The views of this article are the perspective of the author and may not be reflective of Confessions of the Professions.
We all have to agree that the off-page SEO efforts, such as working on backlinking and social media presence, play a major role in every successful business’s marketing strategy. Although, regardless of whether we agree or not, the fact is that those are the signals Google uses to determine your blog’s authority.
However, attracting traffic to your blog without offering something your customers will find interesting based on your small business analytics will increase your bounce rate and decrease your click-through rate (CTR). Not optimizing your posts on-page will confuse Google since it won’t know what keywords you should be ranked for which means your dream of being ranked high on the search result page will remain in the realm of fancy. So, for your blog to be given a chance to grow its audience, you need to apply a few handy on-page tricks.
Leverage longtail keywords
An average information seeker will rarely type in a single word in Google’s search bar because we are all aware that we would get a very general answer. Unless you are looking for some concrete piece of information, such as the year Brad Pitt was born, you will probably type in two, three or more words. This is where longtail keywords come to play as they are actually phrases consisting of three or more words.
User behavior is not the only reason to choose longtail keywords: single words and two-word phrases such as “hats” and “red hats” are frequently used which means you have greater competition. By opting for a longer and more unique keyword, you will have less competition. An additional tip: if you google a longtail keyword and Quora is ranked high in the search results, that means the competition is low and that you should go for it.
Tend to your URLs
Tidy URLs are essential both from the perspective of the reader and Google – you must have copy/pasted a link to a chat at least once only for it to turn out to be super long and clunky. It takes ages for it to get scrolled over in a small chat window and it can also often happen that users fail to copy the entire URL simply because it is too long.
Users are not the only ones that dislike long URLs: Google will truncate your URL if it has more than 512 pixels so leaving every single preposition or conjunction is not a good strategy. Try to make your URLs as short as you can, without losing their general meaning. Keywords are more than welcome in the URLs from Google’s perspective but even though keywords are crucial, avoid repeating them within URLs because you will end up with a spammy-looking URL structure.
Focus on writing compelling headlines
Click-through rate is an important ranking factor in the ‘eyes’ of Google – but how to get people from all over the world, such as Germany or Hong Kong to click on your blog post? If you want to expand your influence internationally, you need to tend to the one element potential blog readers notice first – the headline. Your headline needs to spark attention and to hook the audience but at the same time leave some of the mystery for the reader to discover while going through the post.
Also, the content must be of quality because sensational headlines that lead to poor content will not help your cause. For a company aiming at international influence, seeking assistance from an experienced SEO company from Hong Kong or another market you wish to expand to is a prudent move. They are familiar with the local users’ tastes and possess valuable SEO knowledge to help you build a reputation abroad.
Incorporate internal links
Previously written texts are often forgotten quickly so they could never get too much exposure. One way of getting your readers to check them out is to link them in your newest piece. What’s important from a reader’s perspective is for this link to make sense so don’t insert random links just because you need to. Make sure you link it with your previous texts that are logically connected and that could offer them a meaningful insight.
For Google to make sense of what your blog post is about and for your blog to become reputable, internal links are vital. Interconnecting your posts will help search engines get a better understanding of the text when they crawl over it and that helps your blog be represented as a reliable source of information. Ideally, you would have 3-4 internal links leading to older posts in your newest post but again, avoid linking just for the sake of linking.
Consider adding snippets
Snippets serve to provide your search engine with additional information and if it is anything we learned about Google and search engines, in general, is that, the better we ‘explain’ something to them, the greater our chances are of being ranked higher.
They can be in the form of a video, paragraph, table, list and are eye-catching for an average internet user. They increase the chances of your link being clicked on by making it more noticeable which in return improves your search rankings. Therefore, optimizing your blog to show up in snippets is a wise strategy.
Over to you
This checklist consists of some of the currently most useful on-page SEO strategies, but as time changes, things which were once a competitive advantage can quickly turn into something which is expected of each blog. This is why you should apply these tactics (at least some) and keep your eyes open towards exciting new opportunities!
