You’ve been told that on-page optimization is the key to success for ranking higher in search engine results pages (SERPs) and getting more traffic. But you’re not sure what it means. You make a mental note to ask your SEO consultant about this at your next meeting.
However, if you want to rank high in SERPs and get more traffic from Google, there are some on-page SEO practices you might be doing wrong—or not doing at all! This article will cover seven of these mistakes so that you can fix them right away.
Neglecting keywords
Many people are told to just write naturally and don’t worry about what they’re writing. The truth is that it can actually have the opposite effect of hurting your rankings. This is something the digital marketing experts at G Squared are aware of, and that’s why they make sure every article they create is not only informational and high quality but also optimized for SEO.
For instance, if you use a phrase like ‘organic SEO’ in your content instead of ‘search engine optimization,’ Google will think that it’s an important keyword because many people search for it, even though ‘organic SEO’ isn’t really something anyone would search for.
So how do you find these words? You should take some time to research which keywords best describe your business or industry (or even ones that could work well within specific pieces), then sprinkle them into blog post titles and into the body of your blog post. You should also use these keywords in your image tags, meta tag info and title tags.
Missing or spammy alt text
Not adding alt text to images or using too much description for each one so that they look spammy can hurt the page’s SEO ranking. If you want Google to understand what’s going on within an image (especially if it isn’t clear), you need to add alternative text. This tells Google ‘what the picture says.’
The problem comes when bloggers include phrases like “click here” or “you can find more information by clicking through.” This makes them seem like ads instead of useful content which will hurt rankings over time, because search engines don’t like seeing advertisements.
You should also make sure that you don’t put a lot of text in your image tags. Keep them short and sweet. Try looking at image alt tags created by G Squared for some great examples.
Not including links
Not including links within the body of each blog post can decrease rankings because Google wants to see content that’s as relevant as possible for any given query. There are many ways that you could include links throughout your posts without making them seem too spammy or unnatural. Here are some examples:
- Use an appropriate keyword phrase from within one paragraph, then segue into another sentence where you’ll mention something related.
- Write about how someone else has helped solve this problem before by sharing their website with everyone who might be interested.
- Offer additional resources at the end of posts so people know where they can go if they want more information.
Not using subheadings
Subheadings help Google understand what the post is about and will help people who are scanning for information to find just what they need—which means you’ll be able to rank higher in SERPs because more people will click on your link.
If you’re having trouble coming up with subheadings, it might make sense to look at an article or two (like this one from G Squared!) where there’s a lot of info included but segues very naturally into each section.
You should avoid inserting too much text onto any given page because Google doesn’t like it. In fact, you’ll probably lose a lot of readers as well. Make sure that your content is clear, concise and easy to follow, which will make people more likely to read through the entire blog post!
Not using analytics tools
If you want to gain insight into how users are interacting with your site so that you can increase rankings over time, then this is one of the most important things for bloggers who write regularly about SEO or marketing their business online in general.
You should install tracking software on each blog post once you have at least three published articles (and preferably 30), then check back weekly/monthly/quarterly depending on what works best for you. You can then use the data to improve your site and make it more user-friendly over time!