This article will look at the factors that affect on-page and off-page SEO and how these can impact your search engine rankings.
Search engine optimization (SEO) is a great addition to any online marketing effort. Implementing it carefully and properly can lead to amazing results, with a higher search engine ranking turning into an increase in traffic (website visitors) and, subsequently,sales.
Of course, it goes without saying that the best place to be when someone is looking for the types of products, services, or information you offer is at the top of their search results.
That is what SEO is all about.
Let’s look at the factors that can affect on-page and off-page SEO and how these may impact your search engine rankings.
Factors Affecting On-Page SEO
“On-Page SEO” refers to the activities you can carry out on your website to influence search engines. On-page SEO is entirely in your control.
1. Title Tags.
You will need this on every page of your website, as this will show the search engines and your visitors what the page is about. It should be less than 70 words and include the keyword or key phrase that you want to rank for.
2. Meta descriptions.
This is not always needed and is often ignored by the search engines. However, you can use it to explain in more detail what the webpage is about. Include the keyword or phrase within this description too.
3. Sub-headings.
These make your content easier to read as they can break up long pieces of writing, plus they can help improve your search engine rankings. They are the ideal opportunity to add additional keywords and key phrases into your content and shows the search engines that you believe them to be important to your content.
4. Internal links.
This technique can be powerful and possibly strong enough to rank individual pages on your website without any external (off-page) SEO. Just put a link in your smaller articles to a longer, more authoritative piece of content. This helps the longer content to rank higher.
Think of your site as a web (hence the term WEBsite) everything links to somewhere else making the framework stronger.
5. Image names and ALT tags.
Each image uploaded on your website should have a name that includes your chosen keyword. When indexing the page, the search engines may rank these images when people search for that particular keyword. The ALT tags tell search engines what the image is about so keywords are useful here too.
6. Over-optimizing.
When creating the content for your website, it’s important not to over-optimize the content. This means that it will benefit you to use the main keyword sparingly while including related keywords and phrases. You may be able to rank highly for these other keywords as well. So research your keyword synonyms thoroughly. ANd most importantly make sure it reads well. An article or page stuffed with keywords tends to look robotic and can be off-putting to visitors.
7. Mobile-friendly.
These days, most searches and social media traffic will come from mobile devices. So, it’s important that your website works properly on mobile. If your website isn’t mobile-friendly, this will impact your user experience, and therefore your ranking signals, negatively.
8. Security.
Search engines can give preference to more secure sites. So it is essential that you install an SSL certificate to show search engines that you take your visitors privacy/security very seriously. It will also give visitors confidence in your business.
Factors Affecting Off-Page SEO
Off-Page SEO relates to activities that typically happen away from your site but lead back to your pages.
Trust.
Trust has become an important ranking factor. It shows the search engines that what you say is accurate and that visitors can trust your content. To develop trust, build high-quality backlinks from other trusted sources and ensure that your content is high quality and accurate.
Backlinks.
Most SEO experts gain backlinks by building relationships with other websites. It’s crucial to avoid spamming your links or building them too quickly. This could result in your website becoming de-indexed, which is essentially being banned from the search engines.
Social signals.
According to some SEO experts, getting likes and shares from social media may have an impact on your search engine rankings. So, it makes sense to create the most valuable content you can and share it with your own social media accounts, where others can like and share it too.
Now that you know what on-page and off-page factors affect your SEO efforts, you can make any necessary changes to your website, leading to a boost in rankings and sales.
Just remember that SEO takes time to work.
It won’t happen overnight and may take many months for you to see the fruits of your labor. However, the effort is totally worth it once you’re consistently getting targeted traffic from the search engines, and, better yet, the sales that come with it!
Until next time
NBSkinner
PS. If you want to get a headstart on your site’s SEO, download my FREE SEO Action Plan Checklist just right click on the image below.
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