In our previous blog, we talked about on-page SEO and what it is. In this article we’ll focus on the top 3 on-page ranking factors that you need to think about when setting up your page.
Content
Content remains the undefeated king in on-page ranking factors. With good content, you’re already heading down the right path and set up for success.
Okay, but what is good content?
Good content must answer the user’s question they’ve searched and ultimately be visible. If you have great answers but don’t allow search engines to find it, well you aren’t optimized.
Answering the user questions depends on their query. Remember, it’s all about user experience. Delivering the content in a user friendly way that is helpful to the person seeking it will play a big role in whether you’re providing good content.
If you write an awesome article and it’s not able to be indexed by search engines, it’s just as good as the article that was written poorly that also isn’t visible. Paywalls can be a big issue for SEO and present a large hurdler for premium content providers. If you have paywalled content, you’ll definitely need to beef up on how to properly display that in code.
Within the content of the page, you should use images that go along with the context of the topic you’re writing about. These images should be aptly named and also use alt text with the topic you’re discussing.
Title Tags
After content, title tags come in as the second most important on-page factor for SEO.
Okay, but what is a title tag?
Title tags are the friendly name you see in search engine results and what you see at the top of your tab when visiting in a browser.
The title tag is meant to be a short and concise description of that page’s content. The primary keyword or phrase should always be first and what the main topic of the page is about with the secondary keyword or phrase to follow if room allows.
Usually you see the first 60 characters or so of a title tag. If you aim to keep yours under this amount, the majority will show up in Google results.
URL
Make sure your URL structures make sense. The structure should be consistent across the site and give a hint to the hierarchy based on how the URL is setup.
Another thing to keep in mind is URL slug. A URL slug is a search engine friendly URL that allows you to use words to set the link people will visit when reading your content. You want to make sure the topic and keyword is located here.
Proper URL structure and slug goes a long way to helping users and search engines to navigate and understand how your site is setup. Pairing this with internal linking where appropriate gives you a nice foundation for on-page optimization.
On-page Ranking Factors Summary
When creating your pages, keep these on-page ranking factors in mind for success:
- Content with image (and alt text)
- Title tag
- URL