How To Improve Your Google Rankings With On-Page SEO

What is SEO?

SEO is the ongoing process of optimising a website to improve its visibility and position in search engines such as Google, Bing and Yahoo, therefore naturally increasing the number of unpaid (organic) visits leading to increased revenue and conversions. This includes keyword research, creating and optimising quality content and website structure, building backlinks from other websites, technical website improvements, regular analysis and reporting.

There are 3 areas of SEO: on-page SEO, off-page SEO and technical SEO.

In this article, we’re going to take a closer look at the on-page SEO recommendations that can help improve your website’s position in the search engines.

Recommendations for On-Page SEO

1. Analyse keywords

SEO is not a simple matter and each of its areas requires true consistency. Therefore, you should only approach on-page optimisation of your website after a thorough keyword analysis, which will give you an insight into what people are searching for in search engines and in what form.

Where do you get keywords from?

There are a number of sources. You can get keywords from your own ideas, competitors’ websites, Google Analytics, Google Search Console, Google Ads, Google Keyword Planner or autocomplete tools such as Keyword Tool or Ubersuggest. Google itself also offers autocomplete options, and at the bottom of the SERP you will find additional suggestions in the form of related terms.

Which keywords to choose?

Focus on the most appropriate keywords that are relevant to your business, competitive and searched for in sufficient volume to drive traffic to your website. Don’t just focus on generic terms (engagement ring, furniture), long-tail terms (real diamond engagement ring, solid wood furniture) also have a higher conversion potential.

2. Develop an audit of your site’s content and on-page SEO factors

In order to achieve the desired effect by optimising on-page SEO factors, you need to know their current status. Therefore, pay enough attention to a thorough content audit of your website to identify its strengths and weaknesses.

Within the content section, your audit should analyse

• The logical structure and relevance of the content of your landing pages according to various factors such as keywords or searchability
• The structure of the content section of the website, such as sections – about us, blog, interviews, case studies, FAQs, etc,)
• The completeness, uniqueness and correct length of landing page meta titles and the use of relevant keywords
• Correct hierarchical arrangement of headlines using keywords
• Completion, duplication and correct length of meta descriptions
• Completion of alternative descriptions and image titles

3. Optimise headlines, titles, meta descriptions and image descriptions

Meta titles, headings, meta page descriptions and alternative image descriptions are written in the source code of a web page and are important elements of SEO. They should be unique to each sub-page (or image) and contain keywords relevant to that page, image or search phrase.

Write them in a way that is easy to understand, with enough key information to let the reader know what content to expect on that page (image). Always include keywords and important information at the beginning, as Google may change the number of characters in the future.

In addition to these general recommendations, follow the specific recommendations for headlines, titles, page meta descriptions and alternative image descriptions.

• You will not see meta title tags on the page. They appear in the top or tab bar of the web browser. In the source code they are written like this: <title>This is where you enter the meta title | web</title>. Page titles should be as short as possible, between 45 and 55 characters, so that they are displayed in full or at least in substantial part in search results. Add the domain or company name at the end of the title, outside the character limit, to increase brand awareness. Headlines should be static and have a logical structure (home above categories, categories above products, etc.). It is important that they have a consistent URL variation. This is because Google considers pages to be different whether or not there is a slash at the end of the URL. If both variations already exist on the site with the same content, they need to be redirected to each other.
• Headings and subheadings (H1 – H6) help search engines to recognise what the pages are about. In source code they are written as follows: <h1>Here is the heading | web</h1>. Structured headings and subheadings should be between 55 and 60 characters. They should contain proper heading tags with a logical structure to create logical and easy to understand content (H1 for main heading, H2 for subheadings, H3 for next level subheadings, etc.). At the same time, it is important that they are displayed on the page and not hidden.
• Meta descriptions are always displayed in search results and can increase click-through rates. They are written in the source code as follows <meta name=”description” content=”Enter meta description here”>. Meta descriptions should be up to 155 characters long. However, it is important to note that Google may also display the date of publication at the beginning of the meta description for articles, which will reduce the length by about 15 characters. At the same time, they should be attractive to encourage click-throughs, and they should be regularly tested and optimised so that click-through rates naturally increase.
• Alternative descriptions for images and image file names (alt descriptions / alt texts) are displayed to visitors with unloaded images, both in image search results and directly on the site. They also serve as descriptions for the blind. In source code, they are written as follows <img src=”https://www.web.domena/images/nazov-obrazku.jpg” alt=”Enter image description here” />. Alternate image descriptions should be up to 125 characters long, and it is ideal to regularly test and optimise them with keywords to ensure they are accurate and informative. Image filenames should be free of accents, special characters, capital letters, underscores, punctuation and hashtags, and spaces should always be replaced with hyphens (-).

4. Create and update your structured data

Structured data (rich snippets) are search results that include additional data in the form of images, star ratings, product prices, etc. They help determine the relevance of a web page to a particular search and can increase click-through rates to the page.

Create them by following these steps:

• Identify the type of content on your page that you want to highlight (product, review, etc.).
• Use a structured markup language, such as schema.org, to mark up selected elements of your page
• Verify the correct implementation of the markup language using Google’s Structured Data Testing Tool or similar tools
• Ensure that your structured data is accurate and relevant to your readers
• Monitor it in search results using Google Search Console to detect errors and problems
• Update it regularly to ensure it still reflects the content of your site

5. Create and update Open Graph metadata

Open Graph metadata affects how a page appears on social media. It can increase click-through rates and drive more traffic to the page. In HTML, it is written as follows

<meta property=”og:title” content=”Your title here”>.

<meta property=”og:description” content=”Your description here”>.

<meta property=”og:image” content=”image.jpg”>.

Create these in the following steps:

• Identify the content on your page that you want to share on social media (article, product, etc.).
• Use the Open Graph protocol to specify the title, description, image and other information about the content using OG meta tags
• Add OG meta tags to the head of your HTML code
• Ensure that OG meta tags are both relevant to the content of the page and attractive to the reader
• Check for correct implementation of OG meta tags using Facebook Sharing Debugger, Twitter Card Validator or similar error detection tools
• Update them regularly to ensure they remain relevant as page content change

6. Monitor the effectiveness of your SEO strategy

Pay close attention to regular analysis and reporting. Keyword and search performance analysis will allow you to see how your site is performing compared to your competitors and how you can further improve your search results.

The key indicators of the effectiveness of an SEO strategy in organic search are:

• Positions for selected keywords
• Website traffic
• Conversions gained (forms, leads)
• Organic click-through rate
• Bounce rate

Regular reporting will help you identify your website’s strengths and weaknesses, improve its overall performance and drive unpaid (organic) traffic to it. This can be tracked over time using Google Analytics or Ahrefs.com.