This is a continuation of a previous blog on Google ranking, which covers Alt attributes. If you haven’t checked that out yet, give it a once-over and come back here for that oh-so-good knowledge. We carry only the finest stuff here at BadCat.
Improving Your Google Rank: On-Page SEO
One of the fastest ways to improve your website’s ability to rank on the Google search engine results page (SERP) is with good on-page search engine optimization (SEO). But optimize what? You’ve already got a list of keywords—what more could Google ask of you? Apparently, quite a bit.
With over 200+ (confirmed) ranking factors, Google has a lot of reasons it can lower a website’s SERP ranking. It can be intimidating to get any further into the weeds with SEO. However, this presents a great opportunity for webmasters, marketers, and business owners to set themselves apart from their competitors.
Below, we’ve laid out some of the best practices for growing your rank on the Google SERP with on-page SEO.
Frontload Your Keywords
Frontloading is the practice of beginning your title tag with the keywords being targeted by that page. While the first few words don’t always need to differ page-to-page, each title tag should at least be slightly different. This helps ensure the content on a page is accurate and relevant to the consumer’s search. Because Google bots read title tags left to right, this also ensures the meaning of the page is properly processed.
Latent Semantic Indexing (LSI) Keywords
Latent Semantic Indexing keywords—LSI keywords for short—are a slightly more advanced on-page SEO tactic. Currently, they’re being heavily favored by Google’s algorithm, so it’s a good thing to be aware of, at least.
LSI keywords are the words and phrases related to the topic of a page or website. For example: on a page related to lamps, the LSI keywords might include “lightbulb,” “electrical,” “battery-powered,” and “brightness.” When Google reads LSI keywords, it determines that a website is a correct result—not just for a search for lamps but for any search with a combination of the LSI keywords therein. While it’s not impossible to rank for these terms without LSI keywords, it is much more difficult. The inclusion of LSI keywords in the text for a page is important to rank for as many searches from Google as possible.
Free Website SEO Testing Tools
So, you’ve built out your website with keywords frontloaded in your title tags and LSI keywords strewn throughout your website. What now? Once good SEO is in place, it’s imperative to continue monitoring. Many websites may never see a serious problem, but for the 10% that do, they’ll be kicking themselves for not monitoring it sooner.
Thankfully, Google has provided webmasters with software like Google Search Console, Google My Business, and Google Analytics to assist with that monitoring. Additionally, Google provides tests like Page Speed Insights, Rich Results, and Mobile-Friendliness to determine weak points in a website’s SEO.
As of late, Google has been paying especially close attention to the mobile-friendliness of websites, so the last test should be noted by anyone attempting to improve their SEO. If you see green text when testing web pages, you’re good. If you see red, there may be some stuff you need to investigate with your webmaster and site host. Besides mobile-friendliness, there are a host of other issues that need to be monitored, like alt attributes, outbound linking, website speed, bounce rate, content enrichment, and link building. We’ve already covered some of these topics in past blogs or have plans to cover them in the future, so stay tuned for more information.
Implementing and monitoring SEO takes time—more time than most businesses can spare. The team at BadCat has experience with hundreds of different companies and would be more than happy to help you navigate that process. Contact us today to get started.