In this article, I’ll share what I believe to be some of the most important on-page factors that you need to check off your SEO checklist for every single webpage on your site:

1. 1. 1. Experience, expertise, authority, and trust
      2. Quality content
      3. Content freshness
      4. Readability
      5. Page experience
      6. Meta tags
      7. Heading tags
      8. Keyword optimization
      9. Image optimization
      10. Video
      11. Alt Text
      12. Schema
      13. Other structured data
      14. Links
      15. SEO insights

   FAQ: If you could only choose 15 on-page SEO tactics, which would you choose?

1. Experience, Expertise, Authority and Trust

If we’re paying attention to Google’s Search Quality Rater Guidelines (SQRG), we know that experience, expertise, authority and trust are essential to a quality website.

Here are some things to consider:

Trustworthiness: Google wants to be sure that the webpage is accurate, honest, safe and reliable. That may look different for different types of websites (ecommerce versus informational) and different types of topics (like “your money or your life” topics).

Experience: This has to do with the first-hand experience about the page topic from the content creator. Google recognizes that experience is valuable to nearly any type of topic (think social media posts, forums discussions) but especially important for things like product reviews.

Expertise: Do you have the right level of skill or knowledge to speak intelligently on a topic? This is yet another key element in how Google assesses the quality of a webpage.

Authoritativeness: The authority factor takes into account the brand or the person’s reputation as a go-to resource. Often, this isn’t as serious as it sounds; in the SQRG, Google gives a couple examples such as “a local business profile page on social media may be the authoritative and trusted source for what is on sale now,” or “the official government page for getting a passport.”

This all boils down to the following questions:

Was your content created with the necessary experience and expertise needed for the topic? Is your website and brand an authority on the topic? Can people trust you?

For more, read:

• The Complete Guide to the Basics of E-E-A-T

2. Quality Content

Writing is an art and science, so there isn’t a definitive guide to what quality content is. But here are a few tips to consider. Do you:

1. Answer the query better than your competition?
2. Consider data from the search results like “People Also Ask” and “Searches related to” in addition to addressing common FAQs?
3. Include original research, data, opinions and images?
4. Fact-check and cite quality, relevant resources?
5. Write with a high degree of accuracy when discussing “Your Money or Your Life” topics?

3. Content Freshness

Not all topics need to have fresh content to be quality (think a page on the American Civil War), but some queries deserve freshness and others need to be maintained to be relevant.

And remember that Google says in its SQRG that unmaintained sites are low quality:

… unmaintained/abandoned “old” websites or unmaintained and inaccurate/misleading content is a reason for a low Page Quality rating.

Everyone wants to create new content, but I recommend spending 50% of the time refreshing old content, too.

For more, read:

• Creating New Content vs. Optimizing Old Webpages: Which Is Better for SEO? [Search Engine Land]
• Steps for Updating Your Website Content

4. Readability

Would the target audience easily understand and relate to your content?

The grade level with which you write your content can make a difference. For example, a scientific topic may be written at a higher grade level than a topic about a hobby.

If you examine the search results, you will begin to see that certain queries create results that are written at a similar grade level.

If you have the right SEO tools (like our WordPress SEO plugin), you can easily see what the average grade level is among the top-ranked websites for a query.

For more, read:

• Want Custom SEO Advice per Keyword? There’s a Plugin for That!

5. Page Experience

Google’s “core web vitals” are elements of a webpage that provide a good user experience.

Core web vitals measure things like how fast the page renders, how responsive it is and ensures things like buttons and links don’t unexpectedly shift, causing someone to click on something they didn’t intend to.

Here’s an overview of the three core web vitals:

Largest Contentful Paint (LCP) measures how fast the largest image or text block renders on a webpage. Google recommends that it happens within the first 2.5 seconds of when the page first starts loading.

First Input Delay (FID) measures interactivity – how quickly a webpage loads and executes so that the user can interact with the page. Google wants pages to have an FID of 100 milliseconds or less.

Cumulative Layout Shift (CLS) measures visual stability on a webpage, and pages need to maintain a CLS of 0.1. or less.

Each of these core web vitals has specific thresholds that your webpages must meet at least 75% of the time.

Core web vitals are signals in Google’s page experience algorithm update. To stay competitive, website owners need to work on these technical factors.

For more, see:

• Core Web Vitals for SEO: An Overview
• 3 Expert Tips to Improve Core Web Vitals [On-demand Webinar]

6. Meta Tags

Meta tags may seem like a small thing in the grand scheme of SEO, but they serve an important role.

When done right, meta tags help:

• Search engines determine the topic of your webpage
• Drive clicks and organic search traffic
• Avoid duplicate content issues

So what do you need to consider when it comes to these tags?

• Always include an original title tag and meta description tag for every page.
• Make sure the tags are properly configured in the head section of the page (it’s less likely this would be an issue when using a CMS).
• Write compelling copy that informs a search engine user and entices them to click from the search results to your webpage.
• Include the most important keyword(s) in the right order – but do not keyword stuff or make it sound unnatural.
• Consider the length, taking into account best practices and also research that suggests title tags between 40 to 60 characters have the highest CTR.
• Know that Google can and will rewrite titles and meta descriptions to make them more relevant, according to Google. This can be frustrating but remember that is only a rendering issue (what the user sees). The actual tag remains the same. Here is a possible solution to that if you want more control.

For more, read:

• What Are Meta Tags? Why Are They Important to SEO? How Do You Create Them?

7. Heading Tags

The heading tags make up the “table of contents” for a webpage.

Heading tags help search engines and website visitors easily distinguish between a main section and the subsections on the page, and how those sections relate to one another.

Heading tags are categorized as H1, H2, H3, H4, H5, etc. H1 represents the title of the topic, and subsequent headings represent subsections.

Here are some tips:

• The sequence of heading tags (H1, H2, H3, H4, H5, H6) should be used in a hierarchy (think of it as an outline of a research paper).
• An H1 heading tag always correlates to the main topic of the page.
• I don’t recommend having more than one H1 tag on a page in most cases (definitely not on informational webpages, but maybe OK on main navigational pages in some cases).
• Subsequent sections after the H1 default to an H2 tag.
• You can have more than one H2 tag.
• If an H2 section has subsections underneath that, they would start with H3 tag, and so on.
• You can create subsections all the way to H6.

For more, see:

• What Are Heading Tags and Why Are They Important to SEO?

8. Keyword Optimization

Keyword optimization is one of those touchy subjects in SEO.

People either believe you should intentionally optimize a webpage or do nothing and let the content speak for itself.

I am a firm believer that the content is naturally optimized when you write it well, but that you can always tweak it with keywords to make improvements to relevancy.

Consider this scenario: A person searches on Google for a topic that you have written about on your website. Next, Google determines which webpages to serve in the search results.

Let’s also say that all else was equal between your webpage and your next competitor (meaning you both did all the right things well from an SEO perspective, and you both had quality content).

But you made sure the exact queries/keywords that the person used to search showed up on your page – and all the relevant related words as well – and your competition didn’t.

Do you think you might have a better chance of ranking on top than the competition?

I think so.

For more, read:

• How a WordPress SEO Plugin Can Help You Optimize Your Content with Keywords

9. Image Optimization

Google wants to rank pages that have not only great text, but also great images. This represents more opportunities for more traffic.

Through the images on your webpage, people can find your site in a Google Images search, the traditional Google Search results, or Google Discover.

I recommend you read “How to Improve Google Image Search Ranking” for more details on 17 ways you can use images in your SEO, including:

1. Track your image-based traffic
2. Create high-quality, original content
3. Use relevant images
4. Have a proper file format
5. Optimize your images
6. Aways create alt text
7. Make use of the image title
8. Create an image caption
9. Use a descriptive file name
10. Implement structured data
11. Consider image placement on the page
12. Analyze the content around the image
13. Be careful with embedded text
14. Create page metadata
15. Ensure fast load time
16. Make sure images are accessible
17. Create an image sitemap

10. Video

A large percentage of Google searches produce YouTube videos in the search results.

Searches for information that fall under the categories of how-to, tutorials, and reviews often trigger YouTube video results in Google.

In addition, YouTube is a search engine itself, and represents another way for people to find your content and your business.

