How To

4 On-Page SEO Tactics to Improve Google Rankings

You might have heard that search engine optimization (SEO) is a long game — and for the most part, that’s true. However, it’s possible to improve Google rankings faster when you implement Google best practices.

The best way to improve Google rankings is to keep your end user in mind and optimize content for human visitors and Google’s crawlers.

4 tips for improving your Google ranking in 2023

Your site’s Google page rank relies on on-page, off-page, and technical SEO tactics. For the sake of this post, we’re focusing on on-page SEO, which includes your page URL, content, meta descriptions, headings, keywords, and more.

Read on to learn how you can increase your Google ranking for free with a few simple tweaks to your on-page SEO.

1. Conduct a site audit

Before you begin optimizing your site, it’s good to know where you stand, SEO-wise. After all, you might be doing great! If that’s the case, you may want to focus your efforts on your off-page SEO or technical SEO.

You don’t need to become an armchair expert to do a comprehensive SEO site audit. A great way to find out where you’re excelling and which areas may need improvement with your on-page SEO is with a free SEO audit tool like ours.

Our WebFX SEO checker is a site audit tool that tells you how you can improve your SEO. It’ll prioritize what you should improve first based on its SEO impact.

2. Use low-competition, high CPC keywords

While it’s one thing to find relevant keywords, it’s another to find long-tail, low-competition keywords that have a high cost-per-click (CPC) rate.

You’re more likely to earn a click with these long-tail keywords because they’re more niche and specific. With long-tail keywords, your user is more likely to make a purchase.

So, how do you find these golden nugget keywords? Here are a few ways to find the right keywords to use in your web content:

• Keyword finders: Use keyword finders like SEO.com, LSI Graph, or Keywords Everywhere. Check out some of our other favorite keyword research tools. You can also find trending topics that aren’t as competitive yet with a tool like ExplodingTopics.com.
• Google features: Check out Google’s “People Also Ask” section and bold related keywords, which show up at the bottom of the SERPs page, to see what questions people ask related to your keyword.

Another way to improve Google rankings and your keyword usage is to incorporate latent semantic indexing (LSI) keywords into your page content.

For example, suppose you write a blog post about your grandma’s famous chocolate chip cookie recipe. In that case, Google’s SEO.com’s research tool will look for associated keywords to understand your content. Keywords for chocolate chip cookie recipes might include brown sugar, Pilsbury, baking sheet, eggs, and measuring cups.

3. Enhance your content for crawlers and visitors

Content is king for a reason! Your written content should deliver on what it promises in its headline, or your site’s bounce rate could take a turn for the worse. This can hurt your SERP rankings.

If your H1 title incorporates a long-tail keyword about improving Google rankings, write straightforward content that provides that information, like we’re doing now!

Here are some quick, easy ways to enhance your content, increase dwell time, and ultimately improve Google rankings for your site pages:

• Make sure your content is anywhere from 1,000 to 2,000 words.
• Include informative headings and bite-sized sections that readers can easily scan.
• Embed videos into your content to increase dwell time.
• Include bullet points for important, information-dense sections.
• Add a hook, whether it’s an email opt-in freebie, case study, or infographic.
• Invest in copywriting services to take your content to the next level.

To enhance your content for Google crawlers, you can:

• Update your page’s URL to include your long-tail keyword.
• Include your keyword in an H1, H2, and possibly H3 tag.
• Mention your main keyword in the first and last 100 words of your post.
• Use internal links so crawlers can go from A to B on your site.
• Build strong backlinks to enhance brand authority.
• Create and submit an XML sitemap to Google’s Search Console.
• Make sure your site is secure with an SSL certificate.
• Fix any broken links or use 301 redirects.
• Compress images for smaller file sizes using an image compressor.

4. Use keyword-optimized images

The images you choose for your site’s content matter. Use Google-friendly, keyword-optimized images to one-up your competition. Google’s Vision AI helps you find or create images Google will associate with specific keywords to improve your Google Image page rank.

If you’re in an industry that relies heavily on images for your craft, goods, or services, search for relevant keywords on Google images to see which images Google associates with them.

For example, if you plan to snap photos for a blog post about your grandma’s famous chocolate chip cookie recipe, head over to Google images and search “chocolate chip cookie recipe.” You’ll notice something right away — many of the photos look the same.

The images are primarily aerial shots of a stack of cookies on a baking sheet or a plate. That’s because cookies are the focal point of all these images, allowing Google to easily associate them with the search “chocolate chip cookie recipe.”

So, if you’re creating custom photos for your recipe article, an image of you placing a sheet of cookies into the oven won’t perform as well as an aerial shot of that same tray of baked cookies.

Vision AI knows a cookie when it sees it, and the cookies become harder to identify when something else is the focal point of the image.

Ready to take your SEO game to the next level? Our SEO specialists can help!

Partner with our SEO experts at WebFX for an in-depth, comprehensive SEO audit. We’ll score your site based on all of its SEO aspects — on-page, off-page, and technical SEO.

Our team of digital marketing professionals can show you where you’re doing well and how you can tweak your strategy to improve Google rankings and grow your online presence.

Contact us online or call us at 888-601-5359 to speak one-on-one with a WebFX strategist today!

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