Search engine success #2: On-Page factors

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Search engine success #2: On-Page factors

Search engines love good quality, fresh content. Repay the love with careful and consistent attention to the content of your website.

This is Part 2 of a 3-part series. Missed Part 1?

One of the criteria search engines use when deciding how to rank your website are ‘On-Page factors‘. On-page factors are the things that the search engines find on the pages of your website. This means text content, and search engines love rich text content.

Give yourself a fighting chance by paying close attention to the quantity, quality, placement and freshness of the content of your website. Here are 7 vital pointers…

1. Keyword phrases

Think about the words and phrases that potential customers might use to search for your website. These are ‘keyword phrases‘. It’s vitally important that these words and phrases are contained in your website pages. Choosing just the right words and phrases can make an enormous difference to the success of your search engine campaign…

2. Devise a list of phrases to target

At Definition, we often embark on a dedicated programme of keyword research, to determine which words/phrases to ‘target’. It’s undoubtedly a precise science, but if you want to do it yourself, you won’t go far wrong brainstorming a list of a few key phrases that are particularly relevant to your business. Try to especially think of phrases that the competition might not be using – these niche phrases are far more valuable and will give you that competitive edge.

Common sense can dictate which keywords to target – if your site sells ‘widgets’ to local car mechanics in Hampshire, it’d probably be best to include the words “widgets”, “car” and “Hampshire” on your list! It’s best to list actual phrases, rather than individual words: it’s more likely visitors will use meaningful phrases when looking for your website or service.

3. Location, location, location

Search engines do place more importance on text found in certain key parts of a web page. These include:

• Page titles
• Main headings
• Within the first few hundred words of the page

Increase your chance of search engine success by ensuring that your chosen keywords phrases are contained within these valuable parts of the page. All Definition‘s customers are given full control over the text content of these important areas, allowing you to easily maximise your search engine opportunities.

Don’t go overboard though – the page must remain readable to your human website visitors too, not just search engines.

4. Horses for courses

It’s important to choose keyword phrases to target that are relevant to each individual page on your website. For instance, on the home page it’s wise to target general phrases that are applicable to all aspects of your business. But don’t be shy to target more specific keywords on pages that contain more specialised content – for example, your customer service page, or a page dedicated to a particular kind of product.

5. Well-coded, well-structured pages

Search engines love well-coded and well-structured pages. Make sure that your web designer has ensured your website pages contain no coding mistakes or errors, and that they’re built using the latest standards. Get a firm guarantee that the pages of your website are lightweight, clean, and boast a proper content structure – the search engines will thank you for it, and reward you with higher rankings.

6. High ratio of ‘content’ to ‘website code’

The search engines don’t actually see your beautifully designed web pages – they read the ugly underlying website code instead! If they have to wade through acres of website code to get to the actual text content they’ll rank your site less well than a site which uses much less code. It’s a method that we at Definition follow by default in building all our clients’ websites – and it’s one less thing for you to worry about. Furthermore, we make sure that the content appears first, before any code, making Google’s job of indexing your website even easier.

7. Readable, compelling, fresh content

We’ve left the most important point till last. Search engines adore good quality, well-written, relevant content. Guess what? Your visitors love that too. Make sure that you keep your website regularly filled with fresh, interesting content, filled with rich keyword phrases pertinent to your business. You can do this yourself, or you can hire a dedicated web copywriter, trained in optimising web content for search engines. Either way, it’s a winning strategy on all levels.

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