So including video in your SEO program in most cases means you will create and optimize videos in YouTube.

Here’s a few things to know:

• If you are targeting queries/keywords that often produce video results, make sure you have video for those queries as well.
• Employ various YouTube SEO tactics to rank well in YouTube and the Google Search results.

But you should also put video content on key webpages of your own site, and this can be an embedded video that you created somewhere else, for example, from YouTube.

This is because videos on your webpages can help:

• Further explain a concept to people who would rather watch than read
• Keep people engaged on a page longer
• Influence buying decisions

For more, read:

• A CMO’s Guide to YouTube SEO in Less Than 5 Minutes
• How to Optimize Images, Videos and Other Media Content for SEO

11. Alt Text

Alt text is a best practice, but it’s often overlooked and misunderstood. Google highlights the importance of alt text for the vision impaired, but it goes further than that.

The American with Disabilities Act says your site should be compliant for the visually impaired. And if you don’t have an accessible site, you could find yourself in court.

In 2021, a judge found Domino’s Pizza violated ADA, Title III, by having a website that was not usable by the plaintiff – a blind man.

Other organizations are pushing for web accessibility, too. The W3C Web Accessibility Initiative (WAI) is working to develop guidelines and resources to help make the Web accessible to people with disabilities.

Does alt text influence rankings? This has been a debatable point. But regardless of what side you are on, being a good web citizen means making your site accessible – at least doing the bare minimum.

12. Schema

Structured data markup using Schema.org guidelines clarifies to the search engine what a page is about, and also enhances listings in the search results, which can lead to more clicks.

This can be a bit technical, so many website publishers opt out. However, for the less techy bunch, Google’s Structured Data Markup Helper can be of assistance.

For more, read:

• How to Use Schema Markup to Improve Your Website Visibility in Search

13. Other Structured Data

This category of on-page optimization is all about how you format the information on a page.

Content formatting can enhance the user experience and help search engines better understand the content. This includes things like:

• Table of contents at the top (especially with anchor links)
• TL;DR (“too long, didn’t read”) summary near the top of your article
• Headings that contain a key term or question, followed by the answer in body text
• Breadcrumb navigation
• HTML tables
• Bulleted lists
• Ordered lists

14. Links

When it comes to page links, you want to consider the following:

Make sure they are fully qualified. An absolute link is a link that contains the whole URL of the file you are linking to. A relative link is only part of a full URL. There are arguments for and against both. While absolute links may take more work upfront, they are easier to maintain in the long run.

Make sure they are optimized. Make sure URLs on the page are descriptive and contain keywords.

Make sure you are virtual siloing. SEO siloing is a way to organize your website content through links based on the way people search for your site’s topics and can make your content more relevant for a search. For more, check out: SEO Siloing: What, Why, How.

Make sure you mind your outbound links. Your outbound links impact user experience and SEO. On the user experience side, the sites you link to can provide value to your website visitors. On the SEO front, if you link to quality sites in your field, then search engines may deem your site higher quality by association (and the opposite can be true when linking to low-quality or spammy sites). For more, see: What Are Outbound Links? Why Are They Important? And How Do They Work?

15. SEO Insights

OK, so this one is technically not an on-page “factor.”

But without the right SEO tools to help you uncover how to optimize your pages to meet or exceed what the competition is doing, you’re largely shooting in the dark.

One tool I must recommend is our Single Page Analyzer from the SEOToolSet®. This tool allows you to analyze a webpage (your competitor’s or your own) to uncover key SEO data.

People use the tool to:

• Better the meta tags on a page
• Adjust the reading level of the content
• Improve keyword density
• Find optimization opportunities
• Further research the competition

For more, read:

• Free SEO Tool Alert! On-Page Content Analyzer

So there you have it: My list of 15 of the most impactful SEO factors when optimizing webpages. Do these right and you have a better chance of ranking on page one of the search results out of millions of results.

Our SEO experts can help you implement these on-page SEO factors to improve your website performance and win more traffic. Reach out to us for a free consultation.

FAQ: If you could only choose 15 on-page SEO tactics, which would you choose?

1. Experience, Expertise, Authority, and Trust (E-E-A-T): Align your content with your expertise and showcase authority in your industry. Building trust with users and search engines is paramount for ranking success.
2. Quality Content: Create valuable, engaging, and original content that addresses users’ needs and queries better than your competitors. Incorporate relevant data and research to support your claims.
3. Content Freshness: While not all topics require constant updates, regularly refreshing your content shows search engines that your website is up-to-date and relevant.
4. Readability: Write in a clear and concise manner, catering to your target audience’s reading level. A user-friendly, easily digestible format enhances the user experience.
5. Page Experience: Prioritize user experience by focusing on Core Web Vitals, ensuring your pages load fast, and avoiding unexpected layout shifts.
6. Meta Tags: Craft compelling and accurate meta titles and descriptions that entice users to click through to your website from search results.
7. Heading Tags: Organize your content using proper heading tags (H1, H2, H3, etc.) to create a logical structure that search engines can understand.
8. Keyword Optimization: Integrate relevant keywords naturally throughout your content to improve relevancy for search queries.
9. Image Optimization: Optimize images with descriptive alt text and proper file names to improve accessibility and enhance the user experience.
10. Video: Utilize video content to engage users, provide valuable information, and potentially rank in both traditional search results and YouTube searches.
11. Schema: Implement structured data markup using Schema.org guidelines to provide context to search engines and enhance your listings in search results.
12. Other Structured Data: Use content formatting techniques like tables, TL;DR summaries, and breadcrumb navigation to improve user experience and content understanding.
13. Links: Optimize internal and external links for relevancy and descriptive anchor text. Virtual siloing can improve content organization and boost relevance for specific searches.
14. Alt Text: Provide informative alt text for images, not only for visually impaired users but also to enhance search engine understanding of your content.
15. SEO Insights: Use reliable SEO tools to gain valuable insights into your webpage’s performance and identify optimization opportunities for better search rankings.

Mastering these 15 on-page SEO tactics will empower you to create a strong foundation for your website’s search engine visibility. By combining technical expertise with user-focused content, you can significantly improve your chances of ranking higher in search results and attracting valuable organic traffic.

The post 15 of the Most Important On-Page SEO Tactics appeared first on Bruce Clay, Inc..

What does it take to beat a giant? Sometimes trying to fight your way up the ranks of search results may feel like an impossible battle. No matter how much you improve your site, establish quality connections, and wait patiently, those giant sites above you simply will not budge.

If you’re a David going up against a Goliath, there’s still hope. Let’s go over an SEO strategy that can keep your content alive on page one of the search results when you are competing against the big guys.

I’ll be covering 9 simple steps to help ensure victory:

• Use SEO tools
• Identify your competition
• Structure your site
• Rethink your keywords
• Improve your webpages
• Structure your pages
• Get more, better, or the same links
• Get more SERP visibility
• More quality content
• FAQ: How can I develop a winning SEO strategy to overcome larger competitors and achieve top search rankings?

1. Use SEO Tools

You can’t analyze the competition effectively without tools. So, as you go into battle, the first step is to have a good arsenal of weapons. Here is a list of SEO tools that can help you perform many different functions as you gather intel on the competitors:

• SEOToolSet®
• SEOToolSet’s free SEO tools
• Bruce Clay SEO WP plugin
• Ahrefs
• Semrush
• Majestic

It’s amazing how much of an opponent’s SEO strategy you can see in an instant with the right tools.

2. Identify Your Competition

Competitive research strengthens any marketing project, but for search engine optimization, you can’t do without it.

The sites that are the most relevant, trustworthy, and high-quality for a given user’s search query and perceived intent rank the highest. So what better way to find out what the search engines want than to look at the victors?

You may think that only businesses offering the same service, product, or information you do should qualify as true competitors. But in the search engine results pages, those first-page results are all competing to take your place — no matter what type of website. And so far, they may be winning!

Learn more:

• How to Do Competitor Research for SEO

3. Structure Your Site

You may find that all your big competition has invested in their website structure. But in some cases, they may not have. Either way, examine how their navigation and content are structured, looking for what may be missing on your own site and/or how your site can do better.

SEO siloing is a strategy well worth investing in. This search engine optimization technique structures a website’s content by grouping related webpages together in hierarchical categories based on how people search.

