On-Page SEO is about everything on your website that you have full control to optimise – content, layout, performance.

In this article, we’ll give you the tools to succeed in creating great content, layout and optimised performance.

When it’s time to create your content, it’s a good idea to have already done your keyword research, and you’ll probably have a couple of long-tails that are worth using.

Content is by far the most important aspect of search engine optimisation. Without content, of course, you can’t rank at all. But creating good content isn’t just about putting a few words on a page, it takes a bit more than that. Writing good content can be a bit of an art.

However, good content and structure is not everything. You also need to optimise your content for both Google and your visitors. Without properly optimised On-Page SEO, even the best content will fail.

The technical application, the structure of your site, is also important for your SEO and your content.

Are you using WordPress/WooCommerce? To easily get started with optimising specific pages and products, the Yoast SEO plugin is recommended. It also gives you a lot of other nice features. For example, you can set canonical URLs, integrate it with Google Search Console, and much more.

Create awesome introductions to make the visitor stick

Someone clicks through to your content. Great, but the battle is not yet won!

What you need to do is write a really good introduction, something that will keep the visitor interested, you don’t want them to go anywhere now.

Three quick tips on how to write a really good introduction:

1. Keep the introduction short and explosive.
2. Describe exactly what the visitor can expect from the content.
3. Capture interest.

The first two points don’t require any extra explanation, but how do you capture the visitor’s interest? You need to make them really want to read on, you want to keep them away from the back button.

One trick is to give clues as to what the visitor will get out of the content, but don’t tell them everything, you want to get the visitor engaged, to want to find out everything the content provides.

Example: “Want to become a master of SEO? Learn the secrets here.”

BUT, no matter how awesome the introduction is, your page should always address the topic and keyword it ranks highest for. You can ensure this by using available keyword research services.

Finding proven content for the topic (or specific keywords)

Have you found a keyword you want to rank for, but are running out of ideas?

Why not start by finding already proven content for the topic or specific keyword and create content based on that.

If you don’t have a specific keyword in mind, viral content might be something to go for instead. People love to share good content.

As always, there are services that can help you find data to work from.

Once you have your data and ideas for content, just create it and make it better than previous content.

Use case studies where possible, build trust

There is an easy way to differentiate your content from others for high competition keywords. Use case studies. It’s something visual that often gets the visitor hooked.

Including real data and examples is also a great way to build trust and to showcase your product in the wild.

Make sure your texts are easy to understand and absorb

There’s nothing worse than clicking on a search result and being greeted by a giant wall of text. But that can be easily remedied.

Text-only content is something you want to avoid at all costs.

Here are a few points to make your content easy to absorb, read and understand:

• Separate your content into logical sections, which is also good for SEO.
• Write short, simple sentences. Preferably 2 to 3 sentences per paragraph.
• Try to weave narrative text into your content.
• Use lists and bullet points (like these).
• Break up your content with images and illustrations.
• Use slideshows, presentations and videos where appropriate.

If you’re using WordPress, Yoast is great for getting indications of how readable your content is. You also get it directly after publication.

If you write in English, Hemmingway Editor is a good (free) tool that can help with this. Simply copy and paste your content and go through the tips that pop up. Another option is Grammarly, which is also a great tool for keeping track of spelling and grammar (English). It is available in both free and premium versions.

Don’t just write for the sake of writing, make it interesting

Firstly, don’t fall for the myth that longer content is better for search engine optimisation. Because that is far from always the case. If something should be kept short, keep it short. Don’t just write for the sake of writing.

The articles in this series could probably have consisted of another 100 paragraphs. But much of it would have been more filler than anything else. In other words, it’s important to be factual and avoid all the extra fluff.

The risk is that you lose the visitor after just a few sentences and that the text does not feel meaningful to read. Of course, you don’t want that.

Create outbound links, it helps both you and your visitors

Linking to other sources with factual content that directly relates to what you’re writing about will build trust and create relationships with sites that have the same target audience. It also adds value for your visitors.

It has been shown that there is a small correlation between outbound links and Google rankings.

The correlation you can see probably has to do with Google looking at outbound links where there are no other signals for ranking. Hence, a small correlation. Therefore, you should not force outbound links into your content. Provide these where it adds value.

Best practice for outbound links is to open them in a new tab/window so that the visitor does not leave your page.

