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A List of Important On-Page SEO Elements

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Previously, I talked about the significance of optimizing on-page web elements to boost SEO rankings. This time around, I will discuss the 5 important areas to improve on your website to ultimately boost web traffic and conversion rates.

HTML tags and web design

  1. Title Tag
  • The title is one of the basic HTML tags that will let you know the subject of the blog post. How is this relevant? You can set a title as you publish a post anyway, right? I know it gets neglected at times.
  • The thing is the title tag is the one that is displayed in the SERPs. Usually, it will manifest as the link users will click once they are in the search engine results.
  • So, don’t forget to edit your title tags. Avoid having duplicates and take time to compose your titles because this will be visible to your users.
  1. Meta Description
  • Aside from the title, meta descriptions are a must. These two go hand in hand. You just don’t edit the title. Of course, you need to provide a small snippet of your post. In the SERPs, the meta description is placed just below the title.
  • Through adding meta descriptions, you are trying to convince people to check your article out. Thus, it is crucial to discuss what the web page is about and the scope of your topic.
  • Remember, that meta descriptions do not directly influence your rankings. However, if you do it right,
    • Your web pages gets more clicks. Thus, increasing your CTR.
    • It also implies that you have a good quality page since people click on your web pages.
    • It proves that your website has something to offer to the searchers.
  1. Catchy Headlines
  • Compel your readers to read your blog posts and you start that by writing irresistible headlines. Of course, users will prefer to click a page that catches their attention. If they think it is boring from the headline alone, they won’t bother clicking. Instead, users will look for pages that they think are interesting.
  • Other than the title and meta description, you also need a great headline to lure readers to your website. It should provide a solution to the concerns of people, and most importantly, the headline should pique the natural curious mind of anyone who is browsing the internet.
  1. Header Tags
  • To divide your post into different sections, you would need headlines, right? In order to effectively make headlines, you need to use the header tags. The standard header options are H1, H2, and up to H6.
  • If you apply header tags, you are making it easier for your users. They can read your content better. It is also easier for them to identify the key points of your content. Thus, readers will keep coming back to your website because they find your posts easier to digest and enjoyable to read.
  1. Premium Content
  • Let us all not forget the main focus of it all: your writing. You write useful content for your users and for search engines.
  • You need to make your pages easier for search engines to discover. How will people see your web page if search engines can’t detect them?
  • So, don’t just add content just to fill a web page. Write something helpful, educational, and something that make your reader’s life easier.

Understanding On-Page SEO

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Being one of top results of a search engine involves a mix of different factors. It can be technical SEO, off-page SEO, and on-page SEO. Getting links for your site is considered an off-page SEO. When other websites mention you, it is one of the strategies to boost your link building efforts.

The truth is that off-page SEO will not be as effective if you choose not to improve your on-page SEO. Thus, it is important to prioritize to enhance elements that is on your website. Before you make optimizations outside, you should first deal with on-page improvements.

List of SEO factors including on-page and off-page SEO

The Thing About On-Page SEO.

Before I start blabbing about the essential on-page SEO you need to enhance, I will start with the basic information.

On-page SEO, or on-site SEO, is the process of honing web pages to develop better rankings and gain more traffic for your website.

When you are creating relevant content for your website, this is one way of increasing your on-page SEO. Aside from providing excellent content, you can also edit your title, your meta description, and even your headlines. If you do all these, your website is guaranteed to have prominence, competence, and certitude.

When all these factors are combined together, one thing is sure: your website will surely be visible in the SERPs.

What Makes On-Page SEO So Valuable?

You should give importance to on-page SEO because it:

  1. greatly helps search engines to know your website better,
  2. and search engines can easily determine if it is a suitable answer to a user’s question.

As search engines keep up with the changes in technology, it is only natural that search engines increase their efforts in identify content. It is important to give emphasis on relevancy and semiology.

With Google’s ever-changing algorithms, it has proven to be better at understanding the needs of the users. It can identify what users actually want to know and Google does not take things too literally.

Google tries to give results closest to the intent of user. It even shares related searches whether it is searching for the basic information about a business, finding stores, and looking for directions.

Coping up with these changes is utterly important, and you can only achieve it through updating the contents of your website. Improve the things the user can see such as texts, videos, photos, and other media files. Also, consider the things visible to the search engines such as title tags, meta tags, and etc.

Furthermore, on-page SEO is something you can control compared to off-page SEO. You can’t just go on the internet and tell people to write about your websites. Off-page SEO are external factors that you have NO charge of. Thus, focus on on-page factors that you can regulate.

These are the factors to note in order to develop your on-page SEO for the better:

  1. Title Tag
  2. Meta Descriptions
  3. Header Tag
  4. Premium Content
  5. Catchy Headlines

… and many more! Don’t worry because I will discuss it in details on the next post. So, keep an eye on the 5 important on-page SEO elements, which I will be posting very soon.

SEO Trends to Follow Before 2020

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If you want to know the trend to gain Google and readers approval in content marketing and SEO, just remember four things: type of media, content quality, originality, and finding the right target audience.

