4 OnPage Rules to Keep you in Line!!

It goes without saying in the recent years the success of a business is because of their online presence whether be it in social media or representing their brand in the search engine results. Google and other search engines are often updating their algorithms to cope with the amount of spam and doorway pages which people “used” to rank for. Lots of aspects have changed, for example the most frowned upon: “keyword stuffing” or “ads above the fold” replaced with new approaches like TF*IDF and using unique relevant content instead.

We rarely see doorway pages or thin content in the first page of serps based on the reason that generally the content is irrelevant to the search term. But as time goes by with more updates and new algorithms it takes a lot more than having good content on your page to be able to rank on the first page. This is where the 4 onpage factors comes into play to make sure you can create a valuable webpage that your users and search engine bots can trust.

However, a great way to make a new landing page for a website has changed so often in the past and still now we are finding new and better ways to optimise each individual page. We have collaborated 4 onpage factors which best demonstrates what you have to do to secure the best landing page for your website. The checklist below illustrates factors which you should take into account when structuring your web page which will make sure cover the basics at least for onpage optimisation.

#1. Title Tag:

The title tag is the main text that describes the web document you’re working on. It’s one of the main ranking factors as it appears in three key places:

• Browser

The title tag shows up often at the top of browser windows if you’re using the likes of Google Chrome and in the tabs. People tend to use the title tags as a reference to know which page they are viewing.

• SERPS

When you use the keywords you want to rank for in the title tag, search engines will recognize this and highlight them appearing bold in the serps. This generally leads to a higher click through rate to your page.

• External Websites

Websites or social media platforms often use the title tag as a reference to your page. So the user knows before clicking what exactly the web document is about. Especially for social media it’s important to make the title enticing so it will be more likely shared or retweeted.

When deciding which title tag to use, remember to keep the pixel length of it within the search engine guidelines. The most ideal pixel length should be in range of 449-512px wide, anything more than this and you will risk your title tag being cut short or reconstructed automatically from the search engine to fit their restrictions.

Illustration 1: Pixel Count

#2. Headlines (H1 – Hx):

We are often witnessing first hand the incorrect usage of headlines on the page. In some circumstances people simply don’t use a H1 which is just like reading a book without the chapters. Let us put it into perspective for you: you’re reading a book, you have the Title (Title tag), contents page (sitemap) Chapters (H1) Sub Chapters (H2-Hx). The other typical mistake with H1 and H2s is that webmasters don’t use them in the right order, we are finding more examples where the h3 is set before the h2 which is not useful for search engines when crawling your document.

Marc Purtell from Search Engine Journal said:

”it is absolutely still valuable to spend some time and attention on the H1 tag.”

Now, understandably when you have a large site sometimes may seem impossible keep track on H1’s, H2’s etc. However, with our Focus tool you can see the total breakdown of the page, but concentrating on Headers take a look at the example below:

Illustration 2: Using Multiple H1’s – one at the top is enough (best)

Illustration 3: Not using the H1 properly, then when doing so jumping straight to H4

By the 2 examples above we can clearly that this has become a trailing issue. Use Focus to analyse that new page you been working on, to make sure it is 100% optimised. Get it right from the start to save you time and effort in the future when you have to go back and fix your mistake.

#3. Alt-Images:

With every new page it’s always more satisfying for the reader to have images, so they don’t end up reading bulk text. The use of images, infographics and iframes are great ways to keep the reader from bouncing away from the page. When using the alt-attribute correctly you should clearly describe to your uses what you want to convey with using the image, So incase the image does no show for some readers the image is replaced with your text. But, be careful not to over emphasise them, as Alt-attributes are important and rewarding if you do it right. Thanks for the guys over at Hobo Marketing for the quote.

JohnMu from Google explains:

“As the Googlebot does not see the images directly, we generally concentrate on the information provided in the “alt” attribute. Feel free to supplement the “alt” attribute with “title” and other attributes if they provide value to your users!”

What We See:

What Search Engines See:
<img src=”grumpy-cat.jpg” alt=”Grumpy Cat” />

Here is another screenshot, of how OnPage points out the areas which need working on when identifying that the alt attribute is missing:

Illustration 4: Result = someone has a lot of work to do! Make the alt-attribute as soon as you upload the image!

#4. Content Body:

We all know the value of unique relevant content and doing your correct keyword research by now as every SEOer under the sun has wrote about it. However, not quite the way we do with using our own in-house created tool. If you haven’t heard about our TF*IDF tool, you should have, but without further ado let’s dive straight into it!

First lets settle the difference between keyword research and keyword inspiration. There are many great tools on the market which provide keyword research, pointing out which keywords you should try and rank for. With this method people tend to use the keywords with the most searches and in turn stuffing them in the web document to tell the search engines that this word is the most important term and you are trying to rank for this keyword.

OnPage.org on the otherhand focuses on keyword inspiration, by showing you the top keywords used from the top 15 websites in Google Serps for the specific search term you have inquest. You can create a text report for one or two word combinations, opening up the chances of finding long tail keywords to inspire you (See example below) You are also able to enter the complete Url but it will only analyse that page. The TF*IDF is a mathematical calculation, therefore it’s applicable to any language in the world.

Illustration 5: Term Frequency * Inverse Document Frequency

Above it is simple to see which words carry more weight tham others. If you aim to use the keywords the right amount of times you will hit the sweet spot (within the green boundaries) but if you over shoot this, it will appear to spammy. How to manage the ideal amount is displayed in our text assistant as follows:

Illustration 6: TF*IDF – Text Assistant

It is important to understand that TF*IDF was created to provide you with keyword inspiration when writing your content. Please make sure that we try to evaluate the best keywords for you. There might be “frame-keywords” or other words like “impress”. Please keep in mind to use your brain :-).

tl;dr

So to conclude from this article, you have 4 major onpage factors to relate to as a checklist when building a landing page from a non technical point of view. There are over 100 other factors to count in when creating the perfect website addressing more technical approaches all of which you can find on the dashboard of OnPage. But if you need to create a page quickly and within time restraints, you will find it useful to follow these steps.

If you have yet to create an account with us – create an OnPage.org FREE account now, designed to help support smaller websites with up to 100URLs.
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