10 Essential On-Site SEO Factors for Your Website

Here are 10 essential on-site SEO factors that are important in enhancing and boosting the SEO effectiveness of your website:

1. Title Tag

The title tag is a HTML tag that is located in the head section of every webpage and offers an initial context or clue as to what the subject matter of the page is. This is one of the most important one-site SEO factor as Google’s algorithm places a high amount of significance on this.

Having duplicate, poorly written, or missing title tags can adversely affect your SEO results, so make sure to optimize this element and make it compelling. One tip to keep in mind is that the closer you place the keyword at the start of the title tag, the more importance it has in search engines.

2. E-A-T

E-A-T is a framework used by Google raters to assess sites, webpages, and content creators as a whole. It stands for Expertise, Authoritativeness, and Trustworthiness. Google wants to ensure that websites with high-quality content are recognized and rewarded with higher rankings while webpages with low-quality content will receive lesser visibility, which is why there is a premium on high-quality content.

Since there is a definite relationship between what is considered to be high-quality content by Google and the rankings in search results, E-A-T does play a huge part in Google’s organic search results.

3. Meta Description

Meta descriptions, or meta tags, provide a brief description of the content of the page and are usually displayed below the page title in the search engine results page. This is a powerful tool as you are essentially getting free ad copy.

Make the 150 characters count by adding a call to action and emphasizing your unique value propositions. When you optimize the meta description correctly, the perception of your website content and organic click-through rate will improve.

4. Headlines

It can sound pretty basic to come up with a blog post title, but having a great headline can make a world of difference between a click and an impression. Hence, it is important to create headlines strategically. Your headlines should be catchy as it needs to evoke interest in users to click through and proceed to read the other content on the page.

5. Header Tags

Header tags refer to HTML elements that are used to differentiate the headings and subheadings in your content from other kinds of text such as paragraph text. Think of them as a way to highlight certain parts of a page to grab attention. This creates a great opportunity to place keywords strategically and optimize the user experience by making the content more digestible and enjoyable to read.

6. Write Quality Content for SEO

The most effective way to write for SEO is to combine targeted search terms and high-quality copy. The content needs to be relevant and substantial so people will stay engaged and spend more time on your website.

Search engines want to offer the best possible results, which is why they give top rankings to the sites that have in-depth, well-researched, and well-crafted content. Fresh content is more attractive to search crawlers and helps to boost search visibility while also giving you something valuable to share with your target audience.

7. Keyword Cannibalisation

Keyword cannibalization happens when a specific term is targeted across a number of internal pages and has potentially dire consequences for your SEO. When there are many pages ranking for the same keywords, you are essentially competing with yourself. It is important to check whether your website is suffering from keyword cannibalism and solve it immediately.

8. Content Audit

Many content creators make a common mistake of focusing entirely on coming up with new content and forgetting to audit the existing ones. Identifying the type of content that was effective in the past and gets the most links and social signals enables you to design an effective content strategy. You will also be able to measure if the existing content strategy is working and gaining ROI.

9. Image Optimization

Adding high-quality images to your webpages is a great way to make it more attractive to users. Optimized images help search engines to better understand your content. If you are using them, make sure they are visually appealing and relevant to the topic. Image optimization has many advantages, such as enhanced user experience, faster webpage load times, and higher ranking opportunities.

10. User Engagement

It is essential to make sure that users continue to read your content, engage with it, and keep coming back. Search engines take into account how users interact with the results when deciding which pages are more useful to searches and is worth promoting in terms of search rankings. User engagement factors include:

• Bounce rate - the number of users who click through to your page but go back to search results very quickly
• Dwell time - the duration users stay on your website
• Click-through rate - the percentage of users who click on a search engine result presented to them

If people are spending more time on your website, it sends a message to Google that your site content is relevant to their search. Hence, creating content that delivers value to people is crucial. User experience, site speed, and content optimization are also key aspects of driving user engagement.

Whether you are optimizing existing content or creating new content,  your SEO strategy can potentially make or break your business. To optimize your marketing budget, consider the Aspire Business Account which offers a 1% cashback for your online marketing and software subscription spend. It also comes along with smart features designed to help you save time.