Improve search engine positions, generate more organic traffic, and increase leads!
Over the last 12 month’s we have been monitoring what are the top most important on-page ranking factors! This simple and easy to use SEO checklist will help you make sure every page on your site is up to speed with today’s on-page SEO best practice. It will help you increase your search engine traffic from every piece of content that you publish on your website.
The checklist covers the following areas:
- Title Tags
- Improve Your Click Through Rate
- Decrease Bounce Rate
- Content Is High Quality, Relevant, Fresh And Long!
- Include Relevant Multimedia
- Optimising’s Header Tags
- URL Structures
- Featuring Resources And Tools
- Page Load Times
- Optimising For Local Traffic
- Social Media And User Discussion
- Think Mobile!
Title Tag
Every page should have an HTML title (enclosed in tags). The title copy should be unique, include the target keyword or target search phrase, and must be between 50-60 characters or less (any longer, and Google will truncate it anyway).
Google puts more weight on search phrase found at the beginning of your title tag.
Moz has created a great tool to use to test what your titles will look like in the SERPS: Title Tag Preview Tool from Moz.
Include modifier keywords (like: guide, review, best, how to, 2014) to improve longer tail traffic.
A few great tool’s that could help you generate titles for your content:
Improve Your Click-Through Rate
Meta Description tag: Even though search engines don’t weigh a Meta description in ranking a page, it is very important, because it is the marketing copy for your page. The Meta description in the page head tag set (enclosed inusually appears with your organic search listing, and induces readers to click through.
The Meta description tag should be no longer than 160 characters, and should include your target phrase.
Latest studies show that click-through rate is one of the most important factors!
Decrease Your Bounce Rate
If users are bouncing off your page it’s indicating to Google that your page isn’t relevant to that viewer. Our data shows that higher bounce rate can result in not being shown on page one, especially for competitive terms.
Adding internal links to the beginning of your content is the simplest and fastest way to decrease your bounce rate.
Content is high-quality, relevant, fresh and long!
Several industry studies have shown that longer content (1500+ words) ranks significantly higher in Google.
Don’t over repeat target search phrases within your copy, or the page may get downgraded as spam. There is no rule to how many times you should or shouldn’t mention your search terms, but keep them in mind when writing and you will naturally mention it enough.
Keep the reader in mind, copy should always be reader-friendly!
- Check over for misspellings or poor grammar, search engines downgrade for either.
- Link to other related topics (resource sites, news, blogs, etc…)
Include LSI (Latent Semantic Indexing) keywords
Including LSI keywords around your search phrases within your content it gives Google confidence that your content is of a higher quality and relevance to the searcher.
You can easily find LSI keywords for any keyword, all you need to do is search for the keyword in Google and scroll to the bottom of the page where it says “Searches related to…”
Keep your viewers engaged
- Spend time in keeping your viewers reading your content and interested all the way through…
- Put a lot of effort in making your introduction paragraph interesting and compelling.
Keep your old content updated!
- Add internal links within your old articles when new ones are published.
Include relevant multimedia
like images, graphics, and video that can help illustrate the target search phrase.
Optimise your Images to include:
- Alt text: Use the target search phrase in image alt text (embedded in the image tag as alt=”your search phrases”).
- Captions for images and/or graphics include the target search phrase.
Target search phrase is included within your page headline.
- Make sure your page titles are using a header tag.
- Target search phrase is included in at least one sub-heading H2/H3 tags.
- Using subheadings is a great way to add structure to your content.
URL’s – short and sweet!
- Keep a structure throughout your site, a good example: www.yourdomain.com/ your-search-phrase.
- Our data shows that keeping URLs short and contain your search phrase will provide a small significant difference in rankings.
Feature useful tools and resources within your content.
Create content that resonates with your audience, this increases shareability as your website users will find your content helpful, and of value to them – meaning that they’re more likely to share it on their site or across their social media profiles.
Nobody likes a slow website
Check & optimise the load time of your website!
You can check the load time of your site via a number of tools:
- http://gtmetrix.com
- https://developers.google.com/speed/pagespeed/insights/
- http://tools.pingdom.com/fpt/
Using the above tools will not just grade how fast or slow your website is performing but give recommendations on how to improve it.
Local Search Optimisation
With more and more people searching for local content it’s important to keep these searchers in mind. If you are optimising for specific location for example: country, state, city or regional names, be sure they are mentioned within your copy and perhaps in your page footer.
Social Media and User Discussion
Inclusion of social media links and / or user discussion or reviews. Pages with active visitor interaction are scored higher than static pages.
If you’re a WordPress user you could install the following plugins:
Think Mobile!
If your website is receiving a significant amount of mobile traffic then you should consider what user experience they are having.
If you need more support with optimising your website for search visibility, talk to our Team at Trusted Media today.
