns when the URLs utilize keywords as part of the naming convention. Keyword in URLs is a strong signal to search engines about the content of the webpage. https://semoladigital.com/web-design/seo-friendly-web-design-best-practices https://semoladigital.com/seo-friendly_web_design-best-practices www.semoladigital.com/topic/post-title/ Or www.parknbuy.com/products-category/sub-category e.g., https://amazon.com/clothes/men-wears. Page Title The page title is the first phrase seen by the searchers and plays a vital role in on-page optimization. The page title must be clear and concise to provide insight into the type of content a user will see after clicking on the result on SERP. For example: You want to write on a real estate agency Your page title could be: 7 ways to invest in real estate without buying a property in 2024. Page title – best practices Note… Google only allows a maximum of 600px – pixel width of characters for the page title, and everything else is cut out. This translates to a character length of between 65 and 70. To prevent Google from truncating your title, keep it below 65. Headlines Headlines are the primary information found on the webpage and are displayed in large text. Your headlines should be able to augment the title and describe the information or content on your page. Headlines – best practices How to optimize the content on your web pages The key to optimizing the content on your pages is understanding how people scan and identify the information on a web page. What do people scan? While scanning a web page, users search for information quickly by looking at the headlines, sub-headings, and paragraphs. And so, the layout of your pages, the page elements within HTML, the content, and Keywords all ensure that a user sees the most important information as quickly as possible while scanning your web pages. How users scan web pages 2. He or she then looks at the sub-headings to see if he or she can quickly navigate straight to the answer to the question in mind. 3. From there, move on to scanning the text paragraphs for bullet lists, hyperlinks, and text decorations to see if there is a direct answer or something related to what he or she is looking for. Optimizing content – paragraph #1. The paragraph should be short – not more than three sentences. #2. Each paragraph should represent a single idea. #3. There should be coherence and a sense of completeness in sentences. #4. There should be space between the paragraphs. Optimizing Content – Bulleted Lists Adding bullet points on your web pages makes it much easier for users to scan and read your content. If there’s a paragraph of information, only 55% of people will look at the content on your web page. But, If you add bullet points to your content, more than 70% will pay attention and read through. When and How to use bullet points in content Bullet points help to break up the content and provide quick information bytes. #1. You should only include bullet points in your content if it has specific, actionable information. #2. Bullet points should not be too long. Optimizing content – Use of bold and italics Bold and italics should be used only in a few places to attract the reader’s attention. Here are some important points to note while using bold and italics in your content: Optimizing content – content break-ups A content break-up is another way to enhance readability. You can optimize your content by breaking it up into paragraphs or getting rid of unwanted content. Follow these best practices to break up your content effectively: Content optimization – hyperlinks Hyperlinks help search engines to determine the quality level of your content by citing other people’s work within your content. Use hyperlinks to: Optimizing content – multimedia You can optimize the multimedia and images on your website by using correct naming attributes and captions. Before you integrate an image into your content, you must ensure you properly name it within the alt attribute tag. Here’s an example of how to name an image. Assuming you want to include a picture into your real estate article, it would be: <img src=”home.jpg” alt=”picture of a home”> So that when the image does not load, users can see the details – and what the missing image is about. Here’s is what Google Webmaster Guidelines say: “Use the alt attribute to provide descriptive text. In addition, use a human-readable caption and descriptive
WordPress SEO Checklist: Your Ultimate Guide To On-Page Optimization
Today, I’m going to walk you through a checklist of the most important SEO elements of your website step-by-step. So, I want you to go through each step to ensure your site is fully optimized. Let’s get started… Check #1: The Version of Your Website’s Domain This is the first actionable step that you need to perform. Which version of your site is indexed by Google? There are 4 possible versions and chances of seeing your site domain: But, your site should have only one version. To check this, • Go to google and insert your domain name. Or, • Go to your preferred browser and enter your site domain and see how it loads. This may not mean anything to you but it means something to Google – especially when you want Google to properly index and rank your website. If your website appears to be in 2 versions, Google will treat it as 2 separate sites. And could lead to duplicate issues. All of these versions should resolve to a single URL – and if not, you may have to 301-redirect other versions. On my site, when someone visits the “www” and the “HTTP” version, he or she is redirected to the “non-www” and “HTTPS” version which I have redirected to. #2. Check for Your Organic Traffic Why do I need to check this? To see and take note of things like peak or trough in your traffic – and whether or not it’s trending in the right direction. To do this, head over to your Google Analytics account and sign in. Go to Acquisition >> All Traffic >> Channels and then Organic Search. Once you’re in, make a note of it or a screen capture for future reference. #3. Check for Site Errors Any error on your site can affect its visibility on search engines. Errors can be: But luckily, this isn’t hard to find and fix. Google as a way of informing you of any related errors that may affect your rankings. To check for errors, go to Google Search Console, sign in if you’re not and click on coverage. Have you got any errors on your site? take note and head over to your site. But one more thing before you go to your page… #4. Check if Your Site is Mobile-Friendly It’s important you check this at the onset of your site audit. So, if you find out that the site is not mobile-friendly, you could plan to hand the report to the developers and have them fix it while you continue with your on-page optimization. Or, take note and work on it by yourself. Your site optimization is not complete without mobile SEO. In fact, over 60% of searches on Google come from mobile devices. And there’s a mobile-first algorithm that first checks before ranking your site. Now that you’ve taken note of these steps, let’s go into the pages of your website. Shall we? #5. Check Page Title Page title length: Most search engines will truncate your title if it’s more than 70 characters. An incomplete or shortened title may be unappealing to users – and may not persuade them enough to click on it. So, it is essential that you check for the character limit of your title and make sure it agrees with Google. Next… Keywords In Page Titles: Putting your primary keyword close to the beginning of your title tag is considered one of the most important on-page SEO. Because: If optimizing your page title seems difficult, I recommend you use Rank Math SEO or the Yoast SEO plugin. Make sure you check this on all of your pages before moving on to the next step. #6. Check Your Pages URL Length of URLs: short URLs are easy to remember and more favourable for search engines to crawl. Ensure you clean up the URLs by removing unwanted strings and making them user-friendly. Keyword in URLs: don’t forget to include your target keyword in the URL. Keywords in URLs are considered part of Google ranking factors. #7. Check Meta Description Why do I need to check this? A meta description is a snippet from your content and what you show to users – or instruct search engines to show users will affect how people click to your site. The space Google provides on search engine results pages (SERP) is limited and you should optimize to make use of this little space – to make a good first impression and possibly persuade searchers to click on your site. Meta Description Length: your meta description must be descriptive enough and should be kept between 50-160 characters. Although, this can be any length… but the fact that Google truncates meta description >160 means you’ve limited space to describe the content on your page. Keywords in Meta Description: Note, this doesn’t mean you should stuff keywords in your meta description. A meta description may not be part of Google ranking signals but, they still have an eye on it. When optimizing this, ensure your target Keyword is strategically placed and use synonyms where necessary. And more importantly, make it enticing to attract clicks. To augment your meta description with more information like – star ratings or review stars and pricing, consider using a schema mark-up. #8. Check for Thin Content Thin content signifies less quality within your site. You should either improve it or get rid of it. But, you can as well merge them to make great content. What’s thin content? Thin content is content that has no value – no depth of knowledge to add to readers – and lacks quality and is usually irrelevant to the searcher’s intents. Focus on publishing useful content on your website to avoid being hit by Panda. Nothin content? Then, it’s time to optimize for readability. #9. Optimize Content for Readability To optimize content for readability, you should check for: This would allow users to easily scan or read through your long piece of content.