Avoid penalisation, minimise thin content

If you have too much thin/duplicated content, Google’s Panda algorithm may penalise your site. However, the remedy is fairly simple.

Expand thin content, remove unnecessary content and/or de-index this type of content.

You can easily deindex content by setting the robots meta tag to “noindex, follow”. But be careful, you don’t want to use this solution on the wrong pages.

An example of pages in WordPress that should use this meta tag are archive pages. If you have e-commerce, you should also review product category pages that may fall under the same epithet. These pages can also be seen as duplicate content if you use content filtering.

Higher rank with the keyword in the main title

There are definitely cases where pages rank high without the primary keyword in the title tag. Links can trump most things. But there are clear correlations between including the keyword and higher rankings.

So make sure each page has a unique heading with your keyword in the title tag. You should also not use the keyword more than once in the title tag. Use only one meta description and one H1 tag per page and include the keyword.

Don’t overwork it, a page should generally contain one H1 tag which is the main heading of the page. You don’t need to force in additional keywords.

Create awesome content that people can’t resist clicking on

Holding a nice third place in search results but want more clicks? Make your headline stand out more to searchers, they should get the impulse that they just have to click.

You may only have 55 characters to use, but you can do more than you think with those characters. Create a compelling headline, a headline that grabs attention and play on the emotional if you can.

One tip is to look at how viral pages on Facebook generate clicks with their headlines. These pages have to rely entirely on getting clicks, in other words, they work very hard on their headlines. You don’t have to take it quite as far as the viral pages, pure clickbaits may not be preferable, but you get the point.

Another tip is to look at how other sites for your target audience set their headlines and then do it differently. If your headlines stand out, the possibility of clicks increases. If your CTR goes up, the ranking will most likely follow.

E-commerce site? Capture users with purchase intent via keywords

Do you run an e-commerce site? Then you want to capture those who have the intention to buy.

If someone is searching for “grey suit”, they might be looking for:

• Reviews
• Images of grey suits
• Information on grey suits

But if someone searches for “buy grey suit” then they are more likely to be in the buying stage. Adding a word like “buy/buy” to the headline can create better conditions to capture these buyers.

For example, a suitable headline for product pages on an e-commerce site could be:

Buy {product name} online

The great thing about this heading is that you can predefine it in the template to avoid having to enter custom headings for thousands of products.

Don’t miss to read more about what you need to consider and can do as an e-retailer and how you can use Google for Retail/Merchant Centre in our article on Off-Page SEO.

Increase your CTR by avoiding truncated meta tags

In search results, title tags are broken after 512px (around 55 characters) in desktop view. Meta descriptions are broken after approx: 923px (around 155 characters). Truncated titles and descriptions are not so beautiful, it also has a very negative effect on CTR.

In other words, you should always stay below 55 characters for headlines and below 155 characters for descriptions.

SELL the content in the meta tag for the best CTR

The meta description is your selling point in the search results.

The description won’t always show up in search results, sometimes Google itself picks out better contextually matching text from the content. But when that happens, a well-written meta description can still generate a few extra clicks.

In other words, write unique, compelling descriptions that communicate value and attract clicks for each page. But don’t stop there. Revisit the description after a while to see if you can make improvements. Test if variations result in higher CTRs.

For example, if you have an e-commerce site, you can test adding the price of products to see if it generates more clicks.

Don’t stop testing, optimise your CTR.

Put your content first

Your visitors come for your content right! Therefore, make sure that the content is easily accessible right after they click into the page. At the very least, the headline should be immediately visible without the visitor having to scroll.

You should also make sure not to have distracting elements that take the focus away from the content itself. Such things as:

• Too many adverts at the top – Adverts can be annoying and Google can penalise pages for things that annoy their users.

• Annoying pop-ups – Great for conversions, yes possibly. But too many pop-ups will make the visitor leave the page immediately. Make sure that any pop-ups are very easy to close. Pop-ups with a delay and/or for exit intent are preferable.

• Overlay ads – Google has confirmed that it may penalise sites that use overlay and full-screen ads in mobile view. In other words, be careful with the use of overlay variants, especially those that prevent the visitor from directly accessing the content of the page.

Recommended reading: Surviving Google’s New Policy Against Interstitial Ads.

More visitors with proper device customisation

Your site should always be functional on most devices, operating systems and resolutions. In other words, your website should be mobile-friendly.

