7 on-Page SEO Best Practices for Driving More Traffic To Your Website
In order to get found by potential customers, generate more traffic and score a high ranking in the search engine results, it is essential to conduct on-page optimisation. Although off-page SEO such as link building has greater impact in determining your search engine rankings, it is important to optimise your keywords and perform on-page optimisation.
1. Long Tail Keywords Vs Broad keywords
Broad Keywords, very generally describe your business or products/service and have a high monthly search volume. Many different websites compete for the same term so they are very competitive and very difficult to rank for and generate traffic. The higher the score a keywords gets, the more competitive the keyword is, and the more difficult it is to rank for. A great way to increase free traffic is to select long tail keywords.
Long-tail Keywords are specific keywords, with usually a lower monthly search volume than broad keywords, but they are definitely easier to rank and generate traffic for. Although fewer people search for those long tail keywords, they bring in the most relevant traffic. Indeed you’re better having 10 highly qualified leads than 100 low quality visitors.
2. Select Keyword-Rich Page Titles
It is the most important aspect of on-page SEO, the page title appears as the blue, bolded and underlined text on a SERP (Search Engine Results Page: the listing of web pages returned by a search engine in response to a keyword query), and also on the top left of the browser bar.
Follow these guidelines for best practice:
- Google displays up to 70 characters of a given page title in the SERP (Search Engine Results Page) so keep your page title under 70 characters
- Keep your targeted keywords at the beginning of the page title
- Separate each keyword phrase with pipes (|)
- Keep each page title on your website unique
3. Optimise your Page URL
When incorporating keywords into the URLs of your pages, consider the following:
- Target keywords in the URL itself. Include the primary keyword in the page URL
- Keywords that appear earlier in the URL are weighted more heavily than ones late in the URL, so include your most important targeted keywords at the beginning.
- Keep URLs short - short URLs appear to perform better in the search results and you should add just 1 or 2 keywords into the URL.
- Separate words with dashes (-), do not use underscores (_)
4. Optimise your Meta Descriptions
The meta description shows in the search engine results pages under the page title and it is an important place to use your target keyword/ phrase due to the "bolding" that occurs in the visual snippet of the search results.
- Keep your meta description under 150 characters
- Include your targeted keywords
5. Include Heading Tags
The use of the header tags, H1, H2 and H3 are primarily to help organise the text within the content of the pages, and it also aims to show the relative importance of the different content on the page.
- Incorporate your keywords in the H1 heading tag
- Create H2, H3 heading tags on your page that contain other keyword phrases.
6. Optimise Your Images
Images are an excellent way to make your website more appealing to your visitors. However, search engines can’t read the images, unless you add "Alt text". Your images should be described via ALT Tags with the keywords you are optimising for. Basically, you can optimise your images in 2 ways:
- Use relevant and optimised file names. Do not name your file “image12345.jpg ” but instead use a rich-keyword file name that is relevant to your content and page.
- Each word should be separated with dashes (-). Make sure to not have any space in your file name.
- Using the keyword term/phrase as the name of the image file employed on the page.
- ALT text: it should match the file name, without dashes.
7. Add Meta Keywords
They are no longer part of Google’s or Bing’s search algorithm for determining site ranking. However, still use your keywords (10 or less) in the page’s meta keywords.