As mentioned in our intro blog post, we will feature articles that have been written by the writers here at iNeedArticles.com. You should note that this article, our “2018 On-Page SEO Report: What Marketers Need to Know” was either purchased on the iNeedArticles.com marketplace and thus this article was previously available to anyone, or we ordered the article through the iNeedArticles.com ordering platform. We did not cause the writer to spend an unusual amount of time writing the article on our behalf. In other words, this is a fine example of the quality of writing that is available to all our customers. Without further ado, please read on!
2018 On-Page SEO Report: What Marketers Need to Know
Google’s big yearly updates to their algorithm, and the seemingly monthly updates that follow to refine them, have caused many webmasters to hate previously cuddly animals like penguins, pandas, or even hummingbirds.
However, the good news is that quality matters more than ever. Off-page SEO is still important, but it’s not nearly as big a factor as it used to be, while perfect on-page optimization and high-quality original content can often be enough to rank on the first page.
Without good on-page optimization, you’re running a race you can’t win. The good news is that by following best practices, you will be able to create a website that climbs up the rankings to get you the traffic you need to thrive.
Remember Content Is King
The first step is to make sure every part of your website from the home page to individual blog posts are all original high-quality writing. Search engines value original and well-written content while also penalizing duplicate content or poor writing. This makes excellent and original writing the critical building blocks that you must use to get results.
Use Available Tools
The next step is simple: Get your free Webmaster Tools from Google. These tools allow you to see how Google analyzes your website and what they don’t like about it. These tools can help show you what problems you have, such as:
– High bounce rate
– Detected malware
– 404 and other re-direct errors
– Unnatural backlink structures or low-quality backlinks
– Overall site performance
Not only will this allow you to track down broken pages and links hurting your ranking, but you can set up certain pages to not be crawled by search engines or re-write any negative pages to get better results.
You want Webmaster Tools because even off-page, you can see if you’re getting backlinks from terrible websites or “bad neighborhoods” that are hurting your rankings. Often times websites that get hacked will find themselves getting linked to from forums in other countries – a clear sign it’s time to radically change passwords and disavow them so they don’t hurt your rankings.
Pay special attention to all reports of broken links. These are a major red flag for Google and other search engines and your website will be penalized for each one they find. Either fix them or remove them, and you’ll see the results very quickly.
Other Types Of Pages To Remove
There are certain types of pages you don’t want in your website. The first thing to do is remove any duplicate content. If the information has appeared on one (or multiple) other websites, you don’t want it on yours.
If you absolutely must have that information then re-write it to make it original, or if it has to be word for word (like a legal warning) then you can “noindex” that page or that section of text so it doesn’t get counted against you.
The next step is to look for junk pages on your website that could be hurting you. Certain WordPress themes might sneak in a ghost page that is seen as spam, a hacker might have sneaked in some extra pages, or your content management system might automatically create a tags page – which is not something you want Google ranking.
It’s also a good idea to use the search function of site:http://yourwebsite.com and look through the results Google gives you to see if there are any pages sticking out that don’t look right. You can disallow using the robots.txt command, delete the page entirely, or mark it private to make sure it doesn’t hurt you in the future.
If the page is necessary but just a mess right now, then you need to re-write it immediately. You don’t want just one or two bad pages pulling down the rankings of your entire website, and this actually happens a lot more often than you probably think.
Finally, at least when it comes to hunting down bad pages, you want to find any page with less than 200 words on it. Many people swear by having pages that are 600 or more words or even over 2,000 words if you really want to rank. While more high-quality content is better than less, the problem with pages less than 200 words is they actually result in Google penalizing your entire domain if you have several of these pages. One contact page won’t be a problem, but multiple pages like this will become an issue.
Understand Your Tags
There are three tags you will hear about when it comes to websites: title tags, meta tags, and alt tags. All three have some importance, although the title tags are by far and away the most important (assuming you’re not getting slapped from spamming the meta tags).
Title tags should be short, snappy, and to the point. Think one keyword and short supporting phrase. One way of thinking of title tags is to treat them like your little ad in Google. The key is to not keyword stuff and don’t overdo them or you’ll get penalized!
Generally many SEO specialists agree keeping the title tags between 50 and 60 characters is ideal, with 50 being better as long as it doesn’t cut out critical information.
Meta tags should be 155 characters long or less and give a brief description of the page. If you’re a small business, it’s a good place to put in a phone number or basic contact information. This is no longer an official ranking factor for Google, although there can be penalties for keyword stuffing. There is still some evidence that it can have a small amount of influence on some other search engines.
Alt tags are simply very basic descriptions given to pictures so the search engines can recognize the content. This is an easy opportunity to get a keyword description of the picture recorded by the search engine spiders.
Outbound Links & Internal Links Still Matter!
There are two types of links that matter for on-page purposes. Google really wants information that is useful to the reader and authoritative. This means they specifically look to see if you offer links to other websites that are seen as authority sites.