You should also consider making your website accessible to everyone, including people with disabilities. Learn more about the EU Web Accessibility Directive and accessibility with WCAG.

Making your website mobile-friendly is especially important since July 2019 when Google introduced its mobile-first indexing. This means that indexing is primarily done for mobile view.

At Angry Creative, we naturally adapt all solutions to mobile as standard.

Get more traffic via Google image search by optimising your images

Google image search can generate a lot of traffic. Especially if you have an e-commerce site. Many people simply start their research via Google image search rather than a regular Google search.

Unfortunately, Google is not very good at reading what the images represent, in other words, you need to tell Google what an image represents. However, optimising images for Google image search is relatively easy.

To help Google along the way, add alt texts to your images (think of it as captions) and use descriptive file names.

Example:

Not good:

You should also make sure to use compressed images optimised for fast loading. Optimised images provide benefits for both image searches and general searches as optimised pages rank higher.

If you want to rank with products in Google’s shopping section, you should also consider using clear images (e.g. product against white background). Otherwise, Google is likely to skip these for listing with extra SERP functionality. Read more about Google for Retail.

If you use WordPress, there are several good add-ons for optimising images. One example is Imagify which optimises your images directly when you upload them. There are also options to optimise images in bulk. In our solutions, we use Cloudflare Polish for optimised images.

Reference Google: Image elements do not have [alt] attributes

Use short, descriptive URLs for clarity

If your CMS allows it, use short descriptive URLs/perma links.

The benefits are:

• It looks neater.
  
• It can give some boost to SEO to use keywords in the address.
  
• Plain text links (e.g. if you share a link with someone) contain your primary keyword

A yardstick can be to use 2-3 words and avoid stop words.

Minimise boilerplate text to avoid being penalised by Google’s algorithms

“Boilerplate text, i.e. blocks of text that appear in several different parts of a website. This type of text need not be a problem if you have a lot of other content on your pages. However, it can cause problems, especially on e-commerce sites.

Product pages often tend to have shorter descriptions of the product and repetitive text about terms, shipping, etc. Things that appear on all product pages.

What that tells Google is that product pages only contain ~10% unique content of value. That in turn means that Google’s Panda algorithm will squash you.

Recommended reading: Duplicate Content SEO Advice From Google.

Reference Google: Document does not have a valid rel=canonical

Include a constantly visible address for better local SEO

Your contact details should always be easily accessible on your website.

If you also run a business with local roots, it is especially important to include the physical address. Make it visible in the footer, for example, to strengthen the location data in Google and at the same time give the visitor a trustworthy impression.

Choose a cool branded domain name rather than one based on keywords, you lose nothing in SEO

There are very few benefits (if any) for SEOs to have their business’ primary keywords as domain names (EDM).

Instead, choose a nicely branded domain name. If you completely disregard SEO, it looks much better too.

Recommended reading: Goodbye Exact Match Domains, Hello Brandable Websites.

Listen to the advice from Google Pagespeed Insights for improved performance

One factor for ranking can be page load time. All else being equal, a fast page will rank higher than a slow one. The correlation between a page with optimised page load and higher rank is not huge, but it is there.

To review your page load times, you can use the proven Google Pagespeed Insights. You can also kill several birds with one stone and use Google’s latest tool, Web Vitals.

Both of these services give you recommendations on how to optimise your page for the best results. Listen to these recommendations and optimise your site accordingly.

If you use WordPress, activate a caching plugin for optimised performance

A good caching plugin can make a big difference in how fast your site loads.

Without a caching plugin, WordPress can be relatively heavy when it comes to database queries. This can slow down your site considerably during traffic peaks, which is when you want a fast site.

With a cache extension, the visitor is taken to a static HTML version of your page. A much faster way to load content, which means you can handle more traffic.

There are several great caching extensions for WordPress out there. But if we’re going to mention something that’s really effective, we’ll mention WP Rocket.

If you have a larger site, it usually takes a bit more than just activating a cache plugin. In our solutions with Qala, we offer both load balancing and advanced cache optimisation with Cloudflare.

Configure Accelerated Mobile Pages (AMP) and enjoy the benefits in search results

Accelerated Mobile Pages (AMP) are stripped-down versions of web pages that load at lightning speed on mobile phones.

It is likely that Google will boost rankings for AMP-enabled pages in the future.