Search engines like Google promote organizing your site in a hierarchical structure like this because it’s not only helpful for search engines but also good for website visitors.

Learn more:

• What Is SEO Siloing?
• 5 Times When SEO Siloing Can Make or Break Your Search Engine Rankings

4. Rethink Your Keywords

If there are certain keywords that are dominated by big websites (with big budgets) in the search results and you’re simply no match, rethink the strategy. Going after the longer keyword phrases often levels out the playing field.

Long-tail keywords can actually drive a lot of traffic. Ahrefs published some interesting data on the opportunities that lie within long-tail search terms that are worth looking at.

If you are an ecommerce site, you can add supporting articles that target long-tail keyword phrases. For example, if your business sells frozen yogurt dispensers, write articles about things that fro-yo shops might find helpful like how to install a frozen yogurt dispenser.

This will have the double SEO benefit of increasing your relevance for the main keyword and potentially ranking for some long-tail phrases that will bring new traffic to your site.

You can find other opportunities to beat the competition through keywords too. Say, for example, your competition has just lost rankings for a particular keyword (which you can discover with tools like Semrush’s Organic Research tool). You can analyze those webpages and see how you might beat them with your content.

Another question to ask yourself: Why are they searching for or wanting that information? If searching for “SEO,” for example, consider related queries like “how to get traffic to your website.”

Think about why that searcher cared enough to do the search — why did that search matter?

5. Improve Your Webpages

To be least imperfect compared to your competition, you want to analyze the competition’s webpages and then make sure your page meets or exceeds them. Using the right tools, on-page optimization information is easily attainable. For example:

• Find out ranges for word count targets, metadata targets and readability targets for your webpages based on the top-ranking pages for the keywords in real time by using the Bruce Clay SEO WP plugin.
• Find out how the competition optimizes their webpage with keywords by using our Single Page Analyzer (or free version here). See what words and phrases are repeated and included in the important page elements like the meta data and headings. Seeing these on-page keywords should give you a good picture of how focused the page is on your targeted keyword phrase.
• Take it a step further and use the Bruce Clay WP SEO plugin to help you optimize your webpages well with your keywords.
• What about structured data markup? When implemented on your webpages, it can help them be more relevant for a search and enhance the way your webpage snippet shows up in the search results, which can increase click-through rate.

Learn more:

• SEO Should Beat the Competition, Not the Algorithm
• Want Customized SEO Advice per Keyword? There’s a Plugin for That!
• How a WordPress SEO Plugin Can Help You Optimize Your Content with Keywords
• The Always Up-to-Date SEO Checklist

6. Structure Your Pages

In some cases, you might find yourself competing in the search results with things like Wikipedia entries or featured snippets (position zero). In these cases, structuring your webpage content can help you compete.

Just some of the ways you can structure a page include using:

• HTML tables
• Bulleted lists
• Ordered lists
• Table of contents at the top
• Headings that contain a key term or question, followed by the answer in body text
• TL;DR (“too long, didn’t read”) summary near the top of your article

For featured snippets in particular, you can use the Featured Snippets+ tool to find out more data on how to optimize the page for your keyword.

If you’re competing against Wikipedia pages, you might get an edge if you take the subject matter a step further than they do. Cover the subject equally well, including the structure of the page, but add “how” content to give it a boost. Wikipedia is good at answering the who, what, and when, but rarely addresses the how.

7. Get More, Better, or the Same Links

Spying on your competition’s link profile can help you uncover what links and how many of them you might need to beat a certain webpage.

You can use tools like our Link Reports (powered by Majestic) to discover more about your competitors’ link profiles.

Once you have a good picture of the links to their webpage versus yours, you might think about identifying the quality, relevant domains linking to your competition from whom you want a link from too.

Remember that quality and relevance can trump the quantity of links, so use discretion when sizing up the domains.

8. Get More SERP Visibility

If you have a whole-SERP SEO strategy, you can stop worrying about beating just the 10 blue links.

A whole-SERP SEO strategy analyzes the features that show up most in the search results for target keywords and then optimizes for them. Features can be anything from videos to images to featured snippets and beyond.

The more real estate you own on the search results page, the less concerned you can be about beating that one blue link. And the more traffic you can drive too.

Learn more:

• What Is a Whole-SERP SEO Strategy?

9. More Quality Content

If you and your competitor both provide the exact same product or service, and they are more authoritative and established than you, you’ll need a lot of original content to have a chance of competing online.

But it’s doable! If you are in ecommerce, for example, it can be as easy as replacing generic product descriptions from manufacturers with unique content. Or, if you can’t avoid them contractually, supplement them with lots of original text.

Take a look at more opportunities to create content by doing a gap analysis, too. You can use Ahrefs Content Gap tool to find out which keywords your competition is ranking for that you’re not.

You’ll also want to poke around the competition’s website to see if it offers any helpful content that you don’t — for example, tutorials, guides, videos, etc. You’ll probably need to make your site at least as full-featured to be competitive. More user engagement can mean a lot of things to Google.

Some of your competition may simply have more E-E-A-T (Google’s evaluation of a website’s or webpage’s experience, expertise, authoritativeness, and trustworthiness). While these kinds of sites may have tremendous clout in the search results, you can increase the E-E-A-T of your site and its content to compete.

Learn more:

• Complete Guide to the Fundamentals of Google’s E-E-A-T

Pre-Battle Pep Talk

As you head into battle and watch your competitors’ maneuvers, you’ll find out their strengths and weaknesses (and yours too!). Capitalize on them to develop an SEO battle plan to do what they do, only better.

I invite you to request a free consultation if you’d like to discuss how we can help with your website needs.

FAQ: How can I develop a winning SEO strategy to overcome larger competitors and achieve top search rankings?

Conquering search engine rankings presents a formidable challenge, especially when faced with larger competitors. However, adopting a strategic approach and embracing your brand’s distinct advantages can pave the way for SEO success.

Understanding the Playing Field

Before diving into the tactical aspects, it’s crucial to understand your competitors’ SEO strategies comprehensively. Analyze their keywords, content quality, backlink profiles, and user experience. This assessment provides valuable insights into what’s working for them and where their opportunities lie.

Unearthing Your Unique Value Proposition

Identify your unique value proposition (UVP) to stand out from the crowd. What sets your brand apart? Whether it’s exceptional customer service, niche expertise, or innovative products, emphasizing your UVP attracts users and appeals to search algorithms seeking relevance and authenticity.

Targeted Keyword Research and Content Optimization

Keywords remain the backbone of SEO. Conduct meticulous keyword research to pinpoint terms relevant to your business. Focus on long-tail keywords that reflect user intent. Craft high-quality, informative content around these keywords, ensuring it’s engaging, well-structured, and easily shareable.

Building a Robust Backlink Profile

A strong backlink profile establishes your website’s authority and credibility. Cultivate backlinks from reputable sources within your industry. Collaborate with influencers, create shareable infographics, or produce insightful guest posts. Quality over quantity is key, as search engines prioritize authoritative links.

Technical Excellence and User Experience

Technical SEO is the backbone of your strategy. Ensure your website loads swiftly, is mobile-responsive and has clear site navigation. User experience (UX) is equally crucial—deliver a seamless journey for visitors, from easy-to-follow content to intuitive calls to action.

