On-Page SEO Key Factors
When performing on-page SEO, it’s most helpful to follow a checklist to make sure you’re not missing anything. For more information on this checklist, check out our blog post: On-Page SEO Steps [Free Checklist].
Definitions of SEO Terms
Page/Meta Title
The title is the single most important element when it comes to ranking. Your title should convey the meaning of your content and ideally include a keyword. Your title could either include a short tail keyword or long tail keyword. Here’s an example of how that could break down:
Short tail keyword: “digital marketing”
Page Meta Title: “Digital Marketing | BizzyWeb”
Long tail keyword: “digital marketing examples”
Blog Meta Title: “8 Digital Marketing Examples You’ll Want to Try”
Meta Description
The meta description is the small preview of text that appears underneath your search result. In past years, the meta description held more weight. While it’s still important, it’s not as critical as the title or actual content of your page. Ideally, your meta description should include your keyword and be a short summary of your content. If your goal is to get a featured snippet or rank for voice search, it helps to have a question/answer format for your meta title and meta description.
Example:
Meta Title: “Does Medicare Cover a Gym Membership?”
Meta Description: Medicare does not cover fitness programs and gym memberships, but private health plans may offer gym memberships.
Page URL
The URL for your page is also key for SEO, since Google is very conscious of bait-and-switch content and will try and shut it down. Your URL should match with your page title, but you may need to trim it down to avoid excessive length, redundancy or misleading content. For example:
Page Title: “Digital Marketing | BizzyWeb”
Do This: https//www.bizzyweb.com/digital-marketing
Not This: https://www.bizzyweb.com/digital-marketing-bizzyweb
Never This: https://www.bizzyweb.com/digital-marketing-tips-and-tricks
In the last example, the URL is misleading because the page does not share tips and tricks. Your URL should match your content.
Alt Tags
An Alt Tag, also known as an Alt Attribute or Alt Description, is a description applied to image tags to provide a text alternative for search engines. Since a search engine algorithm can’t “read” an image, we need to give some words so the algorithm can “read” the image and know what it is. This gives relativity between the content and image for the search engines. If appropriate, you can include relevant keywords in your alt tags. You do not need to begin your alt tag with “an image of…” or “a picture of…” – search engines and screen readers alike will provide that information to the end user.
Example:
Image:
Alt text: “A brown puppy jumping”
Subheadings
It’s useful to break up content with subheadings for readability, but these also are important for your SEO. Your subheadings should be formatting as H2 and your sub-subheadings as H3 – you will see these options in your website content editing program. Subheadings should be used to dictate various sections of content.
Example:
Page Title: The Complete Guide to SEO
Example Subheadings:
- What is Search Engine Optimization?
- What is On-Page SEO?
- What’s the Difference Between SEO & PPC?
Internal and External Links
It also improves your overall SEO to include links in the body of your content to relevant content, where appropriate. For example, in a blog post about bathroom remodeling trends, you should include a link to your bathroom remodeling page. Internal links are any links on your website to other areas of your website, while external links are links to other websites. While it may seem like linking away from your website would be bad for SEO, it’s actually the opposite – search engines consider external links in their rankings. A good rule of thumb is to set any external link to open in a new window. That way, your site still remains open for the user.
Body Content
The body of your blog or page simply refers to the actual meat of your content – not just the headings, subheadings, images, etc., but the words on the page. Creating compelling content is a separate skill onto itself, but for SEO purposes it’s critical to ensure that the content on your page matches the title of the page. That may sound obvious, but it’s very easy to stray away from your topic once you begin actually writing. For more tips on how to write content that search engines love, check out our blog: How to Create SEO Content.
What are SERP and Featured Snippets?
SERP stands for Search Engine Results Page and refers to the page a user sees or hears after they ask a search query. The standard format for a search result listing is the page URL, followed by the page title and then the meta description. As search engines have evolved, the SERP page has evolved to include other media elements and features.
The most common SERP feature you’ll see are featured snippets. Featured snippets answer a search query directly within Google. They are typically very short and to the point.
This allows users to answer their question without ever needing to leave Google, although many users will still click on the link to learn more about a given topic. Google hasn’t revealed exactly what criteria they use when selecting which result will be given a featured snippet, however it’s always a result from the first page of SERP. This means that SEO is critical for trying to snag a featured snippet.
Read Now: What are SERP Features? And Why Do They Matter?
What’s the Difference Between SEO & PPC?
Sometimes, the terms SEO and PPC are mentioned together. While similar, they are different. PPC advertising, or pay per click, is an online marketing tool based around ads. Two of the most popular platforms for PPC ads are Facebook and Google. Unlike SEO, you have to pay each time someone clicks on the ad. Online advertising on Google is also separate from what’s called organic SEO – all of the SEO strategies we’ve been covering so far on this page. When searching on Google, there’s a clear distinction between the online ads (PPC) and the rest of the search results (Organic SEO). You can see this in action when you search on Google:
The first search results are all ads and are marked with a clear “Ad” at the start of the text. The organic search results, seen below, are not marked as ads.
