The goal of any website is to optimize the user’s experience for their searches. This article discusses how to sustainably improve the Google ranking to stand out from the competition and attract new visitors.
What is on-page optimization?
On-page optimization is a component of search engine optimization (SEO), which refers to the increase of technical, content-related, and structural aspects of a website. It is the process of optimizing the entire website to ensure that the content is excellently crawled and indexed by Google as well as other search engines. There are factors that Google considers when analyzing a website which leads them to decide how it will be ranked for certain keywords.
What are the goals?
- A fast-loading website with unique content for a specific search term or topic
- Improving visibility in search engine results
- Improving the user experience
- Drawing attention to new web visitors
Five Factors to boost your rankings
1. Technology
Technical aspects of on-page optimization are very important, as they have a great effect on the user experience. Read more about SEO in this guide from Dagmar Marketing.
Pagespeed
Firstly, the loading speed of a website increases its usability. Secondly, a fast-loading website is a positive ranking signal for search engines. To have a positive loading experience from the very beginning, one should make sure to choose a good hosting provider, like IONOS.
Mobile Optimization
On-page optimization also includes improving websites for accessibility by mobile devices such as smartphones, because mobile-friendliness is a ranking factor for Google.
2. URL and website structure
Keyword position
The closer the keyword is to the domain name of a website, the better the ranking of the subpage. Keywords and their position in a URL are no longer relevant for its ranking. However, for users and search engines, the keywords in the URL are important to orientate themselves in terms of content.
URL Length
URL length plays a crucial role for search engines, as it can influence crawlability. Shorter URLs are more likely to be shared and clicked in search engine rankings than long URLs.
3. HTML body and text
The actual content is found on a website, which is where on-page optimization takes place as part of content optimization – including the use of synonyms, file names of images, structural elements like using bold and italic and heading tag for better capture of the heading structure.
4. Internal links
Internal links offer a great possibility to optimize subpages in a target-oriented manner. Since there are no spam filters for internal links, the anchor tags can be linked with the main keyword of the target page. In this way, the relevance of a subpage to a specific keyword can be strengthened.
5. Content
A very important area is the constant improvement of the website content. This does not only include the texts, but also images and videos. The content should be unique and satisfy the search needs of the target group. At the same time, it is important to clearly structure the text elements, for example with subheadings and h-tags.
Founder of Spark Nomad, Radical FIRE, Journalist
- Expertise: Personal finance and travel content
- Education: Bachelor of Economics at Radboud University, Master in Finance at Radboud University, Minor in Economics at Chapman University.
- Over 200 articles, essays, and short stories published across the web.
Experience: Marjolein Dilven is a journalist and founder of Spark Nomad, a travel platform, and Radical FIRE, a personal finance platform. Marjolein has a finance and economics background with a master’s in Finance. She has quit her job to travel the world, documenting her travels on Spark Nomad to help people plan their travels. Marjolein Dilven has written for publications like MSN, Associated Press, CNBC, Town News syndicate, and more.