This is part three in a series of articles in which we discuss the reasons why every small business should be worried about SEO and the best way to start addressing and improving organic search ranking without breaking the bank. The focus is On-Page SEO.
Part Two Recap, Why and How to Select Keywords
In part two, we discussed the reasons we select keywords and some of the different tools we can use to decide which keywords or phrases are best to optimize for on your site.
Below is a short summary of part two:
- Start with a handful of keywords that are ideal long-term targets
- Long Tail Keywords (LTKs) are keywords that are not the name of the website and are not among the most popularly searched terms in your website’s field
- Always try to rank for LTKs first because competition is lower so we can rank quickly
- LTKs are more targeted and have higher clickthrough rates
- Link Juice is the strength of your site on Google based on the number of backlinks
- Search volume helps to understand how difficult it is to rank for certain keywords
- Selecting the wrong keywords to start can delay your organic ranking improvement
- We must not only optimize the website for keywords, but also each individual page by a process known as On-Page SEO
What is On-Page SEO
On-Page SEO is the process of optimizing each page of your website as well as the content that appears in relation to each specific page. Once you have chosen your perfect long tail keywords, you can start to insert them into your website in various ways so Google starts to associate your site with those keywords.
It is important to note at any point in the process of optimization, if you choose to simply insert your keywords wherever possible even if it doesn’t make sense, Google will dock your site for being spammy. The best practice is to make each page extremely clear and specific so Google knows immediately what a page is about. Moreover, content that is easy to digest is what visitors are always looking for, which is why Google ranks clean and clear sites higher.
Your home page is going to be where we kickstart the process of optimizing your website as it is without question your most important page, so let’s get started.
Home Page SEO
Your home page is going to be the most important part of your website and is by far and away the most visible page to the wide world of the web. Think about it, for a large majority of users, your home page is going to be the entry point to your website and essentially the hub for everything to do with your site.
Think about it, when you go to a website how often do you go to a specific page? When you shop for Macy’s products, do you go straight to their men’s shoes page? More than likely, you go to the Macy’s home page then get more specific.
The process of optimizing your home page is going to take at least 1-2 months to start showing results and improving your rank so don’t be alarmed if after the first week you aren’t seeing massive changes.
Much of the work is going to be done in the content of your website and the HTML tags but there are many, many ways to optimize a page and improve rank. We have created checklists to help you optimize your content and HTML tags below.
Content Checklist:
Google crawlers are constantly reading through and analyzing content on the web and it has become increasingly important that your content is as clear and understandable as possible. This doesn’t only apply to the crawlers but also your visitors, if your site feels laborious to read because there are grammar errors or the context doesn’t make sense, visitors simply won’t want to consume the content on your site.
Below are some of the most important practices to follow when looking at the content of your site:
- Content is original
The content on your website must be original and cannot be a ‘copypasta’ from another site. Having good original content gives you two advantages, the first is that your content is attractive to visitors and they will want to come back to your site for it, the second is that Google likes good understandable original content. If you are just stealing other people’s content, Google won’t like you and neither will people. BE ORIGINAL.
- Keyword in URL
This can act as a ranking factor as Google will see that your page is relevant to that keyword. It will not necessarily make a huge difference, but visitors will better understand what your website is about and will be more likely to click than if you have a totally random URL.
- Page Title is less than viewable limit of 65 characters
This one is very simple, if your title is too long it can appear a bit spammy and besides that, it will be less attractive to visitors. Have you ever seen a newspaper headline that took up the entire space above the fold?
- >350 words on front page
There is a lengthy argument about the specific number of words on a page but rather than discuss semantics, there are many advantages to having more copy on any given page of your website. First, it allows you to better describe your website and services to visitors and give more context to a blog post. Second, you have more room to spread your keywords around without them seeming out of place. One advantage that is often forgotten is it also gives you more chances at gaining link juice from other websites linking to your content.
- Keyword in first paragraph of copy
Having the keyword close to the beginning of your copy tells Google that specific term is important to your site. It also tells visitors a little bit about what they should expect from that site/page before they continue reading or scrolling.
