Search Engine Optimization - Onsite

If you are a small business looking to increase your on-page SEO, start with the following steps:

1. Choose keywords wisely – The first step is choosing keywords that will help you reach your business goals. Ask yourself how people search for your product or service and try to match up their questions to answers on your website. Example: A client offers backpack recycling services so one of their main search phrases might be “How to sell back old school books” (with the goal of getting someone on the phone). They want their website visitors to find them on Google whether they are looking to sell specific books or just interested in finding out more about the offer in general, so instead of focusing on one keyword phrase, they would choose something like “Recycle books for cash” as they’ll likely get more traffic on it.

2. Put important on-page elements on top – The onsite SEO guide on Moz recommends placing the most important on-page elements such as title, description and headings above the fold: page title, meta description and H1 through H6 headings respectively. Of course this isn’t possible with every website, but if you can try to incorporate these components within your content before a user has to scroll down too far on the page.

3. Use keywords in URL path/Page Title/Meta Description – This is somewhat of a no brainer but make sure your chosen keywords are included in each of these places (if it makes sense). Optimal URL onsite seo on a website is a common issue.

4. Use LSI Keywords – In addition to your main keyword phrase, you can also include some “LSI” keywords as well which are closely related terms. A typical case might be words like “coupon” or “codes” if possible throughout your content (you don’t want to overdo it). There are plenty of tools available online like Google Trends , Wordtracker and Moz’s on-page SEO tool to help you find good LSI keywords to include on your site.

5. Create good content on a regular basis – When going through on-page optimization on a website it is best to consistently add new content on a regular basis. This way, search engines will make more visits to index your site on a regular bais. If the strategy of making on-page changes over time doesn’t make sense for you or your company, then at least aim for one or two additional posts per month if possible.

6. Use an internal link structure – An internal link structure will allow you to easily navigate from page-to-page within your own site which keeps readers engaged and also helps search engines discover related on-site content. There are plenty of tools on the market that can help you automatically generate a sitemap for your website, just be sure to keep it up-to-date on an ongoing basis.

7. Fill out all HTML elements on page – This tip kind of makes its own point as you want to make sure all areas of the HTML code are filled out appropriately (title, description and keyword tags).

8. Get more traffic and repeat – After implementing these steps you should see some growth in organic search traffic on your website which is always exciting – just be sure to keep any improvements in mind for the future! Use these strategies again with new content when you can, and remember that there are plenty of other ways to get more traffic including social media, pay-per-click advertising, email marketing campaigns etc. so feel free to mix it up!

9. Check each of your pages & add in keywords where they will be beneficial for customers looking for information that is helpful. Don’t forget to add in any additional on-page elements if they make sense to include on your website (for example, adding title and meta description tags to images on a tech blog if that’s part of the content). If these pieces of code take away from the user experience then it might be best not to include them on the site (additional social sharing buttons within the post could fall under this category for instance).

10. Submit your website to search engines – Don’t forget this final step in the process which involves submitting your sitemap file or RSS feed to Google & Bing. Just be sure not to spam them with dozens of requests on a daily basis otherwise they might not accept your listings (Google also has a FAQ on this).

Search Engine Optimization - Onsite