It’s a common problem: You’ve done all your research, you’ve taken all SEO precautions to get yourself out there, you’ve even written local content in order to drum up visitors. But still, your rankings aren’t where they should be. You might be scratching your head, trying to figure out just what the problem is. Well, along with the external factors that will affect your ranking, there are a number of onpage factors that will help as well.
In this post, we’re going to take a look at three onpage factors that will get you ranking fast.
Keywords
Keywords are fundamental when it comes to the search process. They’re both the building blocks of language as well as search. Believe it or not, the entire science of data retrieval is based all around keywords.
As they crawl sites all throughout the internet, these search engines register them based on keywords. This is done so that the billions of sites that are out there don’t have to be stored somewhere–their keywords will do just fine. There are then millions of databases that index based off of just one keyword. In this way, search engines like Google are able to bring up results in a fraction of a second.
Obviously, though, if you want to rank in the index for, let’s say “cat,” then you would have to include some crawlable content that’s based around the keyword “cat.”
Keywords really dominate the entire landscape of search. They base their results based on the words we choose, the order of those words, and even things like grammar and punctuation. This allows the search engines to pull up the sites and also rank them based on quality of content and number of clicks.
It used to be the case that someone could “keyword stuff” and rank high on the rankings, but that problem has been fixed by Google. Now it’s still about the keywords, but it’s about quality over quantity. It gets measured by things like backlinks to your site, number of readers of your content, and other similar things.
One of the best ways to optimize a page and ensure that it gets properly ranked by search engines is to make sure that the keywords you want to rank for are featured prominently in titles, content, and metadata. Again, this doesn’t mean that you engage in keyword stuffing. People want to read good content, not a fluff piece that teaches them nothing. It’s best to insert the keyword organically into the story to the best of your ability.
There’s a difference between using the keyword “cats and dogs” with: “Pet owners cats and dogs have different veterinary concerns,” and: “Cats and dogs are treated differently in a veterinary environment.” One of them reads and flows in a natural way while the other has clearly been constructed for the sake of squeezing in a keyword phrase.
What you’ll also want to do with keywords is make them super specific. The keyword “books” might get you some results, but “books by Zadie Smith” will get you more focused ones. “White Teeth book by Zadie Smith” will get you even more focused results still, and they’ll make it far unlikelier that any competition will be able to usurp your position. You’ll have a ton of competition with the keyword “books,” but you’ll have barely any with “White Teeth book by Zadie Smith.”
Really, the goal with keywords is not to rank highly for all of the keywords but to rank highly for the keywords that people search for when they’re trying to buy what your company provides.
Title Tags
A page’s title element is meant to be a concise and understandable description of what the visitor can expect to see when they enter the site. This is as important for the user experience as it is for search engine optimization, or SEO.
The first thing is that you have to be conscious of the length of your title tag. The search engines will only pull the first 65 or 75 characters, so you need to get your point across as quickly as possible.
The rest of the tag will be truncated with an ellipsis in both search engines and social media sites, so sticking to the limit is a good idea. If you have multiple keywords that you need to hit, then it’s perfectly fine to go with a longer title tag.
In any case, you will want to place your most important keywords near the front of the title tag, as this will both improve your ranking and make it more likely for a user to click onto your page.
It’s also wise to take advantage of branding opportunities when crafting your title tag. Brand awareness is always a good thing to foster. You can place this early in the title tag in order to place your brand prominently for the visitor to see. Alternatively, you can elect to place it later in the title tag so that you can make prominent the keywords you’ve chosen instead.
You should also consider readability and emotional impact when you’re constructing your title tag. The title tag should be both readable and descriptive. The reason for this is that a title tag is the first way that a visitor interacts with your brand. Just like in life, it’s important to make a good first impression here. It should be focused on your keywords, but a title tag also needs to be descriptive, original, and interesting.
URL Construction
When it comes to URL construction, the first thing you have to keep in mind is empathy with the user. Take a look at your URL. Does it accurately and succinctly describe what you can expect to find on the site, or is it merely a string of letters, numbers, and special characters? The former will look better and be more likely to get clicked on than the latter.
Shorter really is better. It’s important to have a descriptive URL, but this shouldn’t come at the expense of readability. Plus, a shorter URL is easier to copy and paste. This is another major bonus
Keywords are important, but you shouldn’t overdo it. It’s important to target your main keywords. However, know that if you overuse them, then you’ll be likely to trip spam filters. This will hamper your efforts in a major way.
You can go static in a way that makes your URLs far easier to read. Instead of having a jumble of letters, numbers, and special characters, you can choose to have words that directly relate to your main topic that you’re covering.
Also, not all web apps will be able to render certain separators like underscores, plus signs, or spaces, so it’s best to use hyphens to separate the words in your content. This will render correctly in just about all web apps, and it’s very easy to read in your URL.
It’s a common problem: You’ve done all your research, you’ve taken all SEO precautions to get yourself out there, you’ve even written local content in order to drum up visitors. But still, your rankings aren’t where they should be. You might be scratching your head, trying to figure out just what the problem is. Well, along with the external factors that will affect your ranking, there are a number of onpage factors that will help as well.
While this list isn’t exhaustive, it should get you well on your way toward working with an SEO agency based in Sydney and getting your ranking higher.
