SEO – Onpage
Onpage Search Engine Optimization?
When you talk about Onpage SEO, you are referring to what is on your website, what you more or less have 100% control over. The content, loading speed (frontend), internal linking, meta texts and so on. For the best loading speed, it also applies that the server your website is hosted on is well optimized. The website can be as good as technical in any way, but with a lack of server environment / web hosting, everything can be too futile. Keep this in mind when planning which web host to choose. If you want to maximize the possibility of better rankings in the search engines, we do not recommend you to choose the cheapest option. That’s not always true but it’s usually true – you get what you pay for.
Below we present a few different concepts and other information that belongs to Onpage SEO. Read for your own interest.
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The content is without a doubt the most important thing when it comes to Onpage and also wins in the long run, but it is also important that the website is user-friendly so that visitors can easily absorb the content.
Building a website and writing content that makes a user stay on the website can also be included in Onpage SEO, it really means that the content is well structured and easy to get through. Images and other effects can increase curiosity and make the user stay longer.
Google does not know how long my visitors stay?
We do not know for sure through which channels Google collects information but one thing is for sure and it is when Google Analytics is used that can have a positive as well as negative effect.
Google Analytics is a free tool that Google provides with the intention of being able to track how much traffic you get to your website, which devices are used and from which channels the visits come from. We have no evidence that Google Analytics could affect your website’s ranking in Google search, but we can be fairly sure that Google collects and uses the data they receive from users who visit your website in order to determine how relevant your website is to its visitors.
If the majority of your visitors leave your page within, for example, 5 seconds (also called bounce rate), it can be a direct disadvantage to have Google Analytics integrated. At the same time, the opposite can be true, that is, your visitors stay on your page longer than your competitors – then you can get a positive effect from it. Therefore, not only the content is really the most important, but more the content goes hand in hand with how it is presented. There are many different techniques that can be used in order to keep the interest of the visitor.
A high bounce rate means that many visitors to your website leave it shortly after arriving. So there is something negative – a low bounce rate is preferable and it can be achieved by having a professional, user-friendly and fast website with interesting and rewarding content.
User Experience or User Interface includes how well your website interacts with the user. Some examples of bad UX are having more than 3 different colors, disturbing effects, not mobile-adapted or responsive, too large text (or too small text), difficult-to-read text fonts, a menu that is difficult to navigate and so on. The list can be made as long as you like.
Today, there are systems that allow almost anyone to “create” a website, with just a few mouse clicks, but knowledge in UX / UI is not something that is natural in humans. You may think that your product looks professional when you have finished clicking with the mouse, but the fact is that it is rarely true for your users.
An H1 tag is an HTML tag that should be the common thread of the page itself, what the content will be about. If the content is about BMW, the title should be BMW. It should also include the phrase (s) you want the page to appear in Google search. “Reasonable” length of the title, for example 1-5 words.
Only 1 H1 tag per underside. The other tags H2-H6 can be used several times on one and the same page, but Google will not put as much emphasis on these.
It is important to review these and check that they are used in the right place and in the right way.
Sitemap is usually an XML file consisting of the page hierarchy of the website.
It is used to “facilitate” search bots (programs that read the content of your website).
If the sitemap is created correctly, it can help search engines like Google to index your website faster.
Alt attribute is an attribute that can be defined for images on your website. It is used by search engines to determine what the image shows. A crawler cannot see what the image shows or how it is supposed to convey to a human visitor.
The original purpose of the alt attribute was to give blind people using a screen reader information about what was on the page.
The text entered in the alt attribute is also displayed if the image cannot be loaded and presented to the client.
A general guideline is to write the ALT text as if you were to explain to a blind person what the picture shows.
Meta-texts are texts that are not visible to the user when they visit your website, but they are frequently used by the search engines and their search results. With meta texts, we can “decide” which text should be visible when someone finds you when searching on, for example, Google.
If there is no meta text, the search engines will take the text they consider relevant. The same applies if you try to enter a meta text that is not relevant to other content on the page.
Meta texts are also important in terms of how you attract a visitor to click to your particular website. Here you can strategically write a metatext that attracts clicks.
Pagespeed refers to how quickly your website loads on the client / browser that your visitor uses. A slow page is often boycotted by visitors and can be perceived as extremely frustrating and unprofessional.
Did you know that the speed or “pagespeed” of your website is a decisive factor in how good rankings you get at Google?
If the website is simple and does not really need any advanced functionality but is still slow, well then it indicates shortcomings of the person who developed the product or the server environment where your website is located at.
Internal linking is just as it sounds, links that lead to other subpages of your website. You may have a home page with a link that redirects the user to the “About Us” subpage – it’s an internal link.
Just as you might suspect, internal linking is also an important factor that can determine what ranking you get in the search engines. Now we do not mean that you should have a lot of internal links on your website, but it is more about having a “good” internal link.
It is not always necessary to have internal linking, but if you have a subpage that covers several areas broadly and you also have several subpages that treat each area in more detail, it may be appropriate to link to the different subpages from the page which covers the areas broadly and concisely. This also makes Google see the links as relevant – it comes from a relevant source. If a page describes “tomatoes” and you link from there to a page that deals with “cars”, it is not a great internal link. However, if the content on the page is about “Tomatoes and tomato sauce” and you link to a page that describes “tomato sauce” a little more developed, it can be considered a good link.
Performing an internal link that allows the user to access all content regardless of which subpage they are on can also be a good internal link.
Try to imagine a good internal link as a common thread that runs between different subpages.