On-Page SEO: What it is & How to Put it to Work for Your Business
When we refer to SEO, we are of course talking about the process by which you get your website recognized by the major search engines. The goal is exposure. You want to build your brand online and increase your web presence in this ever-increasingly competitive marketplace of the world wide web. The means to accomplishing your goal is the implementation of proven SEO strategies, among which are various on-page seo techniques as well as steps to take to develop off-page seo. Today, we will focus on a technique that does take time to develop, but can be the one the most most affordable search engine optimization tools: on-page SEO.
What is on-page SEO?
On-page SEO refers to any measures that you can take to make your site pages keyword rich as possible and to notify search engines that you are using those particular pages to communicate content related to those keywords. In general, developing good on-page SEO requires you to do the following:
1. Discover the Right Keywords:
The “right” keywords for your business are not only the ones that describe the products and services you offer (and where you offer them), but also are the ones that your potential customers are actually already searching for online. Use a keyword tool to find out what the search volume and competition level is for the words you would like to incorporate onto pages of your website.
2. Write Quality Content:
The content that Google respects is the kind that is relevant and helpful to your users. It needs to be keyword-rich, but not overdone. The page that you tag for a particular keyword should actually have content on that page that applies and relates to the keyword – otherwise, search engines will not perceive it as relevant to your users.
3. Let Search Engines Know What You’re Up To:
When the Google crawler scans your page to determine its rank, its wondering which keywords you were trying to target. It’s your responsibility to give the search engines this information so they know where to look and what to look for.
Now you’re probably wondering how to accomplish point #3. Well, its really all about your Meta Tags found in the HTML coding…so let’s talk about that in more detail.
What are Meta Tags?
- Title Tags: This is a sentence of text describing what is on your webpage. This is the first thing a engine crawler will see. Keep these to about 77 characters.
- Meta Descriptions: These are the short paragraphs that appear under each site name on search engine results pages (SERPS). While they aren’t important for Google, they are extremely important to your potential site viewers. Your meta descriptions are your way of competing with other pages that have ranked on the first page of a SERP. Try to keep these to 160 characters.
- Keyword Tags: The need for this meta tag is disputed among SEO specialists. If you chose to utilize keyword tags, here is where you list the keywords that you have used on that page as well as any possible misspellings or alternate variations of the keywords or phrases. These tags usually contain between 8 and 10 keywords.
For more affordable search engine optimization tips, check out our other blogs!