On-Page SEO: How to Optimize Your Content for Search Engines

Having a website for your business is the basic minimum to compete in today’s marketplace. If you want to grow your visibility in the search engines and drive more traffic to your website, you must understand the basics of search engine optimization (SEO). Specifically, on-page SEO should be a vital and ongoing part of your digital marketing strategy if you want to remain competitive. 

What is On-Page SEO?

Also known as on-site SEO, on-page SEO is the practice of optimizing the elements of your website so that you can rank higher and achieve more relevant traffic from search engines. You can contrast this with off-site SEO, which refers to anything you do “off” your website, such as getting links and social media marketing. On-page SEO refers to optimizing both the HTML source code and content of a website’s page. 

Why On-Page SEO is Important

Search engines rely on keywords and other on-page SEO factors to determine whether a page matches a user’s search intent. If the page is useful and relevant, Google delivers the page to the user. 

The most critical thing to know about on-page SEO factors is that Google values them. While Google’s algorithm is changing constantly, the search engine continues to prioritize the user experience. It considers many different on-page factors to ensure users are getting the most value out of their searches. 

12 On-Page SEO Tactics to Optimize Your Content for Search Engines

Here are 12 improvements you can make directly on your company’s website to improve your search engine performance and achieve more targeted traffic.

1. Use Your Target Keywords Correctly

Each of your website’s main pages should have a targeted keyword or keyword phrase. An SEO best practice is to include your target keyword in many key page elements to help your readers and Google understand what your page is about. Some of those elements include your URL, page title, main header, header tags, intro paragraph, and conclusion or call-to-action (CTA). 

2. Write a Compelling Title Tag

Take the time to craft an engaging title tag for each of your pages that describes what searchers will discover if they click on your result. Your title tag should include your keyword, match the searcher’s intent, and be under 70 characters in length. 

3. Include Logical Header Tags

Part of good on-page SEO practices is including logical header tags throughout your pages for easy organization and to make your content skimmable by readers and the search engines. Header tags are <H1>, <H2>, and <H3> tags that improve your site’s readability. 

4. Craft an Engaging Meta Description

While Google doesn’t consider meta descriptions for ranking purposes, they can drive more traffic to your website. This is because Google uses the site’s meta description in search results about one-third of the time. These descriptions should be under 160 characters and include your targeted keyword phrase for the page. 

5. Choose SEO-Friendly URLs

Instead of allowing your content management system to assign random numbers and letters to your URLs, your website page addresses should be meaningful and descriptive. So, if you have a blog post about “creating a will,” your URL might be “www.yoursite.com/blog/creating-a-will/” instead of “www.yoursite.com/blog/post15899/.” 

6. Continue to Produce Content

If you just build a website and expect those pages alone to produce the results you want, you’ll likely be disappointed. To achieve high search engine rankings, you need to continue to produce high-quality, engaging content that addresses your audience’s wants and needs. 

7. Include Relevant Links

Your website’s content should include a mix of relevant internal and external links. Internal links will point to different pages on your own website, which helps users and Google understand your site’s structure and navigate to new pages. External links should be included if they point to trustworthy and authoritative sources using natural and descriptive anchor text. 

8. Optimize Site Images

If you want your website to be engaging, it should have plenty of visual aspects like photos. You’ll also want to optimize your site’s images for the search engines, so Google knows what the images represent and people using screen readers can interpret them. You can do this using descriptive file names and alt text, which is a short image description in the HTML code. 

9. Focus on Page Speed

While Google doesn’t advertise its search engine ranking factors, the company has confirmed that page speed is one of them. So, it’s critical that you optimize your website for page speed. You can assess your site using Google’s free PageSpeed Insights tool to figure out where you need to make improvements. 

10. Ensure Mobile-Friendliness

When Google ranks web pages, it considers a set of Core Web Vitals (CWVs) that relate to a user’s page experience. One of those is whether or not the web page is mobile-friendly. In fact, Google now uses the mobile version of websites for indexing and ranking, so having a mobile-friendly website should be an SEO priority. 

11. Target Featured Snippets

Because featured snippets appear above the organic search results, these can help boost your website referrals because they give you an extra spot on Page 1. Different forms of featured snippets include lists, tables, definitions, and videos. If you want to claim a featured snippet for a search term, you need to answer and format your content correctly and precisely. 

12. Add Schema Markup

Schema markup gives search engines the information they need to better understand what’s on your website. It involves adding code to a page to communicate information in a way that search engines can “grab” it to use for rich snippets. You can create schema markup for things like events, reviews, products, people, and more. 

Contact Too Darn Loud Marketing to Elevate Your SEO Strategies

If you want to get found and chosen by your target audience, effective SEO is a must. Learn more about how we can help. Too Darn Loud Digital Marketing offers customized digital marketing solutions to businesses throughout the United States, including targeted SEO strategies. 

Our experienced online marketing specialists will take the time to learn about your business and industry so we can create a plan designed to produce the best possible results. Call us today at (800) 649-1764 or contact us online to schedule a free website evaluation and consultation.