Google already customises search results for AMP pages by highlighting them with a small lightning bolt. If the page also uses rich snippets/structured data, it will appear better in search results.

If you use WordPress, there is a dedicated plugin to enable Accelerated Mobile Pages for your website.

Boost your CTR by using Rich Snippets/Structured Data

Organic search is more competitive than ever before. That’s why it’s so important to do everything you can to get more clicks.

Rich snippets are descriptive HTML tags that help search engines better understand the content of websites. They appear in search results as extra data that can differentiate your content from others’ and thus increase CTR.

Examples of extra data that can be displayed are ratings, which can be particularly useful when running e-commerce.

If you use WooCommerce as we do in our solution with Qala, you get a standard set of structured data for products.

Update your content often to boost your traffic

To keep your pages relevant, update them continuously so that they have value in ranking.

You should also create evergreen content, i.e. content that is always relevant, whether it is 2012 or 2032.

Create a flow in the hierarchy of your website for better SEO

Facilitate Google PageRank by creating a flow in the hierarchy/structure of your website.

You should make sure that basically all pages are max one click away from the homepage. For important pages, you probably also want to create more inputs for best results.

Recommended reading: How to Create a Site Structure That Will Enhance SEO

Don’t get penalised for duplicate content, choose www or non-www

This is something that surprisingly many websites still get wrong.

Google handles it smarter than it used to, but it can still see http://www.webbplats.com/url and http://webbplats.com/url as two separate pages and thus flag it as duplicate content.

In other words, you should use one or the other and set a 301 redirect for the one not used. You can configure canonical URLs, but a 301 redirect is preferable.

You may also want to specify the preferred address for the site in Google Search Console after verifying both addresses.

Recommended reading: WWW vs non-WWW – Which is Better For WordPress SEO?

Use Canonical URLs for duplicate content, avoid penalisation

Always use Canonical URLs for pages with similar content to avoid being penalised in search results.

It’s not uncommon for e-commerce solutions that allow filtering by category with various attributes to create multiple urls for similar content.

Block sensitive content with robots.txt for better security

Block sensitive content (e.g. admin parts) for Googlebot and other crawlers in robots.txt.

A simple example to block admin in WordPress

User-agent: *
Disallow: /wp-admin

Keep the link value, use 301 redirects for content moved/removed

Always use 301 redirects to redirect content from old to new pages.

In the past, 301 redirects could result in lower link value. However, this is no longer the case. Google has confirmed that 301 redirects are no longer penalised. Google also accepts 302 redirects (temporarily moved content), but 301 is still preferable when moving content permanently.

To manage redirects in WordPress, the Redirection plugin or the premium version of Yoast SEO are recommended, both of which make it easy to maintain.

Sudden drops in search traffic, have you been penalised?

If you see a sudden drop in search traffic to your website, it may indicate that you have been penalised by Google. However, this doesn’t have to be the case, a drop can also have other causes.

Things to look into:

• Has your site recently had downtime?
• Is the analytics tracking code entered correctly?
• Have you accidentally blocked search spiders?

If these things look right, then it’s likely that the site has been penalised in some way.

Even if you haven’t officially received a penalty yet, there’s no guarantee you’re not about to get one. Drops in search traffic that can be linked to updates to Google’s algorithms may indicate that you are due for a penalty based on those algorithms.
Use the Panguin tool from Baracuda Digital to predict changing patterns in your search traffic. Pay attention to changes that occur with Google algorithm updates and take preventative measures accordingly.

Use a Content Delivery Network (CDN) for best performance

Many websites use a single hosting for their content. For example, in Sweden. But what happens when a visitor arrives from the US? Well, content needs to be sent halfway across the globe, affecting loading times (which is not good for SEO).

If you use Content Delivery Networks (CDN), you solve such problems by creating cached versions of your website on several different servers in several different places in the world. This means that when a visitor requests a page, it will be sent from the nearest physical location and thus load faster.

Using a CDN can both speed up your site and save on bandwidth costs.

Angry Creative uses Cloudflare in its solutions, which partly solves the bit with CDN and also provides several other optimisations. Cloudflare is one of the most popular services available and is easy to use.

Install SSL certificates and build trust

Today, there’s really no excuse NOT to use SSL certificates for your website. With the advent of Let’s Encrypt, you can easily create free certificates for secure connections over HTTPS.