Step-by-Step Procedure: Crafting an SEO Strategy to Outperform Competitors

1. Competitor Analysis: Thoroughly research and analyze the SEO strategies of your competitors to identify their strengths and weaknesses.
2. Identify UVP: Determine your unique value proposition that will differentiate your brand and resonate with your target audience.
3. Keyword Research: Conduct extensive keyword research to discover high-potential keywords aligned with your offerings.
4. Content Creation: Develop high-quality, relevant, and informative content around your chosen keywords.
5. On-Page Optimization: Optimize your content for on-page SEO factors, including title tags, meta descriptions, headers, and keyword placement.
6. Backlink Strategy: Build a diverse and authoritative backlink profile through ethical means such as guest posting, influencer collaborations, and content partnerships.
7. Technical SEO Audit: Perform a technical SEO audit to address site speed, mobile-friendliness, and indexability issues.
8. User Experience Enhancement: Improve user experience by ensuring intuitive navigation, easy-to-use interface, and quick-loading pages.
9. Content Promotion: Share your content across social media platforms and relevant online communities to increase visibility.
10. Local SEO Optimization: If applicable, optimize your business for local searches by creating a Google My Business profile and garnering local reviews.
11. Regular Content Updates: Keep your website fresh and relevant by consistently updating and adding new content.
12. Monitor Analytics: Continuously track your website’s performance using tools like Google Analytics and Search Console.
13. Adapt and Refine: Analyze the results of your strategy and make necessary adjustments based on the performance data.
14. Mobile Optimization: Ensure your website is fully optimized for mobile devices to cater to a growing mobile user base.
15. Voice Search Optimization: With the rise of voice assistants, optimize your content for voice search queries.
16. Schema Markup Implementation: Use schema markup to enhance the visibility of your website in search results.
17. Social Signals: Engage with your audience on social media platforms to generate social signals that can indirectly influence SEO.
18. Continuous Learning: Stay updated with the latest SEO trends and algorithm changes to adapt your strategy accordingly.
19. Patience and Persistence: SEO results take time, so remain patient and persistent in your efforts.
20. Regular Audits: Conduct periodic audits to ensure your strategy remains effective and aligned with your goals.

By following this comprehensive guide, you’ll be well-equipped to develop an SEO strategy that competes with larger rivals and positions your brand for top search rankings and sustained success.

The post How to Beat the Giants in the Search Results in 9 Simple Steps appeared first on Bruce Clay, Inc..

Heading tags. They seem like a small little detail on your webpage, but they can have a big impact on how users and search engines understand your webpage content.

Many website publishers inadvertently get this wrong. In this article, I’ll explain:

• What are heading tags
• Why are heading tags important to SEO
• How to set up heading tags
• The do’s and don’ts of heading tags
• FAQ: How do heading tags contribute to optimizing webpage content for better SEO?

What Are Heading Tags?

Heading tags are HTML code on a webpage that, when applied properly to title and subtitle text, help distinguish the parts of a webpage and tie ideas together. Using heading tags can help search engines and website visitors easily distinguish between a main section and a subsection on the page and how those sections relate to one another.

In a nutshell, you can think of heading tags as a way to set up the table of contents on a webpage.

So what do heading tags actually look like? There are different levels, namely H1, H2, H3, H4, H5 and H6. In HTML code, it would look like this for an H1:

<h1>Example Heading</h1>

Your website readers see the heading tags rendered as different-sized headings on the page. (Technical note: Each heading level’s font and size attributes are specified in your website theme or CSS.)

For example, for the article “What Is SEO Training?,” you can see the H1 tag on the code side of the page here:

And when you look at the webpage, that H1 tag serves as the title for the webpage:

For another example, the H1 of this article appears at the top: ”What Are Heading Tags and Why Are They Important?” The next section — the one you are reading right now — starts with an H2 tag and reads: “What Are Heading Tags?”

Note about “title”: The H1 heading functions like a title for readers. So in WordPress, the text box where you type in the H1 heading at the top of the editor window has the label “Add title.”

However, don’t be confused. The page’s title tag (also known as the SEO title or the meta title) is a separate element, and you enter it elsewhere in the WP editor. (You can read more about title tags in our article: What Are Meta Tags?)

Why Are Heading Tags Important to SEO?

Search engines crawl webpages to understand better what they are about. One of the ways we can help search engines better understand the content on a webpage is through heading tags.

If you consider that heading tags act as a table of contents for a webpage, then you can see how scanning the heading tags on the page could quickly help the search engine know what the webpage is about.

Of course, search engines are always getting better at understanding webpage content. So heading tags alone do not make or break a webpage’s rankings.

However, many of the same principles that search engines were built on long ago for crawling and understanding web documents still apply today. Heading tags are a simple way to help them do their job.

Google advises using heading tags strategically. Google’s Search Engine Optimization (SEO) Starter Guide, it recommends heading tags as a way to emphasize your main topics and how they’re organized on the page:

Use meaningful headings to indicate important topics, and help create a hierarchical structure for your content, making it easier for users to navigate through your document. … Imagine you’re writing an outline … Similar to writing an outline for a large paper, put some thought into what the main points and sub-points of the content on the page will be and decide where to use heading tags appropriately.

Not only that but heading tags help you structure a webpage so that it is more primed for being selected as a featured snippet (also known as position zero). You can read more about that in our article: 3 Surprising On-Page SEO Techniques You May Not Know About

Finally, think about your website as a whole, like a book. Each webpage contributes to that book. Each webpage has a main topic (the H1), and contributes to a section (or chapter) of the website.

This concept is useful when thinking about organizing your entire site into a clear theme with a good hierarchy. You can learn more about that here: SEO Siloing: What, Why, How

How to Set Up Heading Tags

You want to set up your webpage so that both search engines and users can read it with ease and easily connect the dots on the topic you are writing about. Heading tags help you do that.

They create visual markers so that a reader knows, “Yes, this is a subsection about XYZ of the main topic.” For search engines, headers help them better understand the topic because the webpage is more organized. The benefit for SEO is increased relevance for searches.

The sequence of heading tags H1, H2, H3, H4, H5, H6 should be used in order to create a hierarchy. You can create subsections all the way to H6, but we typically don’t see webpages that go beyond the H4 tag as a practical matter.

An H1 heading tag should always correlate to the main topic of the page. Subsequent sections default to an H2 tag. You can have more than one H2 tag, but it’s not common to have more than one H1 tag, which represents the main topic of the page.

Further, if an H2 section has subsections underneath that, they would start with H3 tag, and so on. Confused yet?

To further illustrate, here is an example of a fictional article on how to make homemade cat food. The heading tags coincide with the main topic, its subsections, and the subsections of those subsections:

How to Make Homemade Cat Food (H1 tag)
Choosing Cat Food Ingredients (H2 tag)
Raw versus Cooked (H3 tag)
Choosing a Meat (H3 tag)
Poultry (H4 tag)
Rabbit (H4 tag)
Beef (H4 tag)
Supplements (H3 tag)
Fish Oil (H4 tag)
Safflower Oil (H4 tag)
Flax Oil (H4 tag)
Putting It All Together (H2 tag)
Top 5 Cat Food Recipes (H3 tag)
Final Thoughts on Making Homemade Cat Food (H2)

Be sure to use important keywords in your heading tags, whether H1, H2, or H3 or so on. This can strengthen the relevance of the webpage for a search query.

The Do’s and Don’ts of Heading Tags

Finally, here’s a handy list of do’s and don’ts when it comes to heading tags:

• Do include an H1 on every webpage. Each webpage should have at least one heading tag because every webpage has a main topic.
• Do use heading tags in hierarchical order on a webpage. This keeps web content organized and easy to understand.
• Do make sure each heading tag is unique, concise, and compelling to the reader.
• Do include important keywords in your heading tags, especially the H1.
• Don’t use excessive headings. Too many can dilute the theme of the page. Use them strategically as a table of contents instead.
• Don’t put buttons or navigation links into heading tags.
• Don’t use headings as a way to style text that isn’t an appropriate header. If you simply want the formatting of the webpage to change, use CSS instead. Also, don’t use headings when bolding the text might do instead.

Now that you know what a heading tag is and why it’s important to SEO, take stock of your webpages. Are they set up to maximize the value of heading tags?

There’s a lot more to know about optimizing webpages for SEO, so check out our SEO Guide to keep the learning going.

If you could use expert assistance with your SEO projects, I invite you to contact us for a free consultation today.

FAQ: How do heading tags contribute to optimizing webpage content for better SEO?

Heading tags are pivotal in optimizing webpage content for better SEO outcomes. The HTML tags H1-6 serve as markers to demonstrate the hierarchy of your content, with H1 being the highest and H6 being the lowest importance levels, respectively. This hierarchy not only assists in visually organizing content but also signals to search engines the significance of each section.

Search engines utilize heading tags to grasp the context and relevance of your content. Properly utilizing heading tags helps search engine crawlers understand your content’s main ideas, leading to improved indexing and potentially higher search rankings. It’s essential to align your heading tags with the content’s semantic structure, incorporating relevant keywords to enhance search engine visibility.

