How does on-page SEO work?

FourthEstate
July 31, 2022
September 7, 2022

On-page SEO has evolved a lot over the years and is no longer about stuffing keywords into tags and places on the webpage. In fact, if you do this, it’s now classed as poor SEO practice and could lead to your site incurring a Google penalty. Instead think about creating thick and unique content for your website and ensuring the user experience is the best it can possibly be.

  1. Google looks for quality indicators – this includes speed of your site, bounce rate, page views and how far users scroll down the page – focus on creating the best user experience on your website and Google will reward you.
  2. Duplication – avoid duplicate content on your site and do not create copied content from other sites, even if you try to add your own spin, it’s probably more counterproductive than useful and can have big SEO implications.
  3. Customer research – understanding who your prospects are and what they are likely to search for.This should be factored into your SEO approach, but also business in general.
  4. Competitor research – investigate the keywords that are driving traffic to your competitor’s and related sites.
  5. Long-tail topic-focused SEO is important – too many short pieces of content with lots of keyword stuffing on your website will be penalised by Google as it’s against webmaster guidelines.
  6. However, your content should be optimised with relevant keywords – you can discover these with good SEO keyword research tools such Google Keyword Planner, Moz’s Keyword Explorer or the Yoast Google Suggest Explander
  7. Once you have your keywords – look at how you can use them in your content, things like videos and articles that match the intent of the user are a good place to start, making sure the title of your content is descriptive, compelling and keyword-rich (without stuffing!).
  8. Quality content generation – bad or irrelevant content will be punished as Google’s Panda algorithm is attuned to detect content that doesn’t help users.
  9. Make sure you reference images in your content and add descriptive alt text.
  10. Optimise internal links to improve user experience and increase time spent on site.

If you need any assistance with SEO or any aspect of web development and content, feel free to get in touch with us.

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In part 2 of Fourth Estate Creative's SEO Untangled series, we cover on-page SEO, with a list of ten simple points you need to know to get started.
Sarah Hughes
think about creating thick and unique content for your website and ensuring the user experience is the best it can possibly be
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