- Keyword/synonyms used other times on page
You want to use the keyword numerous times on your page but not in excess, the reason for this we will discuss later. To avoid using a word excessively you can use synonyms which helps you rank for other words that visitors may be searching for in your field which will increase your exposure.
- Keyword density 0.5 – 2.5%
The process of adding keywords into the copy of your website is called Keyword Stuffing and will benefit your website up to a point. If you use your keywords too often, it has the effect of making Google think you are trying to spam for that keyword. Overusing a keyword is called Keyword Cannibalization and it can hurt your site which we will discuss later. Many recommend using your keyword no more than 0.5 – 2.5% of the words on any given page.
HTML Tags Checklist:
Once you have all your content nice and optimized, we are going to next optimize for the various HTML tags on the website. These tags allow search engines to quickly gain an understanding of what your website is all about and are largely invisible to visitors. It is absolutely imperative that some of these tags are filled out properly in order to improve your ranking on any SERPs, but some of these tags mean more than others.
The most important tags that we are going to start with are Meta Descriptions/Tags, Title Tags, Header Tags and Image Alt Tags.
- Keyword appears in Meta Description / Tags:
The Meta Description is basically a summary of your the page it is attributed to and is sometimes shown under title of a page on SERPs. This description not only lets search engines understand your page better, it also provides a description for potential visitors when looking at SERPs. The Meta Tags are specifically for Google to understand what keywords or phrases are important to that specific page.
- Keyword appears in Title Tag (at or close to first words)
This tag gives visitors their first context of your webpage, they are usually used as the clickable link on SERPs (the blue text part of the results). This tag is hugely important as it is usually the first bit of information any web user sees when they search for something. It should be something very concise which describes the page.
- Keyword is first H1 Tag (if h2/h3 include keyword or synonyms there too)
Do not confuse the Header tags with Page Title’s, SERPs do not show the Header tags. Their main purpose is to make content easier to read and aid in making content keyword rich. You use Headers to add more keywords into the page while also making the content easily organized and readable for the visitors. Header Tags can have different weights too, H1 is by far the most important and you should only ever have one of these per page. H2 Tags are like subheaders and you can have as many as you want. H3 Tags and so on are just further subheaders which help organize but won’t do much for rank.
- Keyword Appears in any images’ Alt Tag
Alt Tags on images not only make web page more appealing, they also make sure images are understood by visually impaired visitors. For search engines, the images have much more context which will improve your ranking without realistically any major effort.
Practices to Avoid
There are thousands of things you can do wrong when it comes to SEO so don’t get too far ahead of yourself. Generally, all of the items above are good places to start but there are a couple of practices you should be avoiding at all costs.
To me, the golden SEO rule is to make sure to vary the locations on your site where you optimize for certain keywords. If you choose to use the same 5 keywords for every single page of your site, you will experience Keyword Cannibalization which we briefly touched on earlier. This is the when your pages compete with one another as Google will only try to rank one or two pages from a domain on its top results. Make sure to try and optimize different pages for different keywords or phrases to avoid this hurting your SEO results.
One of the other rules which we discussed in our content checklist is to make sure your content is good and original. This means writing content that is unique to your site and making sure that it is not spammy or overly saturated with your keywords. Creating good, readable content is extremely important in today’s SEO world so if you have content that isn’t quite ready for the web, it is better to hold off until it is than publish it early.
Where to Next? Off-Page SEO
If you have followed all of the items we discussed above in relation to your content and your HTML Tags, your homepage should be optimized for the keywords you have chosen! From here, you should move on to optimizing the other pages on your site with the same principles in mind.
Once everything is in place, you should start seeing good progress within the first couple months but the race isn’t over. One of the keys to improving rank has nothing to do with the set up of your website but rather other places on the web where we can get links pointing to your site.
You heard me right, part four will cover some of the best ways to interact with consumers on social media sites, forums, affiliates and more. Off-Page SEO here we come!