For instance, optimizing a blog post about “Healthy Meal Planning,” employing an H1 tag for the main title, “Your Guide to Healthy Meal Planning,” signals its importance to search engines. Subsequent sections, such as “Benefits of Balanced Nutrition” and “Weekly Meal Prep Tips,” can use H2 and H3 tags, respectively. This coherent structure not only aids readers in navigating the content but also assists search engines in comprehending its organization.

To make the most of heading tags, prioritize user experience alongside SEO. Visually, well-formatted headings break down content into digestible sections, making it easier for readers to scan and engage with your material. Moreover, headings enhance accessibility for all users, including those relying on screen readers. Search engines value user-friendly experiences, so ensuring your headings are meaningful and descriptive benefits your audience and your SEO efforts.

Heading tags are a fundamental aspect of optimizing webpage content for improved SEO. They establish a clear content hierarchy, aiding readers and search engines to comprehend the context and significance of different sections. Using appropriate heading tags and incorporating relevant keywords can enhance your website’s search engine visibility and provide a more enjoyable user experience.

Step-by-Step Procedure: How to Optimize Webpage Content Using Heading Tags for Better SEO

1. Understand the Hierarchy: Familiarize yourself with HTML heading tags from H1 to H6 and their corresponding hierarchical significance.
2. Keyword Research: Identify relevant keywords for your webpage content that align with user search intent.
3. Main Title Optimization: Use an H1 tag for the main title of your content, incorporating a primary keyword to emphasize its relevance.
4. Subheading Structuring: Employ H2 and H3 tags for subheadings, breaking down content into meaningful sections related to your main topic and using relevant keywords.
5. Content Organization: Ensure a logical flow of content under each heading, maintaining coherence and relevance.
6. Keyword Incorporation: Integrate chosen keywords naturally into heading tags and content, enhancing the SEO value.
7. Avoid Overuse: Use heading tags judiciously; avoid overloading content with excessive headings.
8. Semantic Structure: Align heading tags with the semantic structure of your content, making it easy for search engines to understand.
9. Visual Formatting: Implement CSS to style heading tags for improved readability and visual appeal.
10. Accessibility Consideration: Craft descriptive and meaningful headings for all users, including those with disabilities.
11. Mobile Responsiveness: Ensure heading tags maintain their effectiveness and formatting on mobile devices.
12. Regular Review: Periodically assess and update heading tags to reflect content changes and evolving keyword strategies.
13. Avoid Keyword Stuffing: Prioritize content quality over keyword density; avoid stuffing headings with keywords.
14. Consistency in Styling: Maintain consistent formatting and styling for all heading tags throughout the content.
15. Header Tag Skip Navigation: Implement skip navigation for assistive technology users to jump directly to the main content.
16. Testing and Validation: Validate your webpage’s HTML to ensure proper usage of heading tags and troubleshoot any issues.
17. User Experience Testing: Evaluate the content’s readability and user experience, making improvements as necessary.
18. Monitor SEO Performance: Keep track of search engine rankings and organic traffic to assess the impact of heading tag optimization.
19. Adapt and Evolve: Stay updated with SEO trends and algorithm changes to adjust your heading tag strategy accordingly.
20. Continuous Improvement: Regularly analyze and refine your heading tag approach based on user engagement and SEO outcomes.

By following these steps, you can harness the potential of heading tags to optimize your webpage content for better SEO, enhancing both search engine visibility and user experience.

The post What Are Heading Tags and Why Are They Important to SEO? appeared first on Bruce Clay, Inc..

Let’s take a closer look at what meta tags are, why they are important, and how to create effective content for them. In this article:

• What are meta tags
• Why are meta tags important
• How do you create meta tags
• FAQ: How can I use Meta Tags in SEO to improve my website’s visibility?

What Are Meta Tags?

Meta tags are pieces of code on a webpage that describe what the webpage is about.

Meta tags, sometimes referred to as metadata, include the title tag, meta description tag, and the keywords tag (although the meta keywords tag is now rarely used) and a few others.

Meta tags live in the “head” section of a webpage, positioned at the top of the webpage on the code side.

Meta tags serve as the basis for the listing on a Google search results page. (The search engines reserve the right to modify how your webpage listing looks in search results … but more on that in a bit.)

Here is an example of what meta tags look like in action, first in the HTML code, then in Google search results:

Screenshot of HTML code for BruceClay.com homepage

Search engine results listing for the BruceClay.com homepage

Why Are Meta Tags Important to SEO?

Meta tags serve a key role in search engine optimization, including:

• Helping the search engines determine the topic of your webpage
• Helping people understand the contents of your webpage
• Avoiding duplicate content issues
• Driving clicks and organic search traffic

Topic: Google itself describes meta tags as a good way to help search engines and users understand a webpage’s content. Meta tags tell search engines what a webpage is about. Search engines use that information to help determine the webpage’s relevance to a query.

According to a study by Backlinko, most organic result titles on Google’s first page contain keywords that are an exact or partial match of that search.

First impressions: The content in meta tags is the first impression that potential visitors have of your website in the search results. If they are crafted well, users should be compelled to click.

Duplicate content: Meta tags are often the first line of defense for duplicate content. If your title tags are the same across many webpages, for example, Google will choose the best webpage among them and filter others from the results. And that webpage may or may not be the one you want to show in the search results.

Clicks and traffic: As mentioned, the right meta data can increase clicks and traffic to your site. According to research by Backlinko, simple tweaks to meta tags can increase clicks. For example, using a question in the title tag increased click through rate by 14%. And pages with meta descriptions received nearly 6% more clicks than those without.

How Do You Create Meta Tags

To create meta tags, you need to ensure the code is properly formatted on the webpage. Then you need to write a clear and compelling description of what the webpage is about. Finally, optimize meta tags with target keywords.

Head Section Configuration

The first thing you want to do is configure the head section properly on the webpage.

If you’re strictly using HTML code, then you will need to be sure you’re organizing it right. If you’re using a CMS, it should place the head section in the right order, but you should always double-check.

The proper setup of meta tags in the head section is:

• Title tag
• Meta description tag
• Meta keywords tag

Even though major search engines claim they do not factor the meta keywords tag into their algorithms, it is valid HTML. For example, it may be useful guidance for writers or others involved with the creation or editing of content.

And besides, just because search engines say it is not used does not mean it isn’t used. That means that it is OK to include it as long as it is not spammed. But most do not use it.

The Title Tag

Title tags serve as the “headline” for your webpage in the search results. So it should help the search engine and user understand what the main theme of the page is about.

Page titles are visible in the search results. They also show at the top of any given webpage in the browser tab. They offer an opportunity to feature your most relevant keywords front and center.

Search engine snippet showing title tag for the BruceClay.com homepage

The title tag should:

• Appeal to the reader, and address their reason for searching
• Be written in headline format: short and matching what searchers are looking for
• Be unique for every page on your website to avoid duplicate content issues
• Have about 9 words but within the range of 6 to 12

Google will cut off (or truncate) a title displayed in search results after roughly 60 to 70 characters, including spaces (a bit longer on mobile), so keep it within that length unless you have a specific optimization reason to do otherwise.

To see how your title may appear in search results, you can use Moz’s title tag preview tool:

Moz’s preview tool shows how Google search results may cut off a long title tag.

General recommendations aside, a more accurate way to get the right title tag length is to use our SEO plugin for WordPress. Our SEO plugin analyzes the top-ranked pages for your keywords. Then it recommends the exact range you should target for your meta data.

Summary tab in the Bruce Clay SEO WP plugin showing meta data targets

Meta titles should always include the most important keywords you are targeting on the page. This, of course, helps the search engine know you are a match for a particular search query.

… algorithms analyze the content of webpages to assess whether the page contains information that might be relevant to what you are looking for.

The most basic signal that information is relevant is when a webpage contains the same keywords as your search query. If those keywords appear on the page, or if they appear in the headings or body of the text, the information is more likely to be relevant.

–Google, How Search Works

Keyword optimization tips:

• Put your targeted keywords towards the beginning of the title. Place the most significant keywords first, followed by the other keywords in order of importance if there’s space. Do not repeat any keyword more than once.
• Make sure when you optimize to not compromise the actual content. You want it to sound natural and not forced.
• You may want to include the company name in your title tag. If your brand is established and trusted, consider putting it in front of your keywords. If you’re still trying to build your brand, consider putting it at the end of the title tag. One study showed that at least for shopping-related searches, 82% chose familiar brands from the search results regardless of where they ranked.

