![\"SEO](\"https:\/\/www.bruceclay.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2023\/06\/15-on-page-factors-800.jpg\")
\nIf you could only choose 15 on-page SEO tactics, which would you choose?<\/p>\n
\nIf you could only choose 15 on-page SEO tactics, which would you choose?<\/p>\n
In this article, I\u2019ll share what I believe to be some of the most important on-page factors that you need to check off your SEO checklist<\/a> for every single webpage<\/em> on your site:<\/p>\n FAQ: If you could only choose 15 on-page SEO tactics, which would you choose?<\/a><\/strong><\/li>\n<\/ol>\n If we\u2019re paying attention to Google\u2019s Search Quality Rater Guidelines<\/a> (SQRG), we know that experience, expertise, authority and trust are essential to a quality website.<\/p>\n Here are some things to consider:<\/p>\n Trustworthiness<\/strong>: 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 \u201cyour money or your life\u201d topics).<\/p>\n Experience<\/strong>: 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<\/a>.<\/p>\n Expertise<\/strong>: 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.<\/p>\n Authoritativeness<\/strong>: The authority factor takes into account the brand or the person\u2019s reputation as a go-to resource. Often, this isn\u2019t as serious as it sounds; in the SQRG, Google gives a couple examples such as \u201ca local business profile page on social media may be the authoritative and trusted source for what is on sale now,\u201d or \u201cthe official government page for getting a passport.\u201d<\/p>\n This all boils down to the following questions:<\/p>\n 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?<\/p>\n For more, read:<\/p>\n Writing is an art and science, so there isn\u2019t a definitive guide to what quality content is. But here are a few tips to consider. Do you:<\/p>\n Not all topics need to have fresh content to be quality (think a page on the American Civil War), but some queries deserve freshness<\/a> and others need to be maintained to be relevant.<\/p>\n And remember that Google says in its SQRG that unmaintained sites are low quality:<\/p>\n \u2026 unmaintained\/abandoned \u201cold\u201d websites or unmaintained and inaccurate\/misleading content is a reason for a low Page Quality rating.<\/em><\/p><\/blockquote>\n Everyone wants to create new content, but I recommend spending 50% of the time refreshing old content, too.<\/p>\n For more, read:<\/p>\n Would the target audience easily understand and relate to your content?<\/p>\n 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.<\/p>\n If you examine the search results, you will begin to see that certain queries create results that are written at a similar grade level.<\/p>\n If you have the right SEO tools (like our WordPress SEO plugin<\/a>), you can easily see what the average grade level is among the top-ranked websites for a query.<\/p>\n For more, read:<\/p>\n Google\u2019s \u201ccore web vitals\u201d are elements of a webpage that provide a good user experience.<\/p>\n Core web vitals measure things like how fast the page renders, how responsive it is and ensures things like buttons and links don\u2019t unexpectedly shift, causing someone to click on something they didn\u2019t intend to.<\/p>\n Here\u2019s an overview of the three core web vitals:<\/p>\n Largest Contentful Paint (LCP)<\/a> 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.<\/p>\n First Input Delay (FID)<\/a> measures interactivity \u2013 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.<\/p>\n Cumulative Layout Shift (CLS)<\/a> measures visual stability on a webpage, and pages need to maintain a CLS of 0.1. or less.<\/p>\n Each of these core web vitals has specific thresholds that your webpages must meet at least 75% of the time.<\/p>\n Core web vitals are signals in Google\u2019s page experience algorithm update<\/a>. To stay competitive, website owners need to work on these technical factors.<\/p>\n For more, see:<\/p>\n Meta tags may seem like a small thing in the grand scheme of SEO, but they serve an important role.<\/p>\n When done right, meta tags help:<\/p>\n So what do you need to consider when it comes to these tags?<\/p>\n For more, read:<\/p>\n The heading tags make up the \u201ctable of contents\u201d for a webpage.<\/p>\n 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.<\/p>\n Heading tags are categorized as H1, H2, H3, H4, H5, etc. H1 represents the title of the topic, and subsequent headings represent subsections.<\/p>\n Here are some tips:<\/p>\n For more, see:<\/p>\n Keyword optimization is one of those touchy subjects in SEO.<\/p>\n People either believe you should intentionally optimize a webpage or do nothing and let the content speak for itself.<\/p>\n 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.<\/p>\n 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.<\/p>\n Let\u2019s 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).<\/p>\n But you made sure the exact queries\/keywords that the person used to search showed up on your page \u2013 and all the relevant related words as well \u2013 and your competition didn\u2019t.<\/p>\n Do you think you might have a better chance of ranking on top than the competition?<\/p>\n I think so.<\/p>\n For more, read:<\/p>\n Google wants to rank pages that have not only great text, but also great images. This represents more opportunities for more traffic.<\/p>\n Through the images on your webpage, people can find your site in a Google Images search, the traditional Google Search results, or Google Discover<\/a>.<\/p>\n I recommend you read \u201cHow to Improve Google Image Search Ranking<\/a>\u201d for more details on 17 ways you can use images in your SEO, including:<\/p>\n A large percentage of Google searches produce YouTube videos in the search results.<\/p>\n Searches for information that fall under the categories of how-to, tutorials, and reviews often trigger YouTube video results in Google.