SEO Trends for 2020

So if you want to know more, here are some trends you owe to know.

  • GO FURTHER THAN THE SHALLOW CONTENT

    • More and more people realize that a more exhaustive, well-searched, and long content are those that are more effective. Check out the top results, and it would tell us that content, with 2000 words or more, are the ones that gained the top 5 in ranking. So, forget about shallow content that has no value because it will give you no beneficial results.

  • FINANCE IN THE PROCESSES OF CONTENT CREATION

    • According to a research, 56% of the B2C content marketers is putting their time and resources in the last year. This could include the following:
  1. Exploring subjects and keywords.
  2. Setting the groundwork of the content’s coverage.
  3.  Writing and improving the content.
  4. Developing the graphics, screen grabs, working on the finished content.
  5. Posting and advertising your content.
    • According to Google Trends, content marketing reached its popular status in the last few years so putting your finances for that purpose can lead you to your goal.

  • UTILIZE THE CONTENT PERSONALIZATION STRATEGY 

    • This is another elected trend that a lot of professionals in the field use and that reflects on one survey by Evergage. It says 93% of marketers use this strategy. This method centers on modifying the content for the various users of your site built on handily convenient personal data that includes interests, statistics, and latest browser history.
    • According to Evergage, many of the marketers agree in its results.
  1. Assist in a more wonderful shopping experience.
  2. Produces quantifiable ROI.
  3. Amplifies customer’s sense of loyalty.
    • The thing is, a certain content speaks to a specific type of person. The need of the NEW visitor compared to a visitor on her say 15th time has a different objective. If you do content personalization, it assures every visitor that there is a little bit of difference in each page; thus, having a content that will interest the users each time they visit your site.

  • CLEARLY PLANNING A CUSTOMER LOYALTY PROGRAM

  1. 52% will endorse the product to others.
  2. 48% would be loyal to the product.

  • WIDEN YOUR RANGE

    • Blogging is a great content marketing approach but it is not everything. You cannot just consider those who read articles and blogs because the truth is, your missing out on other types of people who loves audio and or video and probably blogging too. Just an update, people over 18 years old spend at least 11 hours a day on content that is available in the internet, TV, mobile phone, and other devices connected to the internet. So, play smart and get into podcasts, YouTube, webinars, live streaming, and of course, the ever dependable blogging. Remember, follow where your target customers go and invest on these platforms.

How to Start Updating Your Old Post? (Part 1)

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Everyone says that you should update your blog entries. How do we do that exactly? This post will breakdown the key elements when you need to update your blog posts.

Man thinking about updating or not.

To update or not to update?

Let’s start with question, “What should you update?” Before you start with the actual updating, first, you need to scan all your existing posts. Start with the obvious ones. The most popular posts on your website are probably written eons ago.

If your blog does have a steady influx of traffic, then, view all your top pages, and arrange them by date. By the way, it’s a terrible idea to add dates in the URLs.

How to decide? How many blogs to update?

There’s no exact number here. It really depends on your new resources. If you think you have other posts to link, then, of course, you could add a lot of information. Roughly, here are the things you should be doing before updating:

  • Know ‘the time to update’ versus ‘the estimated value.’
    • Let’s say a post would have 1,500 monthly visitors and there would be a 20% increase of visits once the update is done. Thus, you would have an additional 300 monthly visitors for that page.
    • Is this enough for you? Only you can answer whether an additional 300 visitors would mean a lot or not.
    • Assess other means as well. If you decide to do a paid advertisement, would it be better? How much will it cost you?
    • For the most part, when companies reach over 10,000 monthly visitors, any increase of web traffic is always worth the blood, sweat, and tears.
  • Know the estimated number of views.
    • Use web traffic estimates and look at it as if you are publishing a new content. If a new post would generate 800 – 1200 monthly reads, then, use that range as your basis when you update a blog post. If you think you can get the same amount of reads when you update, then, go for it.
  • Test it first.
    • Like any project, you would test it first if it is indeed effective. Start updating a few pages, 5 – 15 posts for example, and see how it goes. Then, measure the improvements in a span of at least 90 days. If it goes well, you might want to apply the same changes to your other blog posts.

Learn the drawbacks of updating your old posts.

Now that you figured out what are the pages fit for update and revision, the next step is to know the possible dangers when you are trying to update your content:

  • You are changing the focus.
    • When you make changes, there’s a huge change that you would derail from the main focus of the original article. If you derail too much, then, it would affect the existing focus and rankings.
  • You are changing the anchor texts that are relevant to the page.
    • The original article may have internal or external links to boost link building effort. If you try to edit, you may change a particular term that are needed. Thus, there’s a chance that you may devalue previously used anchor texts. You may lose traffic along the way.
  • You want to stay fresh.
    • See, if your website focuses on well-established topics, there’s no need to stay fresh. You only need to update if topics constantly change. For example, if you talk about grammar and composition, there are NOT a lot of changes in terms of the English grammar. So, updating it is unnecessary.

Ready to start the updating? Refer to this list of tips!

