On-Page optimization is the key foundation to getting Google to recognize your site as legitimate. A site without proper meta tags, site indexes, and ALT tags for images can cause Google to penalize your site. A large site can take a couple of days to analyze and fix any bugs. While this in no way ensures good organic ranking, a website audit is a cornerstone of developing a site that Google and other search engines will consider legitimate and authoritative, too.
Broken Links:
Search engines do not like broken links. Your site should be periodically checked to ensure that the links to and from your site are valid. In cases where links have changed, such as when the site is re-built, care should be taken to ensure that the links are properly redirected. This can be done with a htaccess file, or most plugins have features that will do this automatically.
Making sure that all the pages in a site are working is already a big challenge – don’t let broken links devalue your efforts. Broken links can easily derail your previous efforts. A good site provides a streamlined continuum of content and pages. Broken links can easily put a stop to that continuum. Site visitors who encounter 404 errors are likely to leave and never return. Broken links also affect link equity that’s distributed throughout a site. These broken links will hurt site ranking and your general on-page SEO efforts. A skilled WP professional such as myself can help you with an exhaustive site audit to see if you have any broken links. This is where it all begins – ensuring that the continuity of content is unbroken to provide your site audience the best experience while using your site.
Proper Meta Information:
While meta tags information does not ensure organic rankings like they once did, it is important to have the title tags, meta tags, and descriptions that match the page content. The most important thing that search engines look for is the title tag. The title tag should be 50-60 characters in length and relevant to the current content being viewed.
Other factors affect the value of meta information. While it is vital to optimizing search engines, it is even more important to create value for users. Meta information should always contain information related to search queries. Search queries essentially serve people, so any content should be written first for humans and not search engines. The meta description on any page should be coherent, intelligent, and useful to readers. No meta information should be spammy, either. It’s not a good idea to ‘optimize’ meta information by loading it with keywords and search phrases. It should read as naturally as possible. Meta information should also be equally compelling, creating value for the user to click and cross over to your page.
H1 Tags:
H1 tags are another factor in how search engines determine how to range a page. I have seen in many cases where there are multiple H1 tags on a page. Search engines will ignore the information completely and the page will not be found for those desired keywords. While H1 tags do not hold the value they once did, they are still important, especially if they are not done correctly.
Site Load Time:
A site that takes a long time to load can deter users from staying on your site and it is a factor with Google for how legitimate the site is. Making sure that images/code are optimized for load time is important for your site. A web development professional can use various tools like Google’s PageSpeed Insights to gauge both page speed and site speed for your site. Search engines (not just Google) use site load time as one of the search relevance signals. That’s because a site that loads quickly provides a better page experience than a site that takes its time loading the first byte on the browser. Sites that have longer site load times tend to have increased bounce rates, too. A slow-loading site tends to have reduced conversions, too. With these factors in mind, we must take a look at how your site is performing, on the whole, to make sure that its site speed is not negatively impacting your position on search rankings.
User Experience:
The better the user experience on a site will determine CTR (click-through rate). A better CTR is accomplished by keeping people interested and moving through your site. Relevance to the user, content, and design all play into keeping the users from “jumping ship.” Another factor that falls into this category is relevant content. Content, as they say, still is king (as long as it is relevant to the site). A site with relevant content will be seen as more credible than one with little content or content that is not relevant to the messaging of the site.
User experience is so ingrained in people that the average internet user only needs 15 seconds to evaluate if a page is relevant to him or not. You don’t need an advanced degree in web development to find out if a page is relevant to you or not. In addition to offering a speedy site, Google wants site owners to provide content that is practical/usable, and relevant to the site. Google has also reversed its policy of excluding non-AMP content from the Top Stories for each search query. This move translates to more competition and one more reason to improve various aspects of your site.
Quality Links:
It is still important to have quality links coming from higher-ranked sites. Social media traffic and pages with a higher page rank that is relevant remain a big factor in the search engine’s algorithm. Care should be taken that these links are built up “naturally” as search engines will look for a sudden influx of links and will deduct from your site’s relevance if found.
Quality backlinks from other sites represent a “vote of confidence.” Google has always been interested in surfacing sites or pages with a strong vote of confidence from equally legitimate or trustworthy sites. Backlinks have to be earned over a period of time. Google penalizes sites that have a sudden influx of links, so link farming is highly discouraged. If you produce content that is so good that other sites link to you as a reference, you’re going to have a better time with search visibility on the whole.
On-page optimization is everyone’s business. Whether your site is an ecommerce site in nature or a service-oriented website, you need to perform good on-page optimization to ensure better organic SEO, which will result in more traffic, more conversions, and more business for you.
Contact me today and schedule a meeting to start discussing how to perform on-page optimization on your site better.
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