Be Visible

The foundation of SEO is all about reaching people by being visible at the top of the SERPs.

Search engine optimisation is broken up into two main areas, on-page SEO and off-page SEO.  As the name suggests on-page looks at everything that is needed to be done to ensure that your website elements are optimised, the use of headings and sub-headings is correct with proper tags, meta descriptions, keywords, content and friendly URLs, as well as page speed and internal links.  Basically, anything you can do  on a webpage to improve your rankings in search engines.

Off-page SEO is everything that gets done externally (outside of your website) in an attempt to boost your rankings in search engines.  One of the biggest off-page SEO factors is backlinks. Other factors include social media, local SEO, PR, content marketing, guest posting, influencer marketing and brand mentions.

A good SEO strategy includes both on-page and off-page SEO factors.

So why is on-page SEO important?

Best practice SEO for on-page optimisation besides helping search engines to interpret your page content is to help users understand your page content clearly and quickly and whether or not it addresses their search query.

When optimising for on-page SEO keep these points in mind:

 Keywords on-page will be checked by search engines to see if they match a user's search intent.

 Relevant and useful on-page content will also help you increase your rankings as valuable content that matches user intent is very important.

Google uses many factors when crawling a webpage to determine if it will "index" the page.  So just because you build it does not guarantee that it will be indexed or even show up in search results at all.

Google and other search engines are constantly updating their algorithms.  These could be minor updates or major updates like Panda and RankBrain.  The goal of Google is to constantly improve the quality of search results. For instance, the Panda update looked at penalising content farms and keyword stuffing as a part of their mission to stamp out Black Hat SEO and to serve users quality content.  If you didn't already know, Google uses over 200 ranking factors in their algorithm.

Want to know how to optimise your content for on-page SEO? 

1. Start with a little keyword research to find relevant topics and target keywords. 
   Tip:  More competitive keywords are harder to rank for, so try ranking for long-tail keywords to begin with as they often have a lower search volume.
   
   
2. Next, write high-quality content that matches your keyword and readers’ search intent. 
   Tip:  Although Google is much smarter today, it still uses old-school stuff, such as looking for a specific keyword on your page.  What's new is that Google can now also extract your page's meaning from the use of synonyms, the context in which your content appears, and even the ability to pay attention to the frequency with which specific word combinations are mentioned within your content. 
   
   
3. Make sure you place your keywords strategically within your content. Google scans your content to see what your page is about and so will your readers. So with this in mind, include your target keywords in these three areas: H1, first paragraph and subheaders such as H2s and H3s.
   
   
4. The next step is to optimise your title tags, which by the way are a ranking factor.  Your title tags can also influence whether or not a user clicks on your web page.
   TIP:  Keep them brief (50 to 60 characters), include your target keyword and be unique.
   
   
5. You've probably heard of meta descriptions, HTML elements used to describe your web page's content.  These descriptions won't influence your SERP rankings but they can influence the user as a deciding factor of whether they choose to click on your link instead of your competitor's page.  Did you also know that if your meta description doesn’t match the user’s search intent or the content on your web page, Google may choose its own description for the search results?
   TIP: Consider mobile so use no more than 120 characters, include your target keyword, use active voice when writing your description and add a CTA. 
   
   
6. Structure your content with Headings and Sub Headings.  H1, H2, H3, H4 tags etc allow readers to easily skim your page and also enable search engines to understand the hierarchy of your page.  You want to make it easy to find specific information.
   TIP: Use H1 tags as your page title or headline, and include H2 tags to cover subtopics. If you need to cover content in further detail, then use H3s and H4s, and so on to H6s.
   
   
7. Use friendly URLs.  A friendly URL is simple and uses words relevant to your content.  Do not use numbers, full sentences or published dates.  Some website themes will use these y default so it's important to make sure you update them.  Many CMSs have a friendly URL button that you can switch on.  Also, make sure you use your target keyword in your URL to ensure it matches your content topic.
   
   
8. Add internal links.  There are a number of reasons why internal links are an important part of on-page SEO with the main reasons being that Google understands your site’s structure and helps spread link equity aka ranking power around your website.
   TIP:  Use descriptive words as the anchor text that give a sense of the topic or keywords your web page is trying to target.

There are many more things you should do to optimise your pages for SEO, including optimising images, adding external links to enhance user experience and build trust with your audience, and optimising for user engagement as well as more advanced on-page SEO techniques like optimising for page speed and featured snippets and so on. If you need help optimising your website for on-page SEO, get in touch with us today.

Higher Rankings = Higher Traffic and More Leads

So why is off-page SEO so important?

One of the most essential parts of any SEO strategy, especially off-page SEO, is to get search engines and users to see your website as more trustworthy and authoritative.  In today's online climate, your site's reputation is essential because highly reputable websites tend to rank better in SERPs. This is because of E-A-T. When search engines consider your site to have more Expertise, Authoritativeness, and Trustworthiness you will rank better and when you rank better, users are more likely to visit your site. 

In late 2022 E-A-T changed to E-E-A-T when Google added another E for Experience.

The best way to show E-E-A-T is to use off-page factors such as backlinks, reviews and recommendations.  Also in 2022, Google confirmed that E-A-T is rated for every query that is made in searches.  You can learn more about E-E-A-T in Google's Quality Raters' Guidelines.

Technical SEO vs. Off-Page SEO

While off-page SEO looks at improving your reputation in SERPs, Technical SEO refers to the activities that directly impact how the search engines index and crawl your website.  These factors can include site speed optimisation, structured data, XML sitemaps, and canonicalization.

Crawling is an essential component of how search engines work, so the first step in optimising your website for Technical SEO is to make sure Google and other search engines can effectively crawl it.  Then once your pages have been crawled, search engines try to analyze and understand the content of your pages. Next, Google stores those pieces of content in its search index. This huge database contains billions of web pages and your pages have to be indexed before they can appear in search results.

There are a couple of things that can prevent your pages from being indexed by search engines:

1. The Noindex Tag is an HTML snippet that prevents your pages from being indexed. This tag is placed within the <head> section of your webpage and could be used for thank you pages and PPC landing pages.
2. When Google finds duplicate content or similar content on multiple pages on your website, it might not know which of the pages to index and show in search results.  The use of canonical tags comes in handy to identify a link as the original version and to tell Google which page it should index and rank.

There is a lot to consider when we talk about SEO and improving your website rankings and the importance of SEO is not changing anytime soon as a digital marketing strategy.  In fact, if you have a website then you should be implementing SEO, as it's crucial in making your business more visible online, increasing sales and leads and building long-term trust and authoritativeness for your brand.  Boost your credibility with one of our SEO plans or talk to us today about improving the off-page SEO and Technical SEO of your website with a custom SEO strategy or digital marketing package.