<\/p>\n In addition, YouTube is a search engine itself, and represents another way for people to find your content and your business.<\/p>\n So including video in your SEO program in most cases means you will create and optimize videos in YouTube.<\/p>\n Here\u2019s a few things to know:<\/p>\n 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.<\/p>\n This is because videos on your webpages can help:<\/p>\n For more, read:<\/p>\n Alt text is a best practice, but it\u2019s often overlooked and misunderstood. Google highlights the importance of alt text<\/a> for the vision impaired, but it goes further than that.<\/p>\n The American with Disabilities Act says your site should be compliant<\/a> for the visually impaired. And if you don\u2019t have an accessible site, you could find yourself in court.<\/p>\n In 2021, a judge found Domino\u2019s Pizza violated ADA<\/a>, Title III, by having a website that was not usable by the plaintiff \u2013 a blind man.<\/p>\n Other organizations are pushing for web accessibility, too. The W3C Web Accessibility Initiative (WAI)<\/a> is working to develop guidelines<\/a> and resources<\/a> to help make the Web accessible to people with disabilities.<\/p>\n 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 \u2013 at least doing the bare minimum. 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.<\/p>\n This can be a bit technical, so many website publishers opt out. However, for the less techy bunch, Google\u2019s Structured Data Markup Helper<\/a> can be of assistance.<\/p>\n For more, read:<\/p>\n This category of on-page optimization is all about how you format the information on a page.<\/p>\n Content formatting can enhance the user experience and help search engines better understand the content. This includes things like:<\/p>\n When it comes to page links, you want to consider the following:<\/p>\n Make sure they are fully qualified<\/strong>. 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.<\/p>\n Make sure they are optimized<\/strong>. Make sure URLs on the page are descriptive and contain keywords.<\/p>\n Make sure you are virtual siloing<\/strong>. SEO siloing is a way to organize your website content through links based on the way people search for your site\u2019s topics and can make your content more relevant for a search. For more, check out: SEO Siloing: What, Why, How<\/a>.<\/p>\n Make sure you mind your outbound links<\/strong>. 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?<\/a> OK, so this one is technically not an on-page \u201cfactor.\u201d<\/p>\n 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\u2019re largely shooting in the dark.<\/p>\n One tool I must recommend is our Single Page Analyzer<\/a> from the SEOToolSet<\/a>\u00ae. This tool allows you to analyze a webpage (your competitor\u2019s or your own) to uncover key SEO data.<\/p>\n People use the tool to:<\/p>\n For more, read:<\/p>\n 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.<\/p>\n 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<\/a> for a free consultation.<\/em><\/strong><\/p>\n 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.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" Here\u2019s a short list of what we believe to be some of the most important on-page SEO tactics you should focus on.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":35,"featured_media":193331,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"content-type":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[4],"tags":[1379,1474,1475,1232,1477,1476],"acf":[],"yoast_head":"\n
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1. Experience, Expertise, Authority and Trust<\/h2>\n
![\"Google\u2019s](\"https:\/\/www.bruceclay.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2023\/06\/SQRG-TOC.png\")
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2. Quality Content<\/h2>\n
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3. Content Freshness<\/h2>\n
![\"A](\"https:\/\/www.bruceclay.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2023\/06\/american-civil-war-history.png\")
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4. Readability<\/h2>\n
![\"Bruce](\"https:\/\/www.bruceclay.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2023\/06\/BC-plugin-summary-tab.png\")
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5. Page Experience<\/h2>\n
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6. Meta Tags<\/h2>\n
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7. Heading Tags<\/h2>\n
![\"Screenshot](\"https:\/\/www.bruceclay.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2023\/06\/BC-webpage-html-heading-tag.png\")
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8. Keyword Optimization<\/h2>\n
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9. Image Optimization<\/h2>\n
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![\"Adding](\"https:\/\/www.bruceclay.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2023\/06\/WP-image-details.png\")
10. Video<\/h2>\n
![\"Google](\"https:\/\/www.bruceclay.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2023\/06\/position-0-how-to-tie-shoe.png\")
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11. Alt Text<\/h2>\n
![\"Text](\"https:\/\/www.bruceclay.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2023\/06\/web-dev-text-alternatives.png\")
\n<\/a><\/p>\n12. Schema<\/h2>\n
![\"Restaurant](\"https:\/\/www.bruceclay.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2023\/06\/restaurant-type.png\")
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13. Other Structured Data<\/h2>\n
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14. Links<\/h2>\n
\n<\/a><\/p>\n15. SEO Insights<\/h2>\n
![\"Single](\"https:\/\/www.bruceclay.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2023\/06\/seotoolset-single-page-analyzer.jpg\")
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<\/a>FAQ: If you could only choose 15 on-page SEO tactics, which would you choose?<\/h3>\n
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