One of the reasons that those new to SEO often hit the buffers before they even start, is they become overwhelmed trying to understand every single aspect of it. Admittedly, SEO is a big subject, but as with any other, the sensible way to approach it is by breaking it down into its component parts.
This applies perfectly when considering how to optimise pages within a website design. Instead of trying to tackle everything at once and going round in circles, the required actions can be placed within 7 different categories, and then be planned for accordingly.
These 7 elements of on-page optimisation are:
Bot/Spider Friendly
If you want your website to rank, its pages need to be crawled by the search engine bots and spiders. If the underlying data structure hinders, rather than helps this, then what they send back will not be the full picture. Correct URL structures and redirects set up correctly will help, as will having your website hosted with a reputable hosting company.
Keyword Optimisation
This involves making sure that not only do your website pages have the correct number of keywords but also that they are used in the appropriate places such as the title and the first paragraph. Also, the keywords should not merely be the list that your keyword software churned out. Instead, thought should be given to descriptive keywords and those that match user intent.
High-Quality User Experience
You have heard of the term ‘Wow Factor’, and that should be what you want the pages of your website to have. You want visitors to have a great experience in terms of navigating through the site, the page layouts, and how easily it is for them to consume the content. That is how you get them to come back repeatedly.
Highest Possible Quality Content
The content on your pages contributes hugely to any visitor’s experience of it, so you should strive to make it stand out from other websites. That applies not just to what you write, but also to other media, so stunning images and videos which are so good that viewers watch right through to the end, are what to aim for.
Meta and Other Data In Place
Much of this is implemented behind the scenes but do not let that fool you into thinking it is not crucial. Metadata, rich snippets, and other details such as schema all contain information that helps Google accurately assess your website for relevance.
Sharable On Social media
Quite a simple one to implement but no less important. Make sure that visitors are encouraged to share and are able to easily share, your content on social media. A key to this is obviously the quality of the content as visitors will not share content if it is lousy.
Multi-Device Enabled
Despite being a hugely important factor for a couple of years, there are still websites out there whose pages cannot be properly viewed on devices other than a PC. Ensure that yours is not one of them, by checking every page is compatible and ready to be viewed on desktop, tablets, and mobile devices.
