Don’t Forget About On-Page SEO
On-page SEO is more important than ever for increasing traffic and improving conversion rates. As websites battle it out in competitive niches for rankings and search traffic, the margin for error with user experience has gotten quite small. Customers expect speed, clean formatting, and quality content. With so many A+ websites to compare yours to, even the smallest indicator of low quality can scare them off. Buckling down on on-page SEO is the only way to reduce your bounce rate and bump up your numbers.
Over the last several years Google has released several major updates. The Hummingbird, Penguin, and Panda updates changed how sites needed to structure for link building and other factors. Despite these updates, the rules and tactics of on-page SEO have stayed mostly the same. On-page SEO is still all about user experience.
Website Loading Speed
The effect that loading speed has on overall traffic and conversion rates is impressive. To put it in perspective, recent studies show that a 1-second decrease in website response time can lead to a 7% reduction in conversions. It doesn’t matter how well optimized the rest of your site is, if it takes too long to load, customers will quickly abandon your site for the nearest and fastest competitor.
Why? Customers know that they don’t have to put up with slow response times, even during peak traffic. Recent studies also show that 57% of customers will leave a site if wait times are longer than 3-seconds.
Several factors can affect website loading time, one of which is your hosting. As a rule, shared hosting is slow. Get a dedicated IP address if you can afford it. Enter your domain name at pingdom.com for a free website speed test. If you’re over the 3-second mark, your conversion rates aren’t what they could be.
Take Title Tags Seriously
Title tags still matter; knowing how to use them correctly is essential to the success of your website. Today, we’ll focus on <h1> title tags since they have the most impact.
Title tags are just what they sound like, tags for your title. The title of your article will always serve as its title tag, so make sure your article’s title includes the main keyword you’re targeting. Identifying a title tag lets Google know what to look for first when combing search results for your article. If you use WordPress, the article’s title is automatically tagged as <h1>. If you’re using a pre-assembled WordPress theme, make sure it’s setup to do this.
Create Content that Deserves Search Traffic
Just as customers today have high standards for load times, they have even higher standards for content quality and on-site flow. Engineers determine the quality of a design based largely on what’s referred to as ‘discoverability.’ Customers should be able to figure out almost intuitively how your article, web page, and website are organized and how to navigate around it. Your customers are smart, and they know how to find themselves when they get lost; by leaving your website!
If you manage to not scare customers away with poor formatting and slow load times, you’ve won a large part of the battle. The next fight is to keep them there, and the only way to do that is with quality content. Articles, of course, need to be well written, but even more important than that is the connection you make with them.
Providing users with information doesn’t translate to loyal followers unless you connect with them emotionally, either by solving a problem or enhancing their understanding of something they care about. A customer’s interaction with your content should feel like one person helping another and leave them with a feeling of gratitude towards your website for helping them out.
Keywords Still Matter
Keywords help search engines identify the subject of your page and the content you worked so hard to create. Investing time into keyword research and then incorporating those target keywords will create conversions. Make sure to use keywords with high search volume. Natural integrated keywords in your content are still a key component for generating the focused traffic you need.
1 Source Media Group has the knowledge and expertise needed to develop and deliver the perfect On-Page SEO for getting your website ranked. Contact us today to learn more about all that SEO marketing can do for your business.
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