16 Easy Onsite SEO Tactics
Once you’ve done your keyword research the next step is to ensure you optimise your page correctly. Onsite SEO involves making sure your website pages, titles, tags, content and overall structure are optimized for your target keywords. You also need to make sure that you have a significant of inbound links from highly respected external websites – that’s called offsite SEO. Below is a bit of a list to get your started…
1) Your Content / Products – Encase you haven’t done this already. Make a list of all products and services you offer. How do you refer to them? How do potential clients and customers refer to them? Come up with as many combinations of phrases as you can manage.
2) Keyword Ideas – Get any additional keyword ideas by using the Google Keyword Planner to “Search for keyword and ad group ideas.” In addition to taking a good look at your competitors.
3) URL’S: Yes. Having the words you want to be found for within your domain name or page URLs can help your ranking prospects. It’s not a major factor but if it makes sense to have descriptive words in your URLs, do so. Include the target keyword/search phrase in the page URL if possible. A common rule of thumb is to keep URLs less than 115 characters.
4) Meta Title tag: Every page should have an HTML title (enclosed in <title> </title> tags). The title copy should be unique, include the target keyword or target phrase, and must be 65 characters or less (any longer, and Google will truncate it anyway).
5) Meta description tag: Even if the search engines don’t weigh a meta description in ranking a page, it is very important, because it is the marketing copy for your page. The meta description in the page head-tag set (enclosed in <meta name = “description” content=””> usually appears with your organic search listing, and induces readers to click through. The meta description tag should be no longer than 160 characters, and should include your target phrase.
6) H1 headline – Target search phrase is included in page H1 headline.
7) H2 sub-headline – Target search phrase is included in at least one H2 sub-headline.
8 ) Body Copy Length – Target search phrase is repeated three to 10 times within body copy of 300 words and in bold. Don’t over-do it, or the page may get downgraded as spam. Keep the reader in mind as you work with the target search phrase. Copy should always be reader-friendly.
9 ) Synonyms – Did you use synonyms in your copy? Remember: synonyms are great, and using natural language that’s influenced by keyword research (rather than just pure keywords) is highly encouraged!
10) Image file name and alt text: Use the target phrase in image alt text (embedded in the image tag as alt=”your keyword”). Page includes relevant images and/or graphics that help illustrate the target search phrase.
11) Captions – for images and/or graphics include the target search phrase.
12) Internal Links – Are you linking to your internal pages in an SEO-friendly way? Are you describing the page you’re linking to in the anchor text, so that both users and search engines understand what it’s about?
13) Outlinks – Do the links point to trustworthy sites? Are the links relevant to the page’s content? Do the links use relevant anchor text? Does the anchor text include targeted keywords? Are any of the links broken? Do the links use unnecessary redirection? Are any of the links nofollowed?.
14) Structured Data: What if you could tell search engines what your content was about in their own “language”? Behind the scenes, sites can use specific markup (code) that make it easy for search engines to understand the details of the page content and structure. The result of structured data often translates into what is called a ‘rich snippet‘, a search listing that has extra bells and whistles that make it more attractive and useful to users. The most common rich snippet you’re likely to encounter is reviews/ratings which usually includes eye-catching stars. While the use of structured data may not be a direct ranking factor, it is clearly a success factor. All things being equal, a listing with a rich snippet will get more clicks than one without. And search engines are eager for site owners to embrace structured data, providing new and easier ways for less tech-savvy webmasters to participate.
15) Schema: Is a type of microdata that makes it easier for search engines to parse and interpret the information on your web pages more effectively so they can serve relevant results to users based on search queries. Check schema / Generate schema / Implement Schema https://developers.google.com/schemas/
16) Local SEO – (& Google Places) – This is especially important if you and your competitors own a local business or have physical locations. Doing a brand query in Google, with the location set to whatever city their physical building is located in, can bring up a Google Places page.
- Do your competitors have Google Places pages for their physical locations?
- Are they gaining reviews/star ratings?
- Do they have calls to action on other social networks or their own site to encourage customers to review them?
- Are they taking advantage of the descriptions and categories area
16 Easy Onsite SEO Tactics