5 Other Ways to Compose Your Meta Description

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Previously, I taught you 3 ways to effectively present your meta description. If you do your meta description correctly, your click-through rates will surely skyrocket. So, what are you waiting for? Compose your meta descriptions right and apply these 5 tips right this instant.

planning meta description

Below are 5 more ways to craft the best meta description you can think of:

  1. Use colorful emojis.

Emojis are popular nowadays. Heck, Dreamworks even made an Emoji movie. It does help certain words stand out. Using plain words can appear boring. When you use emojis, you would exude a fun vibe. Usually, this approach works well with the teen crowd.

Still, there are people who think that emojis are downright unprofessional. However, if it applies to your brand, then, why not use it? Visually, it will help you attract the young crowd. The green checkbox emoji will definitely emphasize certain key phrases such as, “free delivery”, and “top-rated”. Perhaps, you can use the 100% emoji to highlight words like, “authentic”, “brand new”, and “fast shipping”.

  1. Provide a useful solution.

Start offering solutions to the searchers. For example, “Want to learn conversational Chinese phrases? We have teachers available online to teach you the basics of Mandarin, Hookien, and Cantonese. You will be able to learn words needed for basic conversation in just one class.”

This meta description promises that the user does not need to be knowledgeable in the language. It also implies that your company is straight to the point. You will only focus on words that are useful in real life.

When you present a solution, it’s hard for searchers to just ignore the offer. For them, it will appear as a great deal that shouldn’t be missed. A single class can help him new words that he can apply in real life. Through your website, learning a new language is an achievable task.

  1. Cite your purpose.

For other website, their purpose is what sets them apart. Highlighting corporate social responsibility is the right course of action here. For example, look at Toms. This company is known for their “buy 1, give 1” policy.

Every time you purchase a pair of shoes, Toms will also donate 1 pair to someone in need. You are sharing brand awareness, and you calling on people who share the same value. Thus, users will opt to choose Toms over other shoe retailers because of their “One for One” advocacy.

  1. A call-to-action meta description helps.

You might say that a call-to-action should be added to buttons. Trust me, you need them in your meta description as well. Don’t wait for them to visit your website and click your call-to-action button.

When you include a call-to-action in your meta description, you are drawing in customers to your website and take action once they arrive.

For example, you can add something like, “Start your free trial today and get premium access to our exclusive selection of images, videos, and artworks.” Or, even adding a simple download reminder like, “Download Google Chrome for free” can add to the page clicks.

  1. Use of power words.

There are certain words that demand the attention of the searchers. You can use this to your advantage, and add power words such as “free”, “awesome”, “terrific”, “secrets” in your meta description.

Just remember not to add too much of it. Overdoing power words will make it less effective. If you need suggestions, I wrote an article about power words right here.

3 Ways to Compose Your Meta Description

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Aside from writing catchy titles, you also need to create an equally catchy meta description. In this post, I will be explaining in detail how each meta description can help websites increase their page clicks through adding a sentence or two.

man planning meta description

These are 3 way different ways to compose your own meta description:

  1. Highlight your company’s USP.

What makes your company unique? This is what USP is all about. Your unique selling point makes you stand out from all the companies selling similar products. The USP could be an additional service, more product features, enhanced quality, and etc. can make your brand unique.

You can use this to your advantage and make it a meta description to generate more clicks and more interests from your audience.

Let’s take a look at Zappos.

For number 1, the concrete example would be Zappos. This company is known not only for its FREE shipping, but also its FREE return. This is extremely helpful when you got the wrong pair of shoes, or you got a broken pair.

Some people would just choose to not complain when they are not satisfied with the service because they would pay for shipping. Spending extra on returning the goods is a definitely hassle. Thus, people will just look for another website that can give them a better service.

Adding words such as “free shipping”, “free returns”, and “24/7 customer service” can definitely help alleviate worries and doubts. Just remember to include words you can 100% fulfill. If you brag about 24-hours email support, then, you can’t stand by it. You will receive a backlash of posting untrue statements.

  1. Tell the world your purpose.

In some cases, it might be appropriate to emphasize a greater purpose behind your website, whether that’s a particular corporate value or a very practical way in which you make a difference. This can provide searchers with an additional incentive to check out your site rather than the others.

Let’s take a look at Better World Books.

BWB, or Better World Books, is known for their “One for One” policy. There are not too focused on making money. All they want is for used books to have a new home. They emphasize on the carbon footprint and the waste created to buy a brand-new book.

Thus, BWB created an option for people. Why buy new books when you can buy 2nd hand books at a lower cost? Plus, the guarantee that for every book you buy, they will give another book to those in need.

Adding emphasis on their purpose surely makes Better World Books are better option for bookworms. Not only does it provide books at a lower price, customers get to help people in need. It’s like hitting 2 birds with one stone.

  1. Ask a question.

People rely on search to search for answers. They go to Google and type in question. So, why not throw the question back to the user.

You can say something like, “Do you want to know about the latest SEO trends?”, “What’s hot and what’s not this 2019?”, or “Want to learn about the components of a perfect email?”

Asking these questions will tell users that you have the answer to their question. Personally, this is the meta description format I apply if I can’t think of any.

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