On Page Optimization Tips for SEO Success – 156

Transcript For On Page Optimization Tips for SEO Success – 156

Jesse Dolan: Google shows individual webpages and their search results. So in order to gain rankings and have your pages show at the top, you have to optimize your individual pages.

Welcome back to Local SEO Tactics where we bring tips and tricks to get found online. I’m your host, Jesse Dolan. Today, we’re going to be talking about optimizing your pages. And we mean page by page, individual pages, not your website, globally speaking. When you do a searching Google, Google shows you individual web pages.

I think I mentioned on the show, but if you sit back for a second and think about, it’s pretty amazing that you can go to the Google machine, type in a keyword, type in a search, whatever it is, and of the billions of pages that are out there, Google fairly instantly shows you a result of the top five, top 10, whatever it is pages that match your intent for what you search for. Pretty remarkable.

Now, when you consider this. You have to optimize your pages specifically for that keyword, for that intent, for that thing that you want to be found for how you want to be found for it, when you want to be found for it, where you want to be found for it, all these things. You have to think about those things and optimize your individual pages within that context to be found. So you stand out from the millions and billions of pages that are out there in the group of database to be shown.

So we’re going to go through here a quick list, a refresher, some of the stuff we’ve talked about on various episodes, but here we’re just going to revisit how to optimize in a new visual page. What are the key things that you want to be looking for on that page? What are the key areas that you want to optimize on that page? This is going to apply to every page on your website that you want to get ranked. Your product pages, your service pages, even your homepage to an extent. Although, as we’ve talked before, you don’t really want your homepage to be the main ranking page on your website. That’s more of a gateway. However, your homepage will rank for various things. So you do want to keep those things in mind and attack this in that same way.

So one thing that is predicated overlaying all of this is, you don’t want to be spammy. I’m going to go through some areas here that you want to optimize, that you want to work your keyword into or related keywords, similar things there. You don’t want to be spammy. You don’t want to worry about keyword density or getting the exact phrase and every single one of these and things like that. We’re going to point out the areas that are special on the page that you want to give some attention to. And we say give attention to, it means be intentional. Using the words that are your keyword that are related to your keyword and being specific. You don’t want to waste these areas with generic texts or texts that really doesn’t have anything to do with what you want to be ranked for. So that being said, again, right in good proper grammar, good readability, not be in spammy and have your intent in mind for all of these.

So with that, first thing you’re really going to want to think about here is, what is the intent of this page? Are you creating a page that’s promoting your product or service or your company, maybe the service area that you’re in, where you serve, where you pull clients from? Is this a how to page? Are you presenting information in a how to in a step-by-step type fashion? Is this like a white paper, very informational stats, facts, things like that, if that’s on the page? Think about how that’s going to be presented.

Is this a story? Is this a list, a top 10 list, a top three list, a top seven list, three things to remember when or five things to do before you blank, things like that? Keep those things in mind and have a rough idea and outline of how the page is going to be presented. We’re not going to be talking here about how to creatively write a page or how to present a good page in that sense. But it is important that you think about that, because if I’m putting together a page that’s a how to or a top three, or stats and facts about whatever the topic is, I want to make sure that my intent of that page and that description of that page shows through in some of these key areas. First area to pay attention to here is going to be your page title.

More often than not, that’s the top link that’s going to show in the Google search results. And I don’t mean the top like the number one ranking. I mean when your webpage is showing in the Google results, you’re going to see a page title and then a snippet description of content on that page. That page title is going to be the headline for your page on Google. If you have a how to, again, or a top three, or whatever the intent of your page is, that should be communicated in that page title somehow. So when people are scrolling through the results, if you’re looking for something that is a guide, I want to see that’s a guide, or a how to or step-by-step in that page title. You’re going to get the click. Even if you’re not ranked at the top, people are going to see that you’re providing the type of information that they want, and you’re going to get that click. And over time, that’s going to help your rankings and improve your rankings for that particular keyword, that query and that type of intent.

So think about the kind of page you’re constructing. And make sure in your page title, you’re presenting that forward mixed in with the keywords. If it’s a top three list on how to, get ready for the spring for landscaping. Not just, hey, spring landscaping, preparations, but top three things to do, or how to right and things like that. Have they be part of your page title.

In addition to that, your meta description, although not always shown now in the Google search results is something that can be shown in the search results. And you needs to have that similar tone and similar context and similar intent shining through pro tip here. When you insert your meta description on your page, that’s something you want to be intentional for.

