Search Engine Optimization

Are you doing everything in your power to improve your website’s on-page SEO? Many webmasters focus so much on link-building and other off-page SEO strategies that they fail to use basic tactics to their advantage. Needless to say, they’re leaving money on the table.

On-page SEO is far easier to manage than off-page SEO because you don’t have to rely on anybody else to give you links in order to improve your site’s rankings. Here are 8 lesser known on-page SEO ranking factors that are worth paying attention to.

1. The positioning of keywords in your title tags matters

Almost everybody knows that title tags matter in SEO, but merely creating unique title tags for each page of your site and adding your target keywords to them is not sufficient; the position of the keywords in your title tags is crucial! Target keywords should be placed at or towards the beginning of your title tags.

2. Identify your properties across the web

Want to strengthen your online brand and consolidate your identity on the web? When interlinking to sites or social media profiles that belong to you, use the rel=“me” attribute. For example, if you link to your Facebook business page from your website, do this:

<a rel=“me” href=“http://www.facebook.com/JohnDoePlumbingCompany”>Our Facebook Page</a>

By adding this attribute to your links, you are essentially telling the search engines which online properties belong to you. While it’s still not clear what this does for your rankings, it certainly won’t hurt to consolidate your web identity, especially considering how important social media has become in SEO.

3. Contextual internal links are more valuable

A contextual internal link to another page of your site is more valuable than a standalone link. So, when you link to other pages within your site, include the link in a related paragraph.

4. Placement of the <h1> tag

You’ve probably heard that using <h1> tags that include your target keywords is valuable, but to maximize their value, you need to place them in a prominent position on the page. For the best results, use <h1> tags as headings on each page.

5. Position of links on a site

Links that appear in a website’s sidebar or footer have less value than links that appear in the body of a site. When you place important links on your site, make sure they are positioned high in the body of the page.

6. Bolding keywords

Want to give keywords in your web copy more weight? Bold them. When search engine spiders crawl a page of your site, they will try to determine what it is about. If you bold target keywords, search engine spiders will think the page is related to those keywords, which is what you want.

7. Get rid of unnecessary HTML code

When search engine bots crawl your website, what they’re crawling is its HTML code. Get rid of extraneous HTML code on each page of your site because it could negatively impact your rankings.

8. Mix up keyword usage

Rather than using the same keyword phrase over and over in your content, mix it up by incorporating semantically related phrases. For example, if the title of your page is, “Lemon Lawyer Los Angeles,” make the heading tag say something like, “Los Angeles Lemon Attorney” instead. Some effective ways to mix up keyword usage include using synonyms, changing the order of keyword phrases, using singular and plural forms of the same keyword, and adding relevant modifiers.