Ideally this means anywhere from 1 to 3 links to websites that are generally seen as authority sites like WebMD or Wikipedia, or even more niche sites. If a website appears on page one of Google for a major search term, there’s a good chance it’s seen as an authority by Google. Ranking to pages that genuinely help the reader will help your own rankings.
The other type of linking is internal linking. This has always been powerful, and is more important than ever now with the major crackdown on unnatural or questionable backlinks from other sources.
Internal linking means that on a blog post or page of your website you link to another page within your website. This is best limited to 1-3 times per article or per page, depending on the length of the content. Don’t do this randomly. You want any internal link to go to a page or post that directly relates to the page you’re linking from. The more relevant, the better!
This is a powerful tool, especially if there are a few posts in particular that you’re really pushing or that you’re really proud of and want to get front and center in the search results.
For WordPress Users
There are several things that WordPress users in particular need to be aware of while tackling on-page SEO. One of the first things to understand is that most WordPress websites automatically create a tag page. This means you need to no-index your tag page or even delete it completely. A page full of nothing but keywords will be seen by Google and other search engines as spam, so this is a very important step!
WordPress users will also need to look at other pages that are often automatically generated with the WP platform. This includes:
– Archive pages
– Category pages
– Legal notice pages
– Legal affiliate disclaimers page
– Author pages
You want to take these pages and “noindex” them. You might need them for your website, but you don’t want to get penalized for having these pages.
WordPress users will also want to look at the Yoast WordPress plugin. This gives you a huge leg up on websites that don’t use this plugin properly. You can even order an ebook directly from PR Caffeine to help you do this properly.
Other important on-page optimization factors
You should install Google authorship on your site. While Google seems to have shelved the original idea of using authorship as a way of building easy to recognize authority, it’s still an important command you can add to your content.
By adding the “rel=author” command, you make sure scrapers can’t rank for your content or even create the occasional headache where they rank over you for content you created. Authorship is a great protection for your quality content.
Another factor that is far too often overlooked is the speed of your site. How fast does it load? Can you quickly move from page to page, or is the visitor left hanging as your hosting lags?
If the second of those two scenarios is true for you, that’s a serious problem. Whether you’re weighed down from having too much traffic for your hosting, poor hosting, or too many plugins loading down a single site, poor site speed will get you knocked way down on Google’s rankings, as well as the rankings of other search engines.
The first thing you need to do is get an idea of your site’s true operating speed. The website gtmetrix.com is a great tool to test your site. You want your website to load in 2 seconds or less if possible, and if it doesn’t then you need to do what it takes to get to that level. This could include trimming your use of plugins, watching how your programming is set up, or simply buying a better hosting package for your domains.
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Content Truly Is King
All these tips will help make sure your website has the right on-page SEO optimization in order to rank well. Good content is a critical part of that, but don’t just think about text! If you have a YouTube account then having a good video embedded on the upper right hand page of a popular blog post or a static page can have a huge positive effect on your SEO.
The reason for this is that Google measures two heavily related factors for ranking:
- Bounce rate (number of people who see your site then jump off it quickly)
- Average time spent on the page
The lower the bounce rate on your website, the better. The longer your average visitor stays on the page, the better. Having even a short video right there in the top can help make sure your visitors stay an additional 30 seconds, minute, or few minutes. This alone will help set you apart from 99% of the other websites out there. If those numbers stay good, your website will shoot up through the rankings.
Don’t Underestimate The Power Of Video Content
Finally, you want to make sure to set up a blog that is going to keep adding original fresh content to your website. You may have heard of the Caffeine update from Google, and that was all about Google appreciating websites that add new content on a frequent basis and giving them a bump over websites that don’t do this.
You want to be one of the websites that adds new content. Even if you’re not going to do it personally, it’s worth hiring a reliable and high-quality worker or even freelancer to take care of it.
Tying All These SEO Factors Together
Tying all of these steps together can seem a little overwhelming, but you need to tackle on-page SEO as a bunch of small easy tasks. Many of these tips you only have to do once and that’s it – you’re website is good to go. Take care of each factor step by step until all you need to do is add new content to the blog and keep up with internal linking.
Don’t let on-page SEO overwhelm you. Following the steps laid out in our 2018 on-page SEO report will help push your website towards the top of those Google listings, and that’s when the traffic will surely follow!
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That was an excellent and informative article. I thought my site was well optimized but you have pointed out some areas that I need to look at.
Thank you
Thanks Chris – glad you found the article to be useful!
I also must say that it is a excellent article. It gave me lots of insight to things I have been missing in an attempt to go online. Thanks for the many tips.
GOOD LUCK Liz on your new venture.
Thanks Larry!
I enjoyed reading this article. Had to add some items to my to-do list. Including taking a look at “Other important on-page optimization factors”! Thanks!
Thanks Karin!