Also try to have that be within the first paragraph of your page, if possible, or somewhere high on the page. We often find that Google will rewrite the description, the snippet that it’s shown on search results to fit the intent. Maybe it’ll pull a better portion from your page, or maybe even rewrite it a little bit, but we find that if you want to try to force that description, having it be your actual meta description that you’re inputting in the page and be an actual paragraph towards the top of that page has a higher degree success that you can control what Google’s showing there. So same thing there, make sure the intent comes through, make sure the keywords are in there.

Those are the two main things that you’re going to want to put a little energy in thought into because before somebody even gets to your webpage, that’s what they’re going to see in Google. So these are big SEO ranking factors, but in addition to that, their CTR or clickthrough rate or conversion factors getting somebody from Google onto your webpage, right? Let’s keep that in mind. All right, now we’re on the actual page here. We’re going to get a little bit more technical going through some of the page structure and how we’re going to want to see that laid out. So your page title, you’re going to want your keyword and your page title, addition to that, your main headline, your H one a should be at the top of the page.

Hopefully like the first thing that’s on the page for human beings and Google to be able to scrape and read, you’re going to want your keyword and a similar statement in that some people like to match whatever my page title is. I want that to be the H one you can do that. I would have them be closely matched if they’re not identical, sometimes that doesn’t make sense for it to be identical, , right. The top of your page, sometimes you, maybe you can have your page title B your H one within WordPress, depending on your theme and things like that, but you’re going to want to carry the same keywords and the same intent in your H one. So when people hit that page, they know right spot, you’re communicating to Google that these keywords and this intent of the page is very important.

It’s your primary headline. Again, if you think about a newspaper, that’s the headline at the top tells you what this entire page is about, right. And the content underneath it should be related to that as well. So make sure your, your H one is very descriptive with your keyword and the intent. Likewise, your additional subheadings as you go down the page should play off that as well. Here’s where you can work in that keyword again, like your H twos, your H threes, or related keywords. , things like that, wherever you’re using a headline, don’t use it just for graphical reasons, but that’s even the right word for it. I don’t know, but like aesthetics and design in, right? Understand that when you’re making content on your page, a headline, whether it’s an H one H two H three or whatever, you’re calling that out to Google and any, , bot that scrapes your website saying this is important, right?

Again, just like a newspaper. This isn’t just regular old text. This is a headline or a sub-headline. It carries extra weight. Make sure that when you’re typing that and inputting that into your page, you think about it in that regard, be very intentional with the words that you’re putting into your, your headlines, your H tags.
Now, as you go underneath each headline, you’re going to have usually like a photo, maybe a video along with the text, the supporting text. And we want that same convention to follow suit. If you have your headline up at the top underneath that, if you have a photo, you’re going to want to make sure the name of that, the actual file name has that keyword in there and matches that same intent and that same topic of your headline. Same if it’s a video, hopefully the URL or that video, if you’re linking to on YouTube, the title of that, , just again, some things come through and you use those same keywords and then the text that’s underneath that again, you have your, your headline photo or video, and now text should all be about the same topic, have the same context and intent and should contain your keyword within that as well.

We would definitely want to see the keyword being in the first sentence or two of that supporting text. So at Google’s seeing it right away and human beings are seeing that right away, too, catch you, make you aware that you’re in the right spot, right. And connect the dots with that. Now, as we go through the text, and this is going to be generally speaking on the entire, not just this first paragraph, right, right. After your headline, you’re going to want to flex any special text that you can on the page. So here we’re talking about bold, its underline, things like that. If you, if you think about it, you have all this content on the page, you have this text on the page, the body text of your page of your post, whatever it is of your article. If you put something in bold, that means that it’s special.

You’re calling it out. If you put something in ITX, that’s special, you’re calling it out, right. Things like that. So leverage that for your exact keyword or for related keywords, things that are , , around it that you want to build context for, make sure you’re taking it. Advantage of those. You’re telling Google that this is special. It’s bold, right? Things like that. Another area that you’re going to want to leverage on these pages is lists. Whether they be bullet pointed lists, numbered lists, things like that. Again, as Google’s reading this page, they can see that your list is special. It’s not regular text, it’s a list. Put your keyword in that list, put related key keywords in that list. If there’s steps, right? If you have a big article on how to, if there’s a bunch of paragraphs and steps, make sure you have a summary that just here’s the five steps that we’re going to break down an order.

