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How can you get your company website ranked well in the Google search results? There are a lot of factors to consider, and the specifics of SEO ebb and flow all the time. Certainly things like social sharing, backlinks, and citations matter a great deal.

And then there’s on-page optimization. This refers to the technical dimensions of your website—the things you can do to make the page itself more attractive to Google’s algorithms.

Ultimately, there are a lot of opportunities to make your website better—more appealing to the end user, but also more compliant with Google’s established standards. Here are a few of the basics—the things you can do to ensure your on-page optimization is firing on all cylinders.

Guidelines for On-Page SEO

• Short URLs. Your URL itself should be both short and descriptive. Avoid URLs that are needlessly long and complicated, or that just have a bunch of random letters or numbers. Your URL should give a short and sweet indication of basically what the page is about.
• Title tags. The title tag tells the Google algorithms what the page is about, and helps them to categorize it appropriately. Make sure your title tag includes a keyword or two, ideally positioned close to the beginning of the title tag.
• Title modifiers. There are certain words that, when added to your titles, can help convey the value of your page—things like best, guide, and review are especially useful.
• H1, H2, and H3 tags. Essentially, you should have your content broken down with subheadings, making it easier for people to navigate your page—but also providing Google with a sense of how your page is structured. These section subheadings are great places to insert keywords, assuming you can do so organically.
• Rich content. Videos and images can help your readers stay engaged with your site for longer periods of time; this in turn cuts down on your bounce rate, and thereby increases your ranking potential. Of course, all media content should be relevant to the topic at hand.
• You don’t ever want to shoehorn keywords in where they don’t really belong, nor make your content so overstuffed with keywords that it’s difficult to read. Do try to include keywords wherever possible, though, especially in your opening paragraph.
• A call to action. At the bottom of the page, instruct your reader on the next action steps to take—and include keywords and content information where appropriate.
• Responsive design. Make sure your website automatically resizes to fit any device and any browser. Google will penalize you if your site looks bad on mobile devices.
• Outbound links to relevant resources, and internal links to related sections of your website, can boost the credibility of your content.
• Your business name, address, and phone number should be listed consistently across every page of your website. This helps with local search rankings.
• Meta description. Like the title tag, your meta description tells the algorithms—and search engine users—what the page is all about. Include a keyword or two here, as well.
• Site speed. If your site does not fully load within four seconds, you need to reconfigure it!

Is Your Site Fully Optimized?

On-page search engine optimization helps your website get discovered by potential customers and clients—so it’s critically important to get it right. It can also be a daunting task—but we’re here to help. Learn more about our website design and optimization services by contacting the Driven2020 team today.

Reach out to the Driven2020 team today to talk about search engine optimization.