Creating Onsite SEO is one of the most important steps to take when you want to boost the amount of traffic to your website. Here are four tips to get the job done.
1 — Internal linking
Including internal links on your website can be a great way to boost rankings. They also can improve user experience and navigation. Although it is relatively simple, it can be difficult to get started as you need a backlog of material to link directly. After you've hammered out 10 blogs for your website, that is the perfect time to start finding creative ways to start linking those blogs together to create a more robust onsite experience for your visitors.
To start with, you may be asking yourself, "what is internal linking?". This process is an important part your site architecture. It helps Google understand your site's structure and hierarchy and creates "handshakes" between your various articles and blog pages that keep your audience diving further and further into your website. It also greatly enhances search engines ability to discover content on your website. But its key functionality and most valuable result is that it encourages users to spend more time on your website, click around, and explore. The more time people spend on your site, the more likely they are to convert into customers. People spending more time on your website also will help boost your websites score as Google and other search engines notice the amount of time that people are spending on your website and will boost your ranking and relevance in searches for your keywords.
A great way to maximize the efficacy of internal links is to use descriptive anchor text to maximize the benefits of your internal linking. The anchor text should be relevant and related to the content that you are linking to. It should also have the reader’s journey in mind. A basic example of a good internal link is to provide a link on the homepage to your contact page through a button or hyperlinked text. You don't want to use this on every page of your website, but if you have a contact page, including this directly on your homepage can help your audience navigate directly to your contact portal if that is the main reason that they came to your site. More complicated examples of this can be linking to external resources that are relevant to your blog posts. If your talking about the best videographers in North Carolina, providing a shortlist and linking to the websites of a few of the top-ranking videographers in North Carolina is a great way to provide on-site value for your reader’s journeys. Another way of thinking about this is providing a better experience for your readers.
These internal links are not as powerful as external ones or links from other websites directing people to your own website content. Adding internal links can be time-consuming, but it's definitely worth it and before long you will absolutely start to see results. It is important to use them strategically and in the right way to help search engines crawl your website and improve your overall ranking and website score.
Internal linking can also be a useful tool for building authority in your niche. It's a good idea to strategically link to pages that rank well for related topics. You can research any online pages efficacy with a variety of tools like Serpstat, Semrush, Ahrefs, Screaming Frog, or even the tools provided by Google Analytics (here is a quick tutorial on using Google Analytics for this purpose from Monster Insights). Using these tools will help you find the best, most relevant, and highest-ranking content on your own site to link to by analyzing your own internal links and structure.
The best way to find internal linking opportunities is to search for pages that rank for relevant topics and link with descriptive anchor text.
2 — Meta Description Tags
Including a meta description on your website is one of the most important Onsite SEO factors. Meta description tags should be tailored to your website's unique selling points and include relevant keywords on a per-page basis. A meta description is an HTML element that summarizes a webpage’s content (as snippets) and will often appear in search engines as the first impression of any given page on your website. It acts as a summary of the content on your pages and spending time to make these as concise and well-thought out as possible will greatly enhance the likelihood of someone clicking through onto your website. Imagine that you are going on a first date with someone new that you have met. Your first impression when they meet you will be a lasting one. Meta description tags are very important because they essentially are the digital equivalent of this "first date impression". Though many website services will auto generate these for you from your content, they will often be too long and may not be optimized to really get your first impression across well.
Meta description tags are not mandatory, but they do help you increase your search engine ranking position. They should match the keywords you target and be unique for each page. The tag should contain a concise, but an engaging description that encourages users to click through.
Another important factor is the size of the meta-description tags. As a rule, they should not exceed 155 characters. These descriptions appear beneath the page's title in the search results. The meta description tag can be used as a tagline for the site. It is also important to include your primary keyword in the meta description.
A few other quick tips for writing great Meta descriptions are to work on employing active voice to make the meta description as short and punchy as possible. Capitalizing key words increases the search engine ranking position. Also work on baking-in a short call-to-action.
Your Onsite SEO strategy will be incomplete without a meta description tag(s) so make sure they are accurate and engaging. Your meta description tag should always include your primary keyword(s) but be careful that you avoid "Keyword stuffing" because this can cause your site to be flagged as problematic on search engines.
3 — ALT text
Alt text is a great way for your website to be more easily found and to increase its search engine visibility. The most important part is to be concise and specific, and make sure it accurately describes the image.
There are many ways to optimize your images for SEO, from using image optimization tools to using a few key phrases in your file name. In the end, you want to make sure your images are optimized so that they load fast and are relevant to the page. This will increase your chances of people landing on the page and will help you rank higher in search engines.
A great example of a title for your page is the title. It should be descriptive and include relevant keywords. However, if you are not going to use the title on the page, the alt text is a better bet. This can be achieved by using the ALT tag. It is a shorthand to the ALT attribute in an image tag.
It is also important to have a good anchor text for internal links, as this can help the search engines understand what your page is about. Google image search is the best way to display your eCommerce products.
Your ranking will also depend on how fast you optimize your images. Make sure to keep your images under 400kb. A large image can take up a lot of bandwidth, which will hurt your site's ability to rank high on search engines.
Though it may go without saying, the most important thing to focus on is to make sure your content is of a high quality. As the old saying goes, "Garbage in, garbage out". Visitors won't stay if your content isn't free from errors and mistakes or if it doesn't really offer any kind of insight into the topic that you are discussing.
Garbage In, Garbage out
4 — Sitemap
Sitemap best practices can help improve your website's visibility on search engines. Sitemaps are a list of all pages on your website that help search engine crawlers understand it. Sitemaps can also tell search engines which pages are the most important.
Sitemaps are critical elements of a website's structure and are also useful for your customers to navigate from page-to-page and can be used as a fallback plan for site improvement. They can also be used to help search engines locate deeply nested pages. Multiple sitemaps may be required if your website contains hundreds or thousands of pages.
Sitemaps can either be created automatically or manually. Consult a web manager or freelancer if you have any questions. You can also use sitemap generators such as Yoast to automatically generate a sitemap for your website.
Sitemaps are important because they inform search engines of any changes you make to your website. The search engine can then crawl your site more effectively. When you change your website's layout, add new pages, or make a significant change, you should update your sitemap accordingly.
Sitemaps can help increase your website's organic traffic. They help visitors navigate your site and find the contents they need. They also inform search engines about any new pages or information on your site.
Sitemaps can also be used as a fallback plan to improve your website's performance. They help search engines understand your site and provide a list of pages to index. If you have changed the structure of your site, you should update your sitemap to avoid errors. You should also keep an eye on your site's pages to ensure that they are still listed in SERPs.
There are many sitemap generators available. For example, Squarespace and Shopify offer automated sitemaps. Yoast is a free sitemap generator. You can select which posts you want to be indexed and the SEO premium version also includes a handy internal linking tool.