What is an On Page SEO Optimized Webpage?

On Page SEO is all of the techniques SEO’s use to ensure higher search rankings. All of these techniques are implemented into the design and coding of your website. Not to be confused with Off Page SEO techniques which are strategies used that don’t require any access to your website.

Top On Page SEO Factors

Mobile Optimized Responsive Website

Although this may not be an On Page Factor it is very important. All of our websites we make are responsive and designed to run smoothly on all devices. With phones and tablets being a large percentage of internet traffic google has made it clear that responsive designs are the preferred type.

Site Structure

Using a strong site structure and providing clear navigation will help search engine bots index and analyze your site quickly. It will also help in user experience which google has been paying particular attention to. Don’t over do the content or graphics. Provide a quick answer to a question or problem your client has. If someone is looking for glass repair we want to get them to the targetted landing page for “Glass Repair” as quickly as possible and direct them to our call to action, whether that be a phone call, email form or product purchase page.

Internal linking

Internal linking goes along with site structure. Your internal linking serves multiple purposes.

Internal linking has many advantages:

• Gives your readers more options. As long as they are relevant then your human users will reach their destinations faster. Use clear anchor text (the clickable highlighted words in any give link). This can helpreduce your bounce rates.

• It helps to improve your ranking for certain keywords. If we want to rank for the term ’Glass Repair’ then we can begin linking to it from other posts using variations of similar anchor text and keywords. This tells Google that this post is relevant to people searching for ‘Glass Repair’.

• It helps Google crawl and index your site. Those little webcrawlers that are sent to fetch new site information on your webpage will easily store your data and return information that your site is relevant.

Keyword Research and Targetting

Google is serious about this. Search engines try to provide the most relevant results to a searcher’s query. Make sure you understand how your customers find you, what words and terms they use, and make sure that your pages are relevant to those terms.

Strategic Domain Names and URLs

You should use sub-directory root domains (yourwebsite.com/category/keyword) instead of sub-domains (yourwebsite.category.com) as this is better for your overall site architecture.

You should also stay away from hyphens (search-engine-watch.com) and alternative Top-level domain names (.biz .name .info) as these are considered spammy. Use .com, .net or .org domains.

Having a ‘keyword rich’ domain name may lead to closer scrutiny from Google. According to Moz, Google has “de-prioritized sites with keyword-rich domains that aren’t otherwise high-quality. Having a keyword in your domain can still be beneficial, but it can also lead to closer scrutiny and a possible negative ranking effect from search engines—so tread carefully.”

Headlines and permalinks

The headlines for your articles or pages should be under 55 characters to ensure they are visibile in SERPs. We use the proper balance of target words without keyword stuffing and looking spammy.

The permalink (or URL) structure you set up in wordpress will make your site easier to manage for users and bots. We suggest postname instead of random #’s or letters. Example: yourplumbingcompany.com/commercial instead of /postid=#43kdjfld

Meta descriptions and title tags

Having a meta description won’t necessarily improve your ranking on the SERP, but it is something you should definitely use before publishing an article as it can help increase your chances of a searcher clicking on your result.

The meta description is the short paragraph of text that appears under your page’s URL in the search results.

Here is an example of a meta description for a health blog:

Write clear descriptions(under 155 characters is recommended), make sure it’s relevant to your headline and the content of the post or page itself.

Title tags are used to tell search engines and visitors what your site is about in the most concise and accurate way possible. The keywords in your title tag show up highlighted in search engine results (if the query uses those keywords), as well as in your browser tab and when sharing your site externally.

You should use a few accurate keywords describing the page as well as your own brand name. Only use relevant keywords though, and the most important thing to consider is that although you are formatting for search engines, you should write for humans.

Schema markup

You can make your search results appear more attractive by adding Schema markup to the HTML of your pages. This can help turn your search results into a rich media playground, adding star-ratings, customer ratings, images, and various other bits of helpful info…

Schema is also the preferred method of markup by most search engines including Google, and it’s fairly straightforward to use. For more information, check out our handy guide to Schema.

Properly tagged images

Many people forget to include the alt attribute when they upload images to their content, but this is definitely something you shouldn’t overlook because Google cannot ‘see’ your images, but can ‘read’ the alt text.

By describing your image in the alt text as accurately as possible it will increase the chances of your images appearing in Google Image search.