5 Elements Of On-Page SEO You Shouldn’t Overlook | Pennink Productions

by Liz Seyi Digital marketing manager

The ‘on-page’ aspect of search engine optimisation (SEO) – in other words, the optimisation of individual webpages to help elevate a website up the search engine rankings – will always be a key part of broader website SEO marketing. But not all of the things you probably should be doing in on-page SEO are things that you’ll actually be doing right now.

Let us take a look at just five components of on-page SEO that you definitely ought not to overlook or ignore in 2021 – at least if you want to achieve the best possible results.

1. Using URLs that are easy to understand

You might not spend much time thinking about your website’s URLs, simply on the grounds that your site’s human visitors are unlikely to spend much time looking at them. But URLs that are unnecessarily long and complicated – for example, that contain lots of numbers or that are very ‘clickbaity’ – can be confusing for the Google bots that are attempting to index your pages.

It’s best if your site’s page URLs contain just a few words that succinctly communicate the subject of the page. Taking the opportunity to insert the main keyword into the URL is likely to further help the page to rank strongly in the search engines.

2. Including low-competition, not just high-competition keywords

Yes, we’re sure you’d love to get your Ruislip restaurant’s website ranking well for ‘eateries in London’… but there’s also a good chance this would prove an almost hopelessly broad, and competitive, keyword to try to rank for. Optimising for a long-tail keyword such as ‘vegan restaurants near Pinner’, which isn’t searched so often, might be likelier to bring you meaningful results.

Those are just rough examples, but you get the idea. Using the relevant keyword tools out there, it’s easier than you think to find low-competition keywords that are relevant to your brand and content. And they can be a powerful part of your website SEO marketing mix, especially for outmanoeuvring local competitors.

3. Ensuring outbound links open in a new browser tab

It’s probable that from time to time, you will be linking to various invaluable external sites across your site’s pages – trusted industry bodies, for instance, or sources of insightful statistics. But much of the whole point of on-page SEO is to keep visitors engaged on your site for as long as possible. So, what can you do about this?

A great oft-overlooked tip here is to embed your external links so that they open in a new tab or window when the user clicks on them. That way, the reader will be able to easily flick back to your site, after temporarily viewing the external page.

4. Tidying up duplicate content

Content on your pages that has been duplicated from elsewhere – whether other pages of yours, or even other sites – isn’t a great look. Even more crucially from the point of view of website SEO marketing, it sends a message to Google’s search bots that your site’s content isn’t valuable, because visitors can find the same information somewhere else.

This is why it is so important to produce content for your website’s pages that is unique, valuable and relevant to your target demographic. It also needs to be geared towards what human users are searching for. Scrutinising your site’s titles, headers and copy will help you to rid your pages of inelegant and SEO-compromising duplicate content.

5. Optimising images

You only need to glance over almost any random webpage to appreciate how integral a role imagery plays in the user experience… but this all goes hand-in-hand with the SEO aspects, too. Indeed, you might be surprised by how powerful the optimisation of your on-site imagery is for bolstering your brand’s search visibility and attracting more traffic.

The process begins from the very start of the selection process for your images. This should include ensuring the images are in the right format, such as JPEG or PNG, for your needs, as well as making sure the image KB size is relatively small – but not so small that it impacts on the visible image quality. The key here is to strike that balance between quality and swift loading speed.

You may already know about some of these website SEO marketing tips, but how many of them are you implementing? If you feel that you could do with beefing up this aspect of your brand’s online presence, the PENNInk Productions team is available to talk through your needs.