Today, we’re going to cover SEO in a way that makes you feel like you’re sipping tea with your best friend. On-page SEO is important for both search engines and people. It helps search engines (Google) understand what’s on your website and then connects people looking for that content. Think of it as Match.com for the internet.

Grab a notebook and whatever else you need, because it’s game time.

Every part of on-page SEO is completely up to you; that’s why it’s critical that you do it correctly. It’s time to get organized and set your website up the way you would clean your house for your in-laws.

We’ll cover how to optimize your website for search engines to crawl and index.

You’ll discover how Google indexes your pages, how to write meta descriptions and link text, and how to optimize your website content following industry best practices.

You’ll also learn how internal linking impacts your SEO, how to best structure your URLs, and
the basics of technical SEO.

What is a search engine?

A search engine is a tool that searches the Web for websites relevant to real-time queries entered by users. Depending on the search string, search engines return results, which are called search engine results pages (SERPs). Usually, the engines get it right and display the most relevant results. There are no fixed rules used by search engines to display accurate results.

Traditional On-Page SEO Still Matters

It’s called “on-page” SEO (Search Engine Optimization) because the tweaks and changes you make to optimize your website can be seen by visitors on your page, here off-page and technical SEO elements aren’t always visible.

On-page SEO is the process of optimizing various front-end and back-end components of your website so that it ranks in search engines and brings in new traffic.

Just creating and publishing your website isn’t enough.

You need to optimize it for Google in order to rank and attract new traffic. This means you need to be selective with the keywords you use.

Google is increasingly focused on relevance in order to better understand what users are actually searching for when they type a query (Google it) and deliver results that meet user intent (match the search).

“The most basic signal that information is relevant is when a webpage contains the same keywords as your search query. If those keywords appear on the page, or if they appear in the headings or body of the text, the information is more likely to be relevant.” Source: Google’s “How Search Works” report).

While it might be tempting to use a lot of keywords on your website pages in hopes of matching as many queries as possible, Google is smart. That won’t help you rank.

Think like your customer: what would be helpful to the people searching for your product and/or service then, you create content to answer these questions. While you’re doing your research, check the reading level of your end users to write the way they speak.

Focus your efforts on optimizing just one keyword or keyphrase per page.

This is the foundation of creating search-friendly content.

We’re going to cover these elements of on-page SEO:

• Heading tags
• Title tags
• External links

What is a Page Heading Tag?

An HTML element that provides a hierarchical structure to a web page.

In the early days of search engines, heading tags were direct ranking factors.

However, they do have indirect benefits. Well-written headings make your page easier to read and navigate. This creates a better experience for the user, keeps people on your page longer, and in turn helps your SEO.

If your page lacks structure and visitors can’t find what they need, they’ll leave your site and search for and find their answer somewhere else.

This increases your bounce rate, which has a negative impact on what your site will rank, in turn, impacting your SEO. Search engines pay attention to these numbers.

If you are reading this, you are probably in the Customer Service Industry and are ultimately solving a problem for your potential or repeat customers.