There’s lots of ways to incorporate lists and bulleted lists and number lists into your content. And you want to take advantage of that, make sure your keyword is in those as you get further it on the page FAQs, maybe towards the bottom. We like to mix those in towards the bottom at pages, usually a great way to expand on content. Maybe even provide some internal linking to other parts of your website. If you have some FAQs where you’re answering questions, about the topic that your page is developed around. Maybe you have another page that continues on to something related, right? And that’s part of an FAQ. You can embed inter excuse me, you can embed internal links within those FAQs. And it’s very natural process to read. And those internal links are also something that’s going to be important for your website.

That’s how you start to maybe silo pages, draw intent and provide relationships between those pages to Google. So as it reads your content and crawls your page, it can spider out and find more information and develop that backstory that context, if you will. So try to embed the OS somewhere in your page, where it’s relevant. You don’t want to overdo it, just sprinkle in a couple here and there, where it makes sense and where it adds value. If you think about it as a reader, like, would this be a great place to jump over and continue this thought, right? That’s not on a related topic again. That’s why we prefer FAQs for doing that. It’s just an easy way to do that there. Hey everyone, just a quick message about our free SEO audit tool on local SEO tactics.com.

And we’ll get right back to the show. If you haven’t taken advantage of it yet, go on out to local SEO tactics.com/free SEO audit, or look for the yellow button up in the top, right corner, click that. And it’s going to take just a couple seconds. You enter in the page that you want to optimize what you’re looking for, the audits to score against, enter you’re in that page, entering the keyword you’re looking to get optimized for and enter in your email address, click the button. And it’s going to take a few seconds and then it’s going to send you off a PDF report via email. It’s a great report. It’s going to give you an overall score of some vital SEO areas for that page and for your website at large, even though it’s auditing this page, that’s going to tell you some of the good things that happening, some of the bad things that are happening too, you can give you basically a checklist of some things that you need to show up and what you can do to improve your SEO for that page, for that keyword that you’re auditing.

Now, you can use this as many times as you want. You can do multiple keywords, multiple pages, multiple keywords on the same page. You can even use this to check against your competitors if you want to do a little reverse engineering, see how they’re scoring for a certain keyword, what they may be doing good, that you’re not and some things to improve there. So lots of different ways to use it completely free. Again, go on the localseotactics.com/freeseoaudit, or look for the yellow button in the top right corner of the website.

And then to round it out, we usually like to include the keyword in the end of the page somewhere. If you think about it, what’s the first thing you read, what’s the last thing you read, we haven’t tested this. I have no stats to back this up, but we find that we have some pretty good results, making sure that we’re repeat that keyword and hammer on it a little bit again towards the end of the page, just helps, that reinforces this is what it’s about and get, do that one last little push about the topic.

So there you go. A quick one here, just some real quick tips on how to attack a page, some things to keep in mind, again, to reset, your page title, your page description, your headlines, your subheadlines, images and videos, your body text. And within that text, special characters, bullets talics, underlines, bold, things like that. Internal links, adding FAQs, adding more context around that page. Just think about this. If you sit down, if you’re writing an article, go ahead and write out that article, get the creative writing process out of the way. When you put that into your page, come back through this list, go through it and make sure you’re leveraging your keyword in these areas.

So many times when we’re evaluating a new website, we can have a great piece of content and a great article on that page. But there just seems to be a lack of intent around these special areas, right outside of the normal text, to call out to Google and everybody else on what this page is truly about. So hopefully that helps you out. Keep that in mind when you’re writing your pages, writing your posts, or even if you’re going through and updating your website, just to be intentional in those areas. And you should have some good victories. All right. So hopefully that helps you out. Just a, again, a general overview on how to construct a page, some of the primary things to look for and such up for success for your SEO.

Again, remember Google shows us web pages, not websites. You’re going to want to do this on the pages that you want to be ranked. Yeah, it can be labor intensive, but as we often say, optimizing something isn’t easy, right? If you think about it, you don’t paint with a wide brush and optimize something. It should be granular, should be a little intensive and should take some time. If you have any questions on any of this, feel free to ask. You can always reach out to us. As , a lot of our episodes. We talk about questions that people send in and we provide the answers here, right on the show, go on out to local as you O tactics.com, scroll onto the bottom, click the button for submit a question and we’re happy to expand on this topic, any fine nuance or really anything else that you want to talk about related to local SEO.

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