The Meta Description Tag

The meta description tag offers an opportunity to summarize what the page is about. It allows search engines to determine the topic of a given page and properly index that page. It also helps people figure out if the webpage has what they are looking for.

Search engine snippet showing meta description for the BruceClay.com homepage

Google has stated that it does not use meta description tags for ranking. Personally, I have heard it spun a few ways, and I find it difficult to believe them all.

The description may not be a significant or influential ranking factor, but that does not mean it is not used. If it shows in the Google SERP, then I think it helps. Later, I highlighted a quote where Google says these tags are important.

But descriptions do impact click-through rates, an important part of SEO. When a keyword in the description matches the query, it will be highlighted in bold in the search results. This signals to searchers that the webpage has what they’re looking for. And this can increase click-throughs.

The meta description tag should be:

• Written in complete sentences
• A clear and enticing description of what the person and search engine can expect to find on the page
• Unique for every page of your website (Again, this is for duplicate content issues. Large sites can still create unique descriptions programmatically; see Google’s recommendations here.)
• Approximately 24 words or 160 characters with spaces.

Once again, you can use our plugin to determine the length for the meta description based on what is normal among the top-ranked pages in the search results. Plus, another useful feature in our SEO plugin is the ability to detect duplicate content at the meta tags level. Read more about how to get rid of duplicate content in WordPress  with our SEO plugin.

Keyword optimization tips:

• Include important keywords at the beginning.
• Try to include all the high-priority keywords within the first 156 characters to be safe.
• Repeat keywords and keyword phrases a maximum of two times in the meta description.
• Combine keywords and phrases whenever possible.

A Note about Autogenerated Snippets

Sometimes meta tags may not render in the search results exactly how you have them. That’s because Google sometimes pulls alternative content from the page to display in the results that it believes is more relevant.

With regards to title tags, Google explains:

If we’ve detected that a particular result has … issues with its title, we may try to generate an improved title from anchors, on-page text, or other sources. However, sometimes even pages with well-formulated, concise, descriptive titles will end up with different titles in our search results to better indicate their relevance to the query. There’s a simple reason for this: the title tag as specified by a webmaster is limited to being static, fixed regardless of the query.

When we know the user’s query, we can often find alternative text from a page that better explains why that result is relevant. Using this alternative text as a title helps the user, and it also can help your site. Users are scanning for their query terms or other signs of relevance in the results, and a title that is tailored for the query can increase the chances that they will click through.

And when it comes to descriptions, Google says:

Description meta tags are important because Google might use them as snippets for your pages. Note that we say “might” because Google may choose to use a relevant section of your page’s visible text if it does a good job of matching up with a user’s query. Adding description meta tags to each of your pages is always a good practice in case Google cannot find a good selection of text to use in the snippet.

If you’ve put a lot of thought into your meta tags, and you don’t want Google overriding them, there is something you can do. You can prevent Google from generating a snippet of its own in the search results or indicate the max length of the snippet.

There is something you can do to take control of your snippets. As per Google:

You can, alternatively, either prevent snippets from being created and shown for your site in Search results, or let Google know about the maximum lengths that you want your snippets to be. Use the nosnippet meta tag to prevent Google from displaying a snippet for your page in Search results, or use the max-snippet:[number] meta tag to specify the maximum length for your result snippets. You can also prevent certain parts of the page text content from being shown in a snippet by using data-nosnippet.

In Closing

Meta tags aren’t all there is to ranking. But they are a simple way to help you decrease duplicate content and increase clicks and traffic. Simply put, this is one area of a webpage that should get as much attention as the rest of the content on the page.

For more search engine optimization help, see our famous SEO Guide. If you’re a WordPress user, we invite you to try the Bruce Clay SEO Plugin today.

FAQ: How can I use Meta Tags in SEO to improve my website’s visibility?

Meta tags can be divided into various categories, with title tags being one of the most vital components. Not only are title tags used to inform search engines about topics being covered, but they can also act as clickable links in search results pages. Crafting a concise and keyword-rich title tag is paramount for attracting users to your website.

The meta description tag provides a brief summary of your webpage’s content. It’s an opportunity to entice users with a compelling snippet, encouraging them to click through to your site. Utilize this space wisely by including relevant keywords and creating compelling descriptions that spark curiosity.

While the meta keywords tag has lost much of its influence in SEO due to abuse by spammers, it’s still prudent to include relevant keywords within it. However, focus more on the content and context of your page rather than stuffing this tag with keywords.

Beyond these core meta tags, other specialized meta tags can further enhance your website’s SEO. Open Graph tags, for instance, improve how your content appears when shared on social media platforms, boosting its visibility and click-through rate on social channels.

Incorporating schema markup, another type of meta tag, can help search engines better understand your content’s context. This can lead to rich snippets in search results, significantly increasing click-through rates.

Meta tags remain a vital aspect of SEO, providing search engines valuable information about your website’s content. By optimizing your title and meta description tags and strategically using other meta tags like Open Graph and schema markup, you can enhance your website’s visibility and ultimately drive more organic traffic.

Step-by-Step Procedure:

1. Identify key web pages you would like to optimize using meta tags.
2. Research relevant keywords for each page, considering their search volume and relevance to your content.
3. Craft a unique and keyword-rich title tag for each page, ensuring it accurately represents the content.
4. Write compelling meta descriptions for these pages, summarizing the content and encouraging clicks.
5. Avoid duplicate title and meta description tags, ensuring each page has unique tags.
6. Implement Open Graph tags for your website, customizing how your content appears when shared on social media.
7. Utilize schema markup to provide additional context to search engines about your content.
8. Regularly monitor your website’s performance in search results using tools like Google Analytics and Search Console.
9. Analyze the click-through rates and user engagement metrics for pages with optimized meta tags.
10. Continuously update and refine your meta tags based on user behavior and search engine ranking fluctuations.
11. Stay up-to-date with SEO trends and algorithm changes to adapt your meta tag strategy accordingly.
12. Experiment with different title and meta description variations to find what resonates best with your target audience.
13. Avoid keyword stuffing in meta tags; focus on providing valuable and relevant information.
14. Share your content on social media platforms to leverage the benefits of Open Graph tags.
15. Encourage user-generated content and reviews, leading to rich snippets in search results.
16. Seek professional SEO assistance if needed to ensure optimal meta tag optimization.
17. Conduct regular SEO audits to identify and address any issues with your meta tags.
18. Test and optimize your website’s mobile-friendliness, which can also affect your SEO performance.
19. Consider user experience and site speed improvements to complement your SEO efforts.
20. Monitor and adapt your meta tag strategy over time to stay competitive in the ever-changing SEO landscape.

The post What Are Meta Tags? Why Are They Important to SEO? How Do You Create Them? appeared first on Bruce Clay, Inc..

You and your website are in a serious relationship — even if you don’t know it. And relationships are work. Every move you make on your site has an impact on its rankings and your business. So you owe it to your website to be fully engaged.

Although many websites are feeling the impact of COVID-19 on their traffic, there are other reasons sites aren’t getting organic traffic. Here’s what you can do about it.

• You’re just not that into it
• Something’s “off” with your off-page
• You need a tissue for your server issues
• You’re overthinking RankBrain
• Your E-E-A-T is real
• FAQ: How does off-page SEO impact website rankings, and what should I look out for?

1. You’re Just Not That Into It

Are you “casually” doing on-page SEO? Here’s a reality check: You don’t have to go all-in, but you do have to be least imperfect compared with the competition.

There are lots of things you can do to improve on-page SEO (content is No. 1, but we’ll discuss that later). But here are some things you should do every time:

• Image and video optimization. See how to improve Google Image Search ranking for everything you need to know. And don’t forget video optimization, too.
• Externalize JavaScript & CSS. The first thing search engines should crawl is keyword-rich content, not unnecessary lines of code. Doing this step can also speed up page load time, help rankings significantly, and save crawl budget.
• Title tags: Yes, titles are still critical for ranking, but many still get them wrong. For the latest recommendations, check out our post on foundational SEO strategies.

