How Does On-Page SEO Help My Website?

Ask any nine search engine optimization (SEO) experts what’s the best tip for improving your website’s visibility online, and you may get nine different responses. From adding valuable backlinks to using appropriate long-tail keywords, all the answers you get — all those techniques — help your site get noticed. As a business owner, you can spend hundreds or even thousands of dollars every month on substantial SEO efforts.

But there’s one factor that most SEO experts agree on: once a visitor lands on your company website or landing page, it’s up to the design and the content to win them over. Once SEO has done its job and delivered traffic to your website, it’s up to your website — and your website alone — to convert that traffic into new customers. That makes your website content extremely important to your business’s success.

What Can I Do to Make My Site More Effective?

To make your business website work harder for you, optimize your website content. Also known as “on-page SEO,” this technique is completely under your control, so there’s absolutely no reason for you not to pursue this strategy. When it works, your SEO campaigns work better and you’ll likely not only attract more traffic, but you’ll also convert more of that traffic.

Improving your on-page SEO requires several tweaks to your website content. Follow these nine tips:

1. Improve your on-page formatting. Use bolded and italicized text for emphasis. Ray Access uses a strategy of bolding one phrase or sentence in every paragraph on the page to help a visitor scan the page and understand the gist of the page.
    
2. Create on-page lists. When you add either bullet lists or numbered lists, as appropriate, you not only make information easier to grasp, but you also add whitespace to the page, which alleviates eye strain. No reader wants to see a large block of text: it discourages reading. Instead, for positive on-page SEO, make every page inviting and accessible.
    
3. Include subheadings. Break up your website pages with distinct sections, introduced by bolded subheadings. If you make each subhead a question — such as: What’s the Best Website Creation Tool? or Are Subheads Necessary? — you may even compete for Google’s Featured Snippet: which is a huge boost to your site’s SEO.
    
4. Proofread your website content before publishing. This tip goes for your blog posts too. In fact, never publish anything to your site before you let an editor or experienced writer review it. Avoid misspellings of names, places and products. Even though many visitors scan rather than read word-for-word, missing words or bad grammar leaves a bad impression.
    
5. Add internal links within your site. Add links from one page to another within your website. This on-page SEO technique improves the rating of each page on your site. It also connects the whole site.
    
6. Add external links to your site. It may sound counterintuitive to link to another website from your company’s site, but as long as you don’t link to a competitor, the tactic can actually strengthen your site. Add links to external authoritative sites, which builds trust. Additionally, search engines count external links as a positive, especially if you link to an expert site, such as your industry professional association or another recognized neutral site, such as a university.
    
7. Use effective, attractive design. Any design that looks dated dates your company. Visitors may not buy from a company whose website looks like it hasn’t been updated since 1998, especially if you’re supposed to be a modern, up-to-date company. How your site looks matters to your on-page SEO.
    
8. Include original graphics and photographs. All graphics increase the design of your business website, but using original artwork and photography add interest. Have you ever recognized a stock photo on a website? It doesn’t stop you from continuing to read (or scan), but the stock photo may stick in your mind. How else, you may ask yourself, have they cut corners? Original artwork builds trust.
    
9. Improve your page-loading speed. If your site takes more than three seconds to load, you have a potential problem. That delay gives would-be visitors time to click away and perhaps end up on your competitor’s website. To optimize on-page SEO, limit the size of your images. Link to videos instead of embedding them into your site. Test how fast your pages load and adjust accordingly.

You can complete all these simple on-page SEO steps by yourself, but contact Ray Access if you need help with your website content or blog. The best content communicates clearly, provides valuable information and engages your audience. That’s the kind of content Ray Access provides.

Ray Access is a content marketing firm that delivers targeted words to empower your business. Contact us about your specific project to receive a quote or discuss your needs. We write website copy, blog posts, e-newsletters and more. Everything we do is thoroughly researched, professionally edited and guaranteed original.