What happens if quality articles are not optimized for search engines? Of course the results will not be optimal. The visibility or appearance of articles in search engine search results (SERP) will decrease. Maybe it will appear on the first page of search results, but not in the top position or it could appear on the second, third and so on pages if the quality of the competing articles is equally good.
Carrying out search engine optimization (SEO) is important. SEO needs to be attempted to improve the ranking and visibility of web pages so that they are better in various search engines such as Google, Bing and Yahoo. Search engine optimization is divided into two, namely on-page SEO and off-page SEO. The difference between the two lies in the optimization technique.
What is On-Page SEO?
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| What is On-Page SEO? |
On page SEO is an SEO optimization practice carried out on published content. How to optimize on page SEO focuses on the factors in the content. In simple terms, on page SEO can be interpreted as an optimization step to improve the quality of content so that it is easy to read and understand for website or blog readers.
Not only that, good on-page SEO optimization will also make it easier for search engines to understand the context of the content and the relevance of your website to the keywords being searched for.
On-page SEO involves a series of practices that you carry out within your website pages to improve ranking and relevance in search engine results (SERPs). The main focus of on-page SEO is optimizing the elements that you can control directly within the website page, including content structure, HTML tags, keyword usage, image optimization, and other factors that are within your control.
By using good on-page SEO, you can help search engines understand and index your content better. These on-page SEO practices help increase your website's visibility in SERPs, thereby increasing the likelihood of visitors finding and clicking on your site.
On-Page SEO Factors You Can't Ignore
On-page SEO optimization is carried out on the site (blog or website) itself. Optimization can be done in the article quality, article title, meta tags (meta description), permanent links, heading tags, internal links, external links and so on. Off-page SEO optimization is carried out from outside the site by building backlinks, namely links on other sites that point to your site. Quality backlinks also contribute to increasing rankings.
This article only focuses on on-page SEO optimization. There are several ways or techniques to optimize from within the site. When creating a new article, you will come into direct contact with on-page SEO factors that need to be optimized. The following are several on-page SEO optimization techniques that need to be done:
1. Article Title
What's with the article title? Article titles must be attractive and optimized. You can put keywords at the beginning of the title, if not possible, you can put them anywhere in the title. Try not to repeat a word more than once in the title because this is counter-productive and hurts rankings later. The more attractive and optimized the title, the more clicks and the better the ranking.
2. Optimize the permalink structure
Permalink or permanent link is a web address to open a specific web page. You can use permalinks to create search engine friendly URLs. Try to keep permalinks short. Use hyphens to separate words, not underscores. Make sure you use all lowercase letters and use targeted keywords in the permalink.
Read the article How to Optimizing Permalink Structure to Improve SEO
3. Content Quality
Content is the main reason visitors visit your site. Therefore, create quality, interesting and dense content with the information you are looking for. Try not to create superficial or low-quality content, even if combined with search engine tricks, it will still fail. Shallow content leaves visitors with nothing and disappointed. Quality, interesting and information-dense content will be easily crawled by spiders or bots to identify content themes.
4. Image Optimization
Images can bring a lot of traffic to a site from image searches. When clicked, the image will direct to the web page where the image is located. In order for maximum results, images need to be optimized. Image optimization can include several things such as image size, use of the alt attribute, naming the image and how to write it correctly, image dimensions and image format.
5. Internal links
Use internal links to link articles that are still relevant. Internal links are a way for visitors to stay on your site for longer. This can lower the bounce rate and is a signal to search engines that useful articles are useful. Web pages with a good page rank can transfer or pass on the value or equity they have to other pages to help them get better rankings (link equity or link juice).
6. External links
Many people avoid using external links because they direct visitors to leave the site to go to another site. In fact, external links can increase a site's credibility if they lead to trusted, informative and high-quality sources. External links can increase web page rankings if they lead to popular and relevant sources from sites that have high authority.
