On-Page SEO Optimisation to Boost Your Website Rankings

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If you want to improve your website’s search engine rankings, then on-page optimisation is a crucial factor you cannot ignore.

On-page optimisation, also known as on-site SEO, refers to optimising your website’s content, tags, and internal links to make it more search-engine friendly.

Here are nine essential factors that you need to know about on-page optimisation:

Meta Descriptions

Meta descriptions are another key on-page SEO factor that appears in SERPs. They give a concise summary of your page’s content, potentially impacting whether or not users click through to your website.

These descriptions appear beneath the title tag for a page in search results.

A well-written meta description can increase click-through rates and traffic to a page that appears in search results.

Make your meta descriptions captivating and include pertinent keywords.

Google may generate an alternate meta description to the one provided.

Title tags

Title tags are one of the most influential aspects of on-page SEO. They appear in search engine results pages (SERPs) and give users a quick snapshot of your page’s focus.

Make sure your title tags are descriptive, unique, and contain relevant keywords for every page on a website.

Header Tags

Header tags (H1, H2, H3) are web page headings that help organise content and make it simpler for both users and search engines to comprehend what your page is about.

Utilise header tags to divide up your text into sections, including relevant keywords when applicable.

Content Optimisation

Your website’s content is one of the most critical on-page SEO factors. Make sure it’s high quality, informative and engaging for users; incorporate relevant keywords throughout but avoid keyword stuffing.

When people search for products or services online, Google wants to provide them with the best possible search result.

Google understands the significance of the keywords and is less concerned about the number of times the keyword appears and more about the quality of the surrounding content.

The content on a page should match what a user expects to see when they click through to your webpage from the search results.

Conducting keyword research to identify the relevant keywords and phrases to include in your content, title tags, meta descriptions, header tags, and internal links is good practice.

The average word count of a page ranking on page one of Google is now over 1,900 words, although this figure varies according to the market and niche.

Avoid using the same content on multiple pages on your website or having the same material present elsewhere online.

Google will penalise any site for having duplicate content, and rankings will drop. If you source content from another site, ensure you credit the source.

With the evolution of AI writing services, ensure your content is well written and not extracted from a source such as chatGPT by open.ai. Poorly written or duplicate content generated by artificial intelligence may result in penalties by Google in the future.

Internal Linking

Internal linking helps search engines understand your website’s structure and how pages are related to one another.

Optimise Image Names

Use descriptive filenames for images and include alt text with relevant keywords, so they appear in image searches.

Mobile Optimisation

Today, over half of online searches come from smartphones and tablets.

It is essential that a website is mobile optimised and provides a great mobile experience for users.

Mobile-friendly sites are now critically important since Google implemented its mobile-first indexing and gives preference to websites that are mobile-friendly and load fast.

So if your site is not classed as mobile-friendly by Google, it’s time for a website overhaul.

Improve Website speed

Don’t just optimise page titles or keywords – make sure your web pages load quickly too!

With ever-increasing broadband speeds, users no longer want to wait more than a few seconds for a web page to load up.

Site speed can significantly impact user experience and, ultimately, bounce rates, where users get tired of waiting and move to another site that loads quicker.

According to a recent study by Google, bounce rates increased 32% when load times jumped from one to three seconds, to 90% by 5 seconds, and over 100% by 6 seconds.

A slow-loading site will lose traffic and rankings over time. Any website that takes more than a few seconds to load needs attention to improve load times.

Consider compressing images, reducing server response time, and minifying CSS and JavaScript files to improve website speed.

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Navigation and Sitemaps

Sitemaps help search engines and users better understand how to navigate a website.

Now there is a preference for mobile versions of websites in the search engines; navigation menus should be logical and easy to follow to ensure a good user experience.

All important pages should be one or two clicks away from the homepage.

Website visitors should be able to access information or complete an action within seconds.

Implementing these essential on-page optimisation factors can improve your website’s rankings and attract more organic traffic.

To learn more about SEO, feel free to visit our main search engine optimisation page.

Sources
– https://www.searchenginejournal.com/on-page-seo/essential-factors/
– https://backlinko.com/on-page-seo
– https://moz.com/learn/seo/on-site-seo

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