Over the past few years, Google has released several updates to their search engine algorithm, of which Panda, Penguin and Hummingbird were the biggest. Those updates set augmented rules on how owners should structure their sites for link building, both build incoming links and use anchor text for outgoing links.
Despite the updates, however, on-page SEO hasn’t really changed all that much. Every on-page SEO task is really for the user’s benefit. Yet, most SEOs still haven’t come to terms with that fact.
Google wants the user to be happy when they visit your web page. And, the only way that Google will know that your site users are satisfied is when they’re engaged. How long do they spend reading your content?
In this on-page SEO cheat sheet, I’m going to show you the essential things to pay attention to. They’ll improve your search traffic, boost your rankings and make off-page SEO a lot easier for you.
Site Speed
Recent research found that 47% of your target audience expects your website to load in under two seconds. What’s more, slightly more than half of all U.S. online shoppers won’t buy from a site if it loads slowly.
Inadvertent duplicate content can slow indexing down, so examine your site to remove it.
It makes sense. After all, don’t we all hate to wait? And, the instant-gratification of the web has only made us more impatient.
So, it makes sense that Google cares about page load time. From the Webmasters Central Blog:
Essential Tag Fundamentals
Do you take meta tags seriously? Although the effect of the title tag or meta description has changed significantly over the past several years, it’s still a good practice to pay attention to them. In on-page SEO, the major types of meta tags that you should pay attention to are:
Title tags
Title tags define the title of your web page or document. They’re mostly used to display preview snippets of your web pages. When you’re writing your title tag, it should be short, clear and descriptive but don't duplicate content from the page content.
Meta description
According to Survey Monkey, 43.2% of people click on a given result, based on the meta description alone. This is how a meta description usually appears in the organic search listings
The meta description is what search engines use to gauge what topic you’re writing about and the exact audience that they should send to that page. So, make it descriptive and short - no more than 160 characters.
Creating Content That Drives Search Traffic
According to a HubSpot content marketing report from 2014, nearly three-fourths of consumers prefer to research companies and businesses through articles, instead of annoying advertisements.
Content is the backbone of a thriving business and on page SEO is the backbone of content marketing. You’ve probably heard the saying, “content is king.”
But, there is way more to successful content marketing than just “content.” You have to publish the kind of content that will drive traffic and grow your business.
This involves using specific keyword phrase components that include long tail anchor words.
Understand Google Panda algorithm
The Panda algorithm update was first released in February 2011. It was designed to help Google return high-quality results, when users type a keyword phrase into the search box.
While other updates have come and gone, Panda’s effect is still going strong. You may recall that Panda penalized low-quality content and thin sites.
If you consider the state of search now, you’ll agree with me that Google’s ranked top results have vastly improved, since Panda.
Avoid low-quality content
The days of generic content with no value are long gone. According to Rand Fishkin, you have to provide unique value in your content.
For your content to be high-quality, you’ve got to research adequately and spend time writing the best blog post that you’re capable of producing.
Avoid thin content
Your content may be high-quality, in terms of the information that you share, but if you want to give your blog a boost in the SERPs, you’ve also got to increase your content length.
No more 300- or 500-word posts, unless you’re also using an infographic on the same page. Instead, write in-depth articles of 2000 words or more, because recent stats by SerpIQ found that content length affects rankings.
0 Comments