Whether you’re a business owner with a sales website or someone trying to gain more traction on your blog, it’s important that you know the best methods to bring users to your site. When you want to make your website more visible, SEO and understanding how it works is crucial. There are multiple different ways to improve the search engine optimization of your site and knowing a few of these can help improve your rankings.
What is SEO?
SEO, or search engine optimization, is how you optimize your site to be beneficial not only to your users, but also make your website favorable to search engines. When you search for something relevant to your website, does it come up as one of the results on the first page? Would others be able to find your website if they weren’t aware of you? If not, then you need SEO to help to push your site higher in the search results.
What is On-Page SEO?
On-page SEO is where you employ SEO practices directly to pages on your website. For example, if you are a local SEO company in Toronto, you would tailor the content, meta information, and more to bring in users who need help with their website in Toronto. It’s about making your website more relevant to the users searching for your products or services, through a series of different techniques.
One example of on-page SEO is through keywords. Using commonly searched phrases and keywords throughout the site helps boost your search engine rankings for those keywords. There are a variety of tools and websites that can help you see relevant keywords, as well as the search volume and competition for those keywords. Using these tools, you can decide what keywords you should target on different pages of your website.
Why On-Page SEO is Important
It Makes Your Site More Interesting
Featuring content relevant to what people often search for is important to make your site more appealing. Offering relevant content encourages users to see what else you have to offer and may keep them coming back for more in the future.
Higher Search Engine Ranking
Having the right variety of commonly searched keywords on your site helps improve your search engine rankings. Not only does it show search engines that your content is relevant to what others are looking for, it keeps users on the site longer and reduces your bounce rate, which all have an impact on your search engine ranking.
Get Local Business with Local SEO
You might be wondering, what is local SEO? Local SEO is about making your site appear higher in the location rankings on a search engine. When someone is searching for something in their area, you want your website to be one of the top results!
If you’re only offering your services to people in the local area, then having your site appear more frequently internationally is great, but it’s not going to be much help. This is why local SEO is important for many businesses. Including keywords related to your local area, such as including the city, county, or state is an important part of on-page SEO. Some businesses include location keywords to their on-page SEO by creating pages specifically designed for the areas they serve, while others include location-based keywords throughout all of their content.
Correct Keywords Keeps Content Relevant
Understanding and picking keywords for your site is one of the most crucial things you can do for your on-site SEO. Picking keywords to use is a balance between relevancy, competition, and search volume. Using the tools available online to help you see this data can help you tailor the content you create to what your audience is interested in. Going back to our previous example, if you’re a local SEO company in Toronto, including keywords that have the city and services you offer will help bring in the clients you’re looking for, while increasing your ranking for those keywords.
Having a list of keywords that you’re targeting allows you to craft content that is relevant to your site. As you create and publish this content, you’re improving your on-site SEO.
Additional Ways to Rank Better with SEO
URLs Matter
One of the first things you should be considering when trying to increase your rankings in search engines is the URL of the page. Ideally, your URL shouldn’t be too long, as you’ll want it to be appealing to potential viewers. Having a shorter URL makes it easier for the viewer to see where the page might lead them, as well as making it simpler for search engines to work with.
It’s helpful both for users and for search engines when you include your keyword within the URL. Including the keyword is a direct signal of what you are trying to rank for. Depending on your website settings or platform, the default URL for a new page might be made up of a string of randomly generated numbers, such as a page ID. This is not helpful for your visitors and does nothing to improve your ranking. Instead, change the default URL to something easy to read, relevant, and include your keyword.
Improving your Meta Information
You need to pay close attention to your meta title and description. Including your keywords is the first step to having great meta information. When considering why local SEO is important, consider including your location in your meta information, as well. You can improve your meta information and your SEO search results by setting up your meta title to have the keyword, location, and your website. Your meta description is what users see when they search for a keyword, so make sure that you include the keyword as well as a description of what they’ll find on the page.
If you need help improving your on-page SEO, consider working with a marketing company that specializes in helping businesses in Toronto and the GTA improve their rankings. At nuBranch, we know what it takes to get your business to the top.
