3-Way On Page Optimization
The first step to maximize our website’s probabilities to rank as high as possible in the SERPs for a variety of terms that we have optimized our pages for is to follow some time tested best practises of on page optimization. So without further ado, let’s find below the 3 most important on page factors we must implement every time in order to maximize our websites effectiveness.
Title Tag
Over the years page title tag remains the most important on page factor in order to ensure top SERPS rankings. Study after study clearly shows that in order for our website’s pages to rank as high as possible we must place our most important keywords at the very beginning (or as close to the front as possible) to page’s title tag.
Optimal Format:
Most important Keyword – Second most important Keyword | Brand Name
Best Practices:
Make sure that your title tag length does not exceed 67 characters, as this is the character limit that search engines use to display their search results.
Meta description
While search engines don’t use Meta description as a ranking factor anymore, it’s crucial that we provide a meaningful Meta description for each page that will contain the page’s most important/targeted term-phrase for two very important reasons.
The first reason is that a well-crafted Meta description can increase listing’s CTR (a relevance signal for search engines). The way this will happen is that when a user performs a search using a page’s targeted search term as a query, your page will show in SERPs with your targeted terms bolded both at the title tag and at the Meta description section. As a consequence the bolding effect of part of the title tag and the Meta description text will increase significantly the chances of the user clicking your SERPs listing.
The second reason is that a meaningful Meta description will allow the user to recognize instantly if the page’s content has information relevant to his query (what he is searching for). In this way not only we increase our chances for a click and further engagement to our websites but also we decrease the possibility for a bounce back that will happen almost instantly if a user visits a page and can’t find information relevant to his query.
Optimal Format:
Try to include one-time in your Meta description your most important keyword as well as your second most important keyword.
Best Practises:
Your Meta description length should not exceed the 157 characters, as this is the character limit that search engines use to display their search results.
Content
Content is what the user will come to see to our websites, that’s why high quality (meaningful) content is one of the most important factors that search engines are utilizing when they try to decide in what position to rank each website’s page.
So, the next step in order is to create meaningful content by including in our pages specific elements that will boost each page’s effectiveness when it comes to user satisfaction and SERPs rankings.
The elements that you must take into account are the keyword density (how many times you will include your targeted keywords and variations into page’s content), Heading tags where <h1> defines the most important heading and as a result <h1> must be the first heading that we must include to each page’s content and the third element is the alt tag attribution to be used to each page’s image that contributes both to boost our SEO performance and at the same time to serve users (if image can’t render successfully, then the alternative text will be shown to users).
The best way to automate the above process as much as possible is to use a professional SEO tool like Web SEO Analytics’ Keyword Analyzer Tool in order to analyze the title tag, Meta description and content for each page of a website.