2. Something’s “Off” with Your Off-Page

Something’s not quite right with your off-page SEO, and you may or may not know it. This can negatively impact your rankings.

• Links: If links to your site are not trusted, then your site won’t be, either. I’ll even go so far as to say that the sites that link to the site that is linking to you matter, So it’s our responsibility to know and validate those networks. And the sites you link to must be likewise trusted — linking out to an untrusted site, even with a “nofollow”, could harm your perceived trust.
• Sentiment: It’s my belief that brand sentiment (including reviews and social media) is a primary indicator of trustworthiness. This is why sentiment analysis is now part of SEO success. (This ties into E-E-A-T, which I’ll touch on later.) While trust is not an algorithm ranking factor, it is still important for search engines to present trusted resources. If trust matters at all, and we know it does, then this is critical. There is more on trust below.

3. You Need a Tissue for Your Server Issues

SEO 101: Identify and resolve server issues quickly. Use a server tool like ours or check out Google’s tools to identify things like server error codes. And don’t forget to set up a custom 404 error page. (Got a Microsoft IIS server? See this post.)

And if you are not running with HTTP/2, you have really missed the speed boat. Do this now if not already done (free test here).

4. You’re Overthinking RankBrain

When Google said its AI-powered RankBrain was among the top three signals in its algorithm, people got confused. There are no specific RankBrain SEO ranking factors, per se. In many cases, it’s business as usual.

But business “as usual” doesn’t mean “do nothing.” RankBrain is a search result relevant to steroids.

Its purpose is to better understand the meaning of content and the intent behind a search query. For a query, RankBrain determines if users click on shopping or informational sites more and then biases the results towards those preferred types of sites. In other words, it has become difficult for a shopping site to rank for an informational query. Once RankBrain better understands intent, it can apply the Google algorithm signals that deserve the most weight for that query.

That said, content is still the primary focus. Understanding the intent behind queries and delivering on that with our content is critical. Looking at our content from not just a page level but a site level is mandatory.

5. Your E-E-A-T is Beat

Experience, expertise, authoritativeness, and trustworthiness (E-E-A-T). Four words that have big implications for how Google assesses and IMO ranks our websites.

Google is not shy about giving clues on how it assesses E-E-A-T, but much of it is still misunderstood. What we do know is that content and trust are integral. Here are some things to know …

Content

• Know your audience. Ask: What content will delight people and keep them coming back to your site?

Creating compelling and useful content will likely influence your website more than any of the other factors discussed here. Users know good content when they see it and will likely want to direct other users to it. This could be through blog posts, social media services, email, forums, or other means. Organic or word-of-mouth buzz is what helps build your site’s reputation with both users and Google, and it rarely comes without quality content.

–Google’s Search Engine Optimization (SEO) Starter Guide

• Keep it fresh. Review your site from time to time to ensure that the content is up to date. Remember, Google says unmaintained content is one way to rank low on the E-E-A-T scale.
• Organize it. There’s nothing Google loves more than an organized website with quality content. That’s why site architecture is so important
• Make it authoritative. There are two different levels of quality that Google looks at related to authority: 1) The content itself has to be written well, and 2) The content needs to be written or reviewed by experts on the matter.

Expertise and authoritativeness of a site increases its quality. Be sure that content on your site is created or edited by people with expertise in the topic. For example, providing expert or experienced sources can help users understand articles’ expertise. Representing well-established consensus in pages on scientific topics is a good practice if such consensus exists.

–Google’s Search Engine Optimization (SEO) Starter Guide

Trust

What does it mean to have a trustworthy site? In its SEO Starter Guide, Google opines:

Users feel comfortable visiting your site if they feel that it’s trustworthy. A site with a good reputation is trustworthy. Cultivate a reputation for expertise and trustworthiness in a specific area.

Provide information about who publishes your site, provides the content, and its goals. Shopping and other financial transaction websites should have clear and satisfying customer service information to help users resolve issues. News sites should provide clear information about who is responsible for the content.

Using appropriate technologies is also important. If a shopping checkout page doesn’t have a secure connection, users cannot trust the site.

Each of those recommendations gives us clues into how to build a trustworthy site and brand — be an expert both online and offline, focus on customer service and accountability, and ensure transactions are protected.

As mentioned earlier, there are other things at play, too. Like brand sentiment. Brand sentiment can help Google understand what kind of business you are, beyond just what you say you are. For more, read about sentiment as a trust signal.

Last Thoughts

These five main categories — on-page, off-page, server level, RankBrain influence, and E-E-A-T — cover most of what we do in SEO.

If you would like help pinpointing how to improve your site’s rankings and traffic, contact us for a quote. An SEO Audit or other SEO services could provide the guidance you’ve been missing.

FAQ: How does off-page SEO impact website rankings, and what should I look out for?

Understanding how off-page SEO impacts website rankings is essential for any digital marketer or website owner looking to increase their online visibility.

The Basics of Off-Page SEO

Off-page SEO refers to all the activities that take place outside your website but directly impact its performance in search results. These activities include backlink building, social media engagement, online reputation management, and content marketing. Search engines like Google consider these external factors as indicators of a website’s authority, credibility, and relevance.

Social Signals and Brand Building

Social media has become a significant player in off-page SEO. Your social presence and engagement can indirectly affect your website’s rankings. Search engines use social signals such as shares, likes, and comments to determine the relevance of content. A strong social media presence will not only increase SEO rankings but also your online reputation.

Online Reputation Management

Managing your online reputation is crucial for off-page SEO. Negative reviews and unfavorable mentions can harm your website’s credibility. Monitor your online presence regularly and address any negative feedback promptly. Encourage customers to submit positive testimonials and reviews; doing so can strengthen your website’s credibility by way of increased online reviews.

Content Marketing and Guest Posting

Off-page SEO involves creating high-quality, informative, and shareable content. Guest posting on reputable niche websites will showcase it and give you valuable links; make sure that its value aligns with that of your audience.

Off-page optimization is an integral component of digital marketing and can have a substantial effect on website rankings. By prioritizing quality backlinks and cultivating social media presence, off-page SEO can improve website performance on search engine result pages and ultimately boost its performance overall. For long-term success in SEO, be mindful of off-page SEO practices, adapt to industry trends quickly, and prioritize quality over quantity.

Step-by-Step Procedure: How to Leverage Off-Page SEO for Better Website Rankings

1. Understand the concept of off-page SEO and its importance in website rankings.
2. Find out how backlinks affect search engine rankings and the importance of off-page SEO.
3. Sort out high-quality links from low-quality ones.
4. Discover how to get organic backlinks that are of high quality for your website.
5. Discover the significance of social signals and their influence on SEO.
6. Establish an engaging online presence relevant to your niche.
7. Create a plan for building your brand online in order to enhance its online reputation.
8. Monitor your online reputation and promptly address any negative feedback or reviews.
9. Encourage satisfied customers to leave positive reviews and testimonials.
10. Embrace content marketing as a fundamental element of off-page SEO.
11. Create high-quality and informative content that engages your target audience effectively.
12. Explore opportunities for guest posting on reputable websites in your industry.
13. Identify websites that accept guest posts and align with your niche.
14. Craft compelling guest post pitches and content that provide value to readers.
15. Leverage guest posting to earn backlinks and increase your website’s visibility.
16. Stay updated with the latest trends and best practices in off-page SEO.
17. Regularly assess your off-page SEO efforts and adjust your strategy as needed.
18. Prioritize quality over quantity in all your off-page SEO activities.
19. Measure the impact of your off-page SEO efforts on your website’s rankings.
20. Continuously refine your off-page SEO strategy to achieve sustained improvement in search engine rankings.

This article was updated on December 21, 2023.  

The post 5 Reasons You’re Not Ranking Right Now and What To Do Instead appeared first on Bruce Clay, Inc..

• How much content is required per page
• How much content do YOU need to optimize your specific webpage
• How to look at competitors’ pages to help you optimize your own
• How to check that your webpage content hits the mark
• FAQ: What tools can help me analyze and enhance my webpage’s SEO optimization?

SEO content optimization: You must optimize your content, or it will not rank well in search engines. To do that takes some understanding of SEO, the set of practices and methodologies that help the search engine see your webpage as worthy of ranking. Content is often written for impact on users and not to meet search engine needs, and although you impress yourself, few people may see your pages if they don’t rank.

