Marketing techniques are constantly evolving in correlation with advancements in technology, and in the internet age we live in SEO is at the forefront of marketing strategy. In yesteryear, manipulative SEO methods were commonplace and perhaps even courted by Google, but more recently the company has encouraged the demise of these practices, meaning marketers have been forced to get more creative to be successful.
This article will provide guidance which stretches beyond basic optimisation, instead presenting a list of problems and solutions using on-page elements to improve search rankings. To help you on your quest to effective marketing, it is first important to understand the difference between off-page and on-page SEO. Off-page is relative to PR and reputation management, whereas on-page concerns what your store contains, including fixed assets such as the cash register, shelves, and any other elements of this nature which are crucial to your store’s success.
Here are three fantastic on-page optimisation tips for experienced SEO professionals, where assumptions on the advanced knowledge and technical ability of readers have been made. To enhance your marketing expertise further, I highly recommend working with a professional such as AD5, who have the experience and expertise to help you on route to successful marketing.
1. Internal Link Structure
Sub-pages such as ‘Contact Us’ and ‘About’ are renowned for having strong DA and PR scores, yet they typically don’t have external links. They usually appear in cross-website menus, and are given a boost by internal links. Improving the structure of internal links is a great way to optimise on-page elements, and by writing out all the anchors on a given site so they read consecutively, it paint a picture of your site’s theme. One of the issues with internal links is that without a clear structure, the algorithm Google works on assigns search phrases which are less relevant, meaning just a few of the phrases you want to rank high make it to the top of SERPs.
A great way to resolve this issue is by posting good quality articles which link to relevant and important landing pages, in accordance with an extra five or so posts per month which delve deeper into the main subject of the landing page, with cross links between articles. It is important to ensure content is interesting and engages viewers, incorporating anchors that describe the target page. The next step with this process is to configure the strongest pages and link to the most important landing pages, which can be accomplished using advanced SEO tools which you can research further online.
2. Confusing Root Folder
This is often overlooked, but considering Google crawls your website for only a few seconds, maximising your crawl is strongly advised. Often site builders and optimisers discard files into the root folder and subfolders, but it is important to remember that every file is influential, and diluting relevant information into junk files can be harmful to your operation. One of the best ways to combat this is to open a directory called ‘old files’ and place the entirety of your unused files in there. You should also organise your sub-directories and media files, while updating all addresses in the code. You won’t be required to find every single link, but running a broken link check can help to indicate what needs changing. Again there are various tools online which can assist you with this process, and these are well worth researching.
3. Site Loading Speed
Google ranks are synonymous with making information accessible, and this largely relates to helping users discover exactly what they need too as quickly as possible. It is important to retain your visitors, meaning site loading speed is a very important factors relating to user experience metrics. Slow loading speeds correlate with high bounce rates, and this can consequently lead to you being penalised by Google in the rankings.
Loading speed on mobile and PC devices has become an increasingly important factor in recent years, especially with the influx of mobile technology. Improving site loading speed nearly always boosts rankings, and to tackle this issue it is important to start by observing your site’s current state. Utilising Google tools is a great place to start, and there are further tools available online, such as PageSpeed Insights and GTmetrix, which provide a comprehensive insight into your page loading speeds, with provision of information on how to increase page loading times.
Another great piece of advice is to optimise all images on your site, and enable compression using GZIP. You should also use a Content Delivery Network (CDN), which stores your content on different servers around the globe, and when consumers visit your website, the CDN loads the images or files from the closest server to the visitor, making the entire process quicker.
I hope you have found this article informative, and if you’d like to contribute anything to the conversation, feel free to comment below to kickstart the discussion.