Pages on your website that collect personal information should ALWAYS be protected with SSL certificates. One such example is e-commerce where very sensitive information is handled. A store requires SSL certificates, not least to make customers feel safe.

Google also gives a certain advantage to websites that use SSL.

See problems with indexing via search on “site:dinwebbplats.se”

Performing a Google search for your website using “site:dinwebbplats.se” can give you good information on how many pages have been indexed.

Attention should be paid to whether this search produces too many results on pages. This is usually an indication that something is not quite right with the indexation of your website.

Use Google Search Console and Web Vitals for feedback on actions

You know that you can get direct input from Google on any problems with your website and tips on how to fix them.

Use Google Search Console to keep track of issues that may arise and Web Vitals to see what improvements can be made.

There are several useful tools in Search Console and Web Vitals. If Google suggests improvements, you should of course implement them.

Find errors with Search Console

See what problems Google found when it searched your website. If you see 404 errors, you need to fix these with 301 redirects.

500 errors (server error) may indicate that performance needs to be reviewed at the server level.

Suggestions for improvements with Web Vitals

For more information on how to improve your website from Google’s point of view, you can use Google’s latest tool Web Vitals.

After crawling your website, Google provides clear tips for improvement. For each improvement that can be made to your website, an article with information from Google is linked.

Keep security high, scan your website

Security is important from many perspectives. A “hacked” site can be a nightmare for SEO. If you’re not careful, Google can remove your site from all SERPs. No more organic traffic!

In other words, security is important to say the least, not least from an SEO perspective. You should be vigilant and also take preventive measures to ensure that you keep your site clean. There are sneaky hackers who just add unwanted links hidden in the content.

Sucuri’s site check is a handy tool to quickly scan a website for any hacks or security holes.

Upload a sitemap to help Google along the way

The more visible we can be to Google, the better. Adding one or more sitemaps to your website is a good idea.

You can also find tools for this in Google Search Console.

Sitemaps are not a high priority if you already have a well-built semantic website with a sensible hierarchy. But it’s still something that should be done.

In WordPress, you can easily automate the generation of sitemaps with Yoast SEO.

Recommended reading: What is an XML sitemap and why should you have one?

Make it ridiculously easy to share your content

Social media has no direct influence on page rankings. But it does spread your content and the chance of getting inbound links increases.

Indirectly, social media can influence rankings with things like

• Traffic/buzz
• Branded searches
• Searches based on your URLs

So making it super easy to share your content makes sense.

• Share your content on social media – Always have an active presence on social networks and share your content. The more people who see your content, the more shares.
  
• Display sharing buttons clearly and easily accessible – If your visitors don’t see the sharing buttons, they won’t use them. Make sure your share buttons are visible at first glance.
  
• Use Open Graph metadata – This makes your social media links (e.g. Facebook/Twitter) more visually appealing. Links that stand out and are appealing will get more clicks and more shares. Yoast is a great plugin to handle this automatically.
  
• Always create featured images for your content – Use bright, colourful images that catch people’s attention. It will help you get more clicks from social media.

You probably want to be present on all major social networks. Then you can focus on the networks that best suit your industry. An article about recruitment will probably work best on LinkedIn, for example, while a flower page might be best on Pinterest.

Closing tips

To conclude, here are 5 quick tips that should be more or less obvious when working with SEO and marketing your website.

1. Learn as much as you can about SEO from a variety of sources. Don’t miss our series of articles on search engine optimisation in our knowledge bank.
   
2. Keep up to date. A lot changes and fast. Google is continuously making changes that you want to be up to date with.
   
3. Be patient! Effective SEO requires hard work and time, nothing happens overnight. It’s worth it in the long run. Studies show that SEO is what provides the best ROI for inbound marketing channels.
   
4. Avoid dodgy practices at all costs. For example, buying inbound links can often be more expensive than investing in established methods of SEO.
   
5. Do not spam!

Good luck with your on-page SEO!

Are you keen to read more about how to optimise your website for search engines?

Don’t miss our other articles on the subject.

• SEO Analysis – How to create a strategy with reports, analyses and measurable KPIs for SEO.
• Keyword Research – How to find the right keywords to rank high.
• Off-Page SEO – How to optimise your site with external links (link building), services and tools.

Are you ready to take the next step with your website?

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