Optimizing website content is not going to happen by accident. Show care in getting the proper message to both the user and search engines.

If you’re ready to launch some new content, read on to learn how to optimize your website content to be found in search engines. Two free tools make this easier, as they help you measure your on-page content compared to what is natural among competitors.

If you ONLY write it, they will not come!

How Many Keywords Per Page?

In general, write each webpage around one primary keyword phrase and up to two secondary keyword phrases.

Focused content yields stronger keyword relevance. It also satisfies visitors because the page delivers what they searched for.

Site-wide, you may have hundreds or thousands of active keywords assigned to different pages. Your keyword list can grow as your website grows, as long as you have enough content to support your relevance to each keyword.

Always be careful not to overuse, or “stuff,” keywords on a page. As we stressed in Step 5, write for users naturally and go for quality.

Just also incorporate keywords and related words strategically throughout the page (as explained in the previous step). This helps search engines identify what your page is worthy of ranking for.

2. How Much Content is “Enough” for a Keyword?

To rank for a keyword, how much text do you need per page? And how many pages do you need?

Well, the answer varies. Each page needs enough original text content to compete. The right amount will depend on what’s normal for that keyword.

For example, if all the top-ranking pages have 1000 words, then you’ll also need at least 1000 words of text.

Competition aside, here are some general SEO recommendations for page length:

• Research pages: 500 to 600 words minimum per page
• Ecommerce pages: 300 words minimum (shopping pages tend to have lots of product pictures)
• Blog posts:​ 200 words minimum per post, but probably much more

As for how many pages will establish your relevance, you’ll need to match your competitors’ amount of content about that keyword.

The next sections give you an idea of what to expect.

Non-competitive keywords don’t require as much content.

Non-competitive keywords generally aren’t searched a lot. One relevant, high-quality content page about the keyword might be enough to rank if the keyword falls within your overall site themes.

Competitive keywords are tougher battles.

You’ll need a landing page and subpages for competitive keywords to support your site’s subject relevance. Here are brief descriptions:

• Landing pages are where you want people to “land” when they come from a SERP. A landing page should offer keyword-focused content. It should give ​searchers what they expected to find ​and provide a good first impression of your site.
• Subpages link to/from the landing page and support its subject relevance. A subpage can be a blog post, article, video, or other that contains detailed, related content. (You’ll learn SEO tips for site architecture in Step 12 of this guide.)

Brand terms and your brand’s main keywords might be easier to rank for.

Some keywords naturally appear across many pages, strengthening your relevance site-wide.

For example, our website is packed with resources on “search marketing” and “SEO.” Our main service descriptions and our brand name, “Bruce Clay” appear on almost every page.

Even though your site naturally uses your brand and main keywords throughout, each term still needs its focused landing page. That way, the search engine knows where to send searchers looking for you by name.

Compare Keyword Usage on Competing Pages

As you’re writing the title, meta description, and other elements critical to your webpage optimization, you may find it helpful to compare what your top competitors have written.

Use our free SEO Multi-Page Information tool. You’ll be able to read the all-important title tag, meta tags, and H1 heading tag for many pages all at once, as well as whether the page has a rel=”canonical” tag.

Simply enter up to 6 URLs (one per line) and click Get Data below.

SEO Tool: SEO Multi-Page Information Tool

Test Your Webpage Optimization

The most popular search engine optimization tool in our entire SEOToolSet® is our Single Page Analyzer, which lists the top keywords plus a whole lot more. The free version below, provided for you as an essential part of this SEO Guide, shows a small fraction of that tool’s power.

Running the Single Page Analyzer shows you the density for your keywords in the various categories: title, meta description, meta keywords, image alt attributes, heading levels, first 200 words, and total body copy. It also analyzes the reading level and other metrics, so make sure those are appropriate for the audience you’re targeting.

Following our specified SEO web page optimization methodology, you can review these reports to see what you need to change or add to your pages. SEOs often run this tool several times as they test and adjust their web page’s optimization. The Single Page Analyzer reports show red to indicate a value that is too low and blue for a value that’s abnormally high, based on SEO best practices.

Enter the specific URL of your web page and click Run Page Analyzer.

SEO Tool: Single Page Analyzer

Placing keywords in the right spots with natural and reasonable frequency is critical for search engine optimization, but there is much more. You want your content to be the best it can be, and then just maybe you will be considered relevant. Expert content always does better than rambling text with randomly inserted keywords. Yes, you need the keywords, but you also need to make your content worthy.

If your content is not worthy, it does not belong on your website — fix it or remove it.

Now that you know how to optimize website content for SEO, next you’ll find out how to submit your site and help search engines find your web pages faster so your freshly optimized website content can be indexed.

Next Lesson

Need more SEO tips?
Read more about how to avoid Keyword Stuffing

Related blog posts and articles:

• What Makes a Webpage Quality?
• The SEO Copywriting Checklist
• Why Page Titles Matter

FAQ: What tools can help me analyze and enhance my webpage’s SEO optimization?

Utilizing the right SEO optimization tools can significantly impact your webpage’s success. These tools offer indispensable insights into your website’s performance and provide actionable steps for improvement.

Understanding SEO Optimization Tools

SEO optimization tools are instrumental in understanding how your webpage fares in the digital arena. Google Analytics is an invaluable tool that enables you to monitor key metrics such as organic traffic and bounce rates on your website, giving a comprehensive snapshot of its performance and helping identify any areas requiring attention.

Mastering Keyword Research

Keywords are the foundation of SEO, and tools like SEMrush and Ahrefs empower you to conduct comprehensive keyword research. By identifying relevant keywords with high search volumes and low competition, you can tailor your content to align with user intent. This strategic approach enhances your chances of ranking higher in search engine results pages.

Unveiling Competitor Analysis

Analyzing your competitors is a crucial aspect of SEO strategy. Tools like Moz and SpyFu enable you to dissect your competitors’ websites, revealing their top-performing keywords, backlinks, and overall SEO strategies. This insight allows you to adapt and refine your approach, staying ahead in the digital race.

Optimizing On-Page Elements

Ensuring that your webpage’s on-page elements are optimized is essential for SEO success. Tools like Yoast SEO offer real-time analysis and suggestions for improving your content’s readability, keyword usage, and meta descriptions. This hands-on guidance empowers you to create web pages that appeal to search engines and provide value to your audience.

Monitoring Backlinks and Technical Health

Quality backlinks and a healthy website structure are pivotal for SEO optimization. Tools such as Majestic and Screaming Frog aid in monitoring your website’s backlink profile and technical health. These insights enable you to identify and rectify broken links, ensure mobile-friendliness, and enhance the overall user experience.

Step-by-Step Procedure: Analyzing and Enhancing SEO Optimization

1. Start with Google Analytics to understand your webpage’s current performance.
2. Employ SEMrush or Ahrefs for comprehensive keyword research.
3. Use Moz or SpyFu to analyze your competitors’ strategies and identify opportunities.
4. Integrate Yoast SEO to optimize on-page content and improve readability.
5. Leverage tools like Majestic and Screaming Frog to monitor backlinks and technical aspects.
6. Identify high-performing keywords and incorporate them naturally into your content.
7. Create compelling meta descriptions that encourage click-throughs.
8. Ensure a mobile-responsive design for a seamless user experience.
9. Regularly update and refresh your content to keep it relevant and engaging.
10. Build quality backlinks from reputable sources within your industry.
11. Collaborate with influencers or websites for guest posting opportunities.
12. Monitor your website’s loading speed and make necessary optimizations.
13. Implement schema markup to enhance the visibility of your content in search results.
14. Use social media platforms to promote your content and engage with your audience.
15. Regularly review and update your website’s internal linking structure.
16. Monitor your website’s security and implement SSL certification.
17. Utilize Google Search Console to identify and fix any technical issues.
18. Monitor the effectiveness of your SEO efforts using various tools and metrics.
19. Stay updated with the latest SEO trends and algorithm changes.
20. Continuously refine your strategy based on data-driven insights for sustained SEO success.

By following these steps and leveraging the power of SEO optimization tools, you can take your webpage’s visibility and performance to new heights.

The post How to Optimize Website Content for SEO appeared first on Bruce Clay, Inc..