If you don’t implement on-page SEO strategies, search engine crawlers might not crawl your content. And if they don’t crawl your pages, it’ll be impossible to rank for your targeted keyword phrases.
Why is this necessary? Without being crawled, your pages can’t get indexed. And if they never get indexed, Google will not know how to rank them. 93% of online interactions begin with a search engine, so your website must please the algorithm.
You can try every SEO method known to man and still fail. On-page SEO services act as a guide to show the search engines which keywords you’d like to rank for.
Some people might tell you that there are more than four on-page SEO factors to focus on to improve search engine rankings. We believe these four outlined below are the most important of all, as it can get overwhelming. Just focus on these areas, and your SEO rankings will exponentially increase once you’ve made these changes.
You always need to keep a few things in mind when publishing content for the web. Remember, you aren’t just writing for your website visitors.
You’re also writing for the search engines. In particular, you’re writing for search engine bots that crawl web pages. There have been 11 core Google updates since 2013, but high-quality content remains one of the most crucial ranking factors.
To publish excellent content that Google bots love to crawl, keep in mind that you should always have:
At Magenta Marketing Agency, we focus on appropriate page title and meta description optimization. Why focus on these areas? Without the right meta tags, search engines could accidentally “read” your page wrong. The search bots might mistake your page’s intent while crawling your site.
Google bots want to understand your web pages. It’s their only job. So give them exactly what they need to understand better and properly rank your pages in the search engine results. With a little luck and plenty of hard work, we’ll have your site ranking at the top of Google in no time.
Writing fun and engaging content is one thing. Adding targeted keywords to content for SEO purposes is an entirely different ball of wax. But it’s a necessary part of the process to rank for targeted keywords, related LSI (latent semantic indexing) keywords, and long-tail keywords.
‘Targeted keywords’ are search terms that your ideal prospects use to find products or services similar to yours. These are the keywords that you’d want your website to rank for to capture those prospects, and hopefully, convert them into sales.
‘LSI’ is a computational technique that scans the way words cluster together in predictable patterns. LSI keywords are related to the keywords that you want to rank for based on context. For example, ‘accounting’ and ‘tax specialist’ are LSI keywords.
‘Long-tail keywords’ consist of more than three words, have low search volume and competition levels—these makeup for a large percentage of all Google searches.
Keyword research is critical to your success. We recommend performing keyword research first before writing content for your website.
You might wonder, “Is this necessary?”
Google recently beefed up its search engine algorithms with Rank Brain. They improved the intelligence of their algorithm by a wide margin with this update. Google not only crawls your content looking for keyword relevancy—but they also look for topic relevancy too.
What does this mean for small-to-medium-sized businesses?
It means that if you want to rank for a wide range of niche-related topics, you need to pepper your content with LSI keyword phrases. By adding these additional keywords to your content, you’ll have a better chance of showing up in the search results for related keyword phrases.
E.g. Let’s say your website is about Nike. How does Google know that you’re referring to Nike shoes, not Nike, the Greek Goddess of Speed? By scanning your site for LSI keywords, it’ll determine the correct meaning. If your site contains words such as shoes, styles, workouts, collection, online store, shipping, footwear, apparel, equipment, accessories, sneakers, then Google will deduce that your site is about Nike shoes.
‘Google Suggest’ is simple enough to use. Start typing a targeted keyword into Google and view their suggested results. Use these results to create new content or add the keywords to existing content for better rankings.
‘Related Searches’ show up at the bottom of the Google search results. You can add these phrases to new or existing content to boost SEO rankings for additional keyword phrases.
‘People Also Ask’ is a great way to find additional subheadings. In this box, you’ll find questions related to your current search. If you perform a search using a targeted keyword, you’ll find questions about your topic that you can use as subheadings in your content.
Structuring your website content is equivalent to writing a table of contents – search engines can quickly scan and determine the level of importance of each section based on the order.
When organizing your site’s content, pick a theme for each section and ensure it has a relevant title along with a body.
Ensure each page also answers these questions:
Not only does this approach help search engines categorize your site, but this tactic will also make your content digestible and memorable for users who tend to scan websites.
Just like a book title gives you an idea of what the novel will be about, a heading gives visitors an idea of what your business is about.
Every webpage needs an H1 tag; this is the main heading of your page. Search engines show this information in the title tag when displaying results.
You can customize the H1 and title tag, so make sure to differentiate between the two with different and unique content, but include your target keyword in both!
Keep the following in mind regarding other headings:
Some website owners think they can vomit text all over their webpages, just as long as it’s readable. Guess what? This is a foolish approach and one that will quickly kill your potential to rank highly in the search engines.
Instead, use these best practices during content creation and formatting:
On average, it takes about 2-5 months until you start noticing keyword fluctuation as Google starts to recognize your website. In roughly 6-9 months, with all of the right SEO tactics in place, your selected keywords can start reaching page one on search engines.
However, work doesn’t stop there! You have to continue to nurture and elevate more keywords to help them rise about your competition.
SEO is like going to the gym or practicing an instrument. If you miss a few days, you’re not going to see a massive difference in your skill level. But over time, as muscle strength and memory decline, you lose your ability.
For SEO, stopping a campaign won’t make a difference right away. However, typically after six months of ending an SEO campaign (if you’re working with an agency or doing it in-house), a website’s keywords drop off the first page of Google – sometimes even out of the top 100 pages. It’s a slow slide to the bottom.
This is why many small businesses work with agencies, such as ourselves, to maintain their position in search. As you can see, it’s a long and complicated process that involves dedication and skill to master.
Before assigning one of your employees as the on-page SEO expert or learning to do it yourself, consider outsourcing. This will not only save you time and money, but it will give you peace of mind and the results you want.
There’s no going around it. Your website has two audiences – your target market and search engines, and you have to prepare for both. By focusing on all three major components of SEO, you can get your site to outrank your competition.
It’s our job to help small to medium-sized businesses like yours achieve online growth with SEO services and digital marketing. Book a 10-minute chat with us to get an idea of how we can help you get more traffic and boost sales.
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Magneta Marketing Agency, Inc. is a one-stop shop for all your website design, branding and digital construction marketing needs. We help subcontractors and construction businesses grow with online reputation management and lead generation.
