Hello Readers! Glad to see you here. Hope you all are doing well. We know that there are many things which Google takes into consideration while SEO and ranking websites. We generally pay attention to the basic and most common things that matter in this regard but there are few things which are left ignored that are important. So today this will be our topic of discussion and we’ll see the 5 most ignored things in OnPage SEO.
On-page SEO basically includes the practices of what happens to our website or any blog after launching them. It includes points such as checking for site’s traffic, maintaining proper web page contents, keywords, linkings, etc.
According to the research, 71% of search results includes the links on the first page of the search results(SERP) whereas 67% of the search results goes for the top 5 websites that appear in the search.
So it is evident from the data, only launching the website and sharing good content is not sufficient for it to get perfect exposure and better performance and hence we need to spare some of our time on SEO.
We need to rank our website among those top 5 websites that appear while searching for a particular niche or keyword. In order to rank our website, we need to-
1. Use the right Keywords
For any query, users search for certain phrases. These are called as keywords. Using the right keyword for your content that appears for a few number of times in the content is important to come in search results for any query in the Google SERP. So when Google crawls, it picks these keywords.
2. Maintain the SEO standards for the content
Google has certain standards for the contents to be pulled on priority. Web pages following these standards, appear as the top results. So it is necessary to get them followed on one’s website and blogs.
3. Use secured(https) websites
Around 93% searches are preferably HTTPS sites by Google and it is trying to make it to 100% as everyone is concerned about security and hence prefer using secured sites.
4. Focus on the titles and headings
Using proper titles and headings including the keyword is also important for on-page SEO. While searching, the inclusion of keywords in the titles and headings holds more importance than having them into the body part and brings more traffic as well.
5. Work on fast page-loading
Faster loading pages are favored by the search engines so similar to the previous points, to draw better traffic to our website; we need to work on faster page load on our websites.
Apart from these, some of the things which we mistakenly leave are mentioned below. Let’s go through them one by one.
1. Using Google Analytics
As mentioned above, launching our website is not enough as Google values fresh and organic content. It changes its ranking formula regularly and finds the best content for its search result.
We must be aware of how our website is performing, what needs to be improved, and how it can be done to beat the competition. Google Analytics and Google Search Console give us Google’s eyes to see how our website looks and can be improved.
2. Optimizing site for local search (Local SEO)
Local Search Optimization means optimizing a website for the search activity for a small geographical area such as a city or a state. It includes practices like adding an address, phone number, local area code, adding google Maps, inbound links, etc to our websites.
This key NAP(Name, Address, and Phone Number) details can be placed in the header/footer of the web pages of the site. If we don’t optimize our website for local searches, it can cause missing a significant number of audience for the website. Local Search optimization generally helps businesses where people find something near them.
In that case, search engines search for the keywords based on the geographical code. And hence people get more customized and cantered results for their queries.
3. Using unique titles/meta description
Titles, headings, and meta descriptions play an important role in the on Page SEO. Where the “Title” tag defines the title of the page, “Meta Description” is an HTML attribute that can influence people to click on the associated web page link.
It’s basically 3-4 lines text that provides a summary of a particular web page. Before going to the webpage, people look for these meta descriptions where they get an overview of the page in a precise way. It helps them save a lot of their time to reach the most relevant page.
We don’t generally care about these factors which may lead to using duplicate and redundant titles/meta descriptions. We should always avoid this as Google pulls out the unique content and can avoid such duplicate contents.
4. Mobile-friendly Website
We must know that a mobile search for any keyword can produce different results than that of desktop for a particular query. Also, most of the searches are done on mobile devices and Google favors such websites. Hence we must look into making our website mobile-friendly so that it can appear in those search results.
Mobile-friendly content means using easily readable texts, easy navigation, easily clickable links, and an overall completely responsive site for mobile phones. We can check it with Google’s Mobile-Friendly Test where you will get a report on how handy your website is for use on mobile phones/tablets.
5. Fixing issues as soon as possible
This happens generally with the new websites that it faces issues such as having broken links (internal/external) or missing web pages (404 errors), etc. We should always find them and get them fixed at the earliest as it can affect the user experience and hence the traffic.
Google Search Console tools can help you get notified of the issues. There are many other tools as well which provide this service to find out and notify the bugs and issues to the website owners.
There were the 5 most ignored things in OnPage SEO that must be taken care of to increase traffic to our website and for better website ranking as they might look minor but can cause a significant impact on the site performance.
Some more points like giving properly organized content, using distinct anchor texts for images, paying attention to faster page load, properly linking website pages together, having a sitemap file that can update itself, maintaining SEO standards, etc can be taken care of to beat the race.
Keeping eyes on small but important things can bring your website on top of Google SERPs. Hence next time when you think of starting a website or you face any problems like not getting enough traffic on your website even after good and consistent content, you can look for these points.
Conclusion:
While working on a website, the content quality is not enough to bring enough traffic, we need to follow Google’s standards and factors on which it ranks the websites and contents. While in general practice, we pay attention to the most common factors for on-page SEO but forget to look after some hidden yet important ones. Here is the list of the 5 most ignored things in OnPage SEO-
- Using Google Analytics
For Measuring the website performance. - Optimizing a site for local search(Local SEO)
To bring more local traffic to the website. - Mobile-friendly Website
To ensure more traffic from mobile searches as most people use their mobile phones for searching for things online. - Using unique titles/meta description
To keep the content unique and organic. - Fixing issues as soon as possible
To fix the bugs and issues at the earliest.
Hope this will help you optimize your site and bring more traffic!