7. Page load speed
Google once stated that the ranking algorithm includes site load speed, as a result, page load speed is one of the ranking factors. Search engine search results also prioritize fast sites. There are various ways you can try to make your site load faster. Site load speed can be measured through tools such as Google PageSpeed Insights, GTMetrix or Pingdom Website Speed Test and so on.
8. Meta Tags
There are two previous key meta tags, namely meta keywords and meta description. Meta keywords are no longer used and now you only need to fill in the meta description. However, in Joomla CMS, there is still a field (text box) where you can add meta keywords.
Meta keywords are still filled in, maybe they are still useful for other things. You need to add a unique and relevant meta description for each article. Use targeted keywords in the meta description, but in moderation and don't overdo it so it isn't considered keyword spam.
Write a meta description that is user-friendly, understandable and related to the article you are writing. This meta description is not solely for search engines, but is also intended for visitors. The purpose of the meta description is to reflect the essence of the article's content at its important points.
9. Heading Tags
Heading tags, h1 to h6, have an important role in SEO because they function to organize heading levels, subheadings and other important points. Headings help readers understand the subject of the article. Search engines use headings to better understand the structure of text in articles. Using headings correctly will help people who read the article and also contribute to search engine optimization (SEO).
10. Use LSI Keywords
You really need to repeat the focus keyword several times in one content to optimize on-page SEO. However, that doesn't mean you can repeat it excessively. Repeating keywords excessively will only make Google consider your content as spam.
To get around this, you can use LSI keywords. LSI keywords are keywords that still have a similar meaning to the keyword you are targeting.
Why do you need to use LSI keywords? Because the keywords provided by the keyword tool are usually the result of combining several similar keywords. As a result, the variety of keywords provided is limited.
However, not everyone uses the exact same key. The reality is that people use a variety of keywords to search for a topic. Well, variations of keywords are called LSI keywords. To find LSI keywords, you can use services such as LSIGraph or LSIKeywords. For maximum optimization results, you can also insert LSI into the meta description.
11. Add Social Media Share Buttons
Even though shares on social media don't have a direct effect on SEO quality, you can't ignore them. Social media can help you reach and build new audiences on various platforms.
Moreover, Indonesian people are known to be active on social media. Based on APJII 2017 research, 87 percent of Indonesian internet users use the internet to open social media. The hope is that your readers will share your content with their friends and followers on social media.
So that readers can share content easily, you need to add share buttons to all your website content. That way, they only need to press the share button and automatically share the content on the social media of their choice.
To add share buttons on social media, you can use the help of share plugins such as AddToAny and MasShare. There are many social media plugins that you can choose from.
12. Pay attention to content length
The number of words in the content is also an on-page SEO indicator that you need to pay attention to. There is no exact number for how many words should be in content. Because determining the number of words is always different depending on the targeted keywords and competitor content. It could be that you need to create 800 words of content for keyword A, while for keyword B, you have to create 2000 words of content.
You need to measure how long the content you should create. The way to do this is to look at the word count of competitors' content. At least look at the number of content words in the top three search results. After that, create content that has the same number of words or more than your competitors.
13. Set the link to open in new tab
Maybe opening a link in a new tab seems trivial, but it can improve the quality of your website visitors' experience. Imagine, if there are three or four links in one article, readers need to press the back button repeatedly to return to the first content. Apart from being tiring for readers, it is also feared that opening links in the same tab will increase the bounce rate.
Closing
In the journey of on-page SEO optimization, you need to work hard and be patient to see significant results. While it's impossible to improve your website rankings overnight, you can implement the 10 on-page SEO optimization strategies we've discussed to help build a strong foundation for long-term growth.
By conducting keyword research, optimizing titles, URLs and content, as well as using headings, internal linking and other technical aspects, you can increase the visibility and relevance of your website in the eyes of search engines. Be consistent and keep learning to achieve better rankings and gain long-term profits.
Carrying out on-page SEO optimization is one of the best solutions for increasing your blog traffic. On page SEO optimization is also not difficult. By implementing the steps above, you have improved the quality of on-page SEO well.