The world of SEO can be overwhelming. Many business owners have a hard time understanding what SEO best practices are and applying them to their site. There are many professional SEO companies that, through rigorous testing, have determined the best methods to improve a page’s rank in Google, and we’ll share a few of them with you. With our five on-page SEO tips and tricks, you’ll be well on your way to improving the rank of your pages

1: Quality and Keywords

When it comes to on-page SEO, the quality of your content plays a huge role. Content quality determines your site’s indexability and search engine performance. Many site owners will make the common mistake of stuffing keywords in places that don’t help the reader/site visitor. The whole point of the content on your site is to gain new customers, so tailoring your pages/content to specific customer needs and wants is the best way to ensure your content ranks well on Google and other search engines. Having a very well-spread-out set of keywords that both broadly and precisely match customer queries is also a significant factor in how well-optimized your on-page SEO is. Make sure your content is well-written, fills a need, matches a customer query, and has an appropriate spread and density of included keywords. It is also a good idea to cross-check other competitor websites and pages to see what keywords work well and tailor your keyword strategy to compete against theirs.

2: Don’t Overlook Keyword Placement When Optimizing On-Page SEO

While density is essential, don’t overlook where they are placed on the page. Placing important keywords in HTML heading tags helps Google’s digital crawlers, often referred to as spiders, understand what your page is about. It also enables users quickly determine that your page is relevant to what they were looking for. A user’s eyes will be drawn to larger text in headings on the page. Suppose they immediately see the keywords they searched for or a variation of their search. In that case, they are more likely to stay on your page rather than bounce back to search results and look for a different firm.

3: Alt Tagging Images and How it Improves Your On-Page SEO

When you visit a webpage, you can easily tell what all the images are. You can understand that the photo on the screen is a car or an animal etc. Google’s spiders can’t, though. This means that if your image doesn’t have an alt tag, the spiders can’t determine that the image contributes to the relevancy of a user’s search query and rank your page higher because of it. Adding an alt tag, especially one that includes keywords that you want to rank for, is one more tool to help boost your rank. Alt tags also have the added benefit of helping visually impaired users that are visiting your site. For example, suppose a visually impaired person uses a screen reader to navigate the webpage. In that case, the screen reader will read the alt tag so that while the user might not be able to see the image, they will still be able to understand that the content on the page is.

4: Internal Links: Keep Users on Your Site and Improve Your On-Page SEO at the Same Time

Any blog you’ve read recently, and even the one you’re reading now, likely includes links within the content to other blog posts or portions of the main site. This practice of including internal links in your content has the possibility of keeping someone on your site longer as they click through related posts or services and makes your page more accessible for spiders to crawl, which can help boost your Google ranking. Spiders find new pages by following link paths and storing new URLs that they find in a search engine index. URLs stored in the index can then be displayed when a user searches for something. By using internal links, you make it easier for pages across your site to be indexed, which in turn means that it is easier for your pages to be displayed in SERPs. Another important factor considering internal and external links is juice. Juice is the flow of content that comes from where your links are placed. For example, a law firm’s page may have links to other, more specific legal services that they offer. This helps direct your users’ traffic towards the services you’d like them to see and potentially hire you for. Having a good internal link strategy for optimal link juice flow is a major factor in on-page SEO optimization.

5: Make Sure Your User’s Experience is the Best Possible

It’s easy to get wrapped up in the details and forget to satisfy a users’ needs through your content. Even if you do everything right to rank in Google, if your site is poorly designed or hard to read, users will not stick around. Luckily, there are a few simple steps you can use to make sure that the readability and overall user experience of your page are the best they can be, such as:

Use Well Defined Headings. Breaking your page up into small chunks under relevant headings helps make your page easier to read. Doing so also makes the relevancy of your page immediately apparent. Typically, users don’t read large blocks of text on your page.
Relevant media content. Images and videos about your business can go a long way to keeping a user interested. Relevant media goes a long way towards improving the user experience.
Bolding or italicizing text. Emphasizing keywords using bold or italics HTML tags can quickly draw users’ eyes to the most important information. Doing so also shows users that you have what they’re searching for.
Bulleted lists. Lists (like this one) can be a much more effective way to display information. They’re easier for the user’s eyes to scan compared to a normal paragraph.

Feel Out of Your Depth? Enlist Some Help

Optimizing on-page SEO can be overwhelming, especially if you have no experience with SEO best practices. A professional SEO company can be a huge help and optimize your website to ensure that you rank as well as you deserve. Unlike many other efforts to increase your companies visibility, you can easily track the SEO results through increased traffic to your site and call tracking. It would help if you had every advantage over your competitors possible. In the digital age, SERPs are the number one place you should focus on.