Ever wondered how you could build a perfectly web optimized page? This is the challenging question every person in the web industry has to face. While a lot of factors can play into the optimization of your search engine, one of the things you have the most control over is the content on your own pages. On-page optimization is a fancy way of saying “little tweaks you can make to improve SEO on your own site,” is a crucial part of SEO and can have a big impact on your site’s organic traffic. Here are some of the basics you’ll need to know about on-page SEO.
Web Traffic & Search Engine Optimization.
What is SEO anyway? SEO stands for Search Engine Optimization. Search engines have two key responsibilities: to search and build up an index and to quickly provide the users with a list of websites that are the most applicable. Lets break it down even more.
What is Indexing? Indexing simply means collecting and storing data that is fast and the most accurate. The search engine depicts the web to find the best link available. Let’s compare this to the subway system, train A, B and C all take you to the same destination, but taking train A will allow you to reach your destination a lot quicker than B and C. Engines work hard to provide the best answers as fast as possible.
Now when it comes down to providing the user with a list of this data, think of a search engine as an answer machine. When a person searches online, the search engine goes through all of its documents and returns only with results that are relevant or useful to the user. Then it ranks those results according to the popularity of the websites providing the information. The order of those results is influenced by both relevance and popularity, which brings us to why engaging online content is a must. A consistent flow of good content on your website shows the search engines — as well as your users — that your company is active.
With all that in mind, here are ways to make your webpages even more appealing to search engines so you can rank higher and get even more traffic.
1. Size Matters
The size of your website can have a huge impact on search engine rankings. Search engines love content so, in general, the more the merrier. Make sure you’re updating old content and adding fresh content periodically so search engines know it’s an active site. You want to create content using keywords of the actual search terms people are using, so you can produce content that effectively answers their questions. This also helps enable them to figure out what the page is about.
2. DON’T clutter your page.
Don’t clutter your page with unnecessary information. Keep it simple! It is proven that there is consistently a higher click-through rate for simpler websites and landing pages than pages with too much text or too many options. Don’t confuse your readers.
3. Your website is SLOW.
Load times matter when it comes to website performance. You don’t want to keep the user on a page longer than they are supposed to. It is proven that even a ONE second delay could decrease user satisfaction. Read up on Content Marketing & SEO to learn more about tools like SEOmoz.org, Google Webmaster, and Google Analytics which can all help you find ways to improve your site speed.
Even a 1 second delay on your site can hurt user satisfaction (and your site optimization) Click To Tweet
4. Keyword usage
Keywords are one of the main elements of SEO optimization. Using the primary keyword phrase at least once in the page’s title, is highly recommended. Not only are titles key to how engines weigh what is important or not, they greatly impact a searcher’s tendency to click. Keywords show up in bold on a search engine results page (SERP), so they can make your listing look even more enticing to users.
Satisfying all of these perfectly may not be possible, making small changes can boost the on-page SEO value of your pages and increase organic traffic, little by little, over time.
Ready to dive even deeper? If you have ten minutes, check out our top SEO pointers just for nonprofits.