On-page SEO must be on your new year resolution list if you want to have your business ranking on the first page of Google. With more than 3.5 billion searches performed every day, Google is continuously evolving to be the best, and SEO practices keep adapting to those changes. Hence, being always updated with the last news becomes a must-do to be at the top of the game — and rankings. In order to present how the 2019 scenario will look like, this article will explore the essential on-page SEO ranking factors in 2019 and the SEO services available to boost your rankings. Read on, and indulge in a well-rounded on page SEO overview that will help you to understand better the ever-changing SEO world.
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Essential SEO on-page ranking factors for Google in 2019
Every year, Google updates and adds SEO on-page ranking factors. Overall, there are 200 ranking signals that establish organic search page ranking — including domain-related factors, on-page factors, off-page factors, site-level factors and others. This article will focus on
The term of “on-page SEO” refers to the optimization of individual web pages – content and HTML source code – in order to rank higher in search engines. It differs from off-page SEO, which refers to links and other external signals.
A natural question is: are these ranking factors all equally important? The answer is: no. Some of the 200 ranking factors have to be prioritized compare to others. To make your life easier, here is a list of the 7 essential SEO on page ranking factors that you must take into account for your 2019 strategy.
Mobile first indexing
On 19th September 2018, Google announced that the indexing of websites will be mobile-based, in other words, based on their mobile version content and not on their desktop one. What to do? If your webpage is already built with responsive design, nothing is going to change. If not, a minimum requirement is to have at least a mobile-friendly website, with on-page content matching on both desktop and mobile versions.
Quality and structure of the content
That’s no escape: it needs to be high, since it’s one of the factor that matters most. Google algorithm updates in 2018 showed that the search engine is focusing more and more in evaluating content quality and depth. Good content, from an SEO point of view must answer a query of the users and must be linkable. Yes, it’s time to step up your blogging game and to get a solid content marketing strategy.
Keyword-intent
In the past, the websites or blog posts with the most occurrence of a keyword ranked the highest for that keyword. Now, the game has changed: the highest ranking is given to the page that best aligns with the intent behind that keyword. That’s why quality and in-depth content is crucial. Also, this means that content producers need to understand what someone is intending to find when they search for a word or phrase and to give them the answer in the easiest and clearest way possible.
URL and domain
Good page URLs are important: they must represent a clear hierarchy of the information on the page. This means that also your website architecture is crucial. Moreover, the age of your domain matters: the older, the better, while new one they’ll need sometime to show and earn authority on the SERPS – search engine results pages. Also, make sure your domain is secure – HTTPS, with “s” standing for “secure” – by obtaining a SSL certificate.
Page Speed
How fast your page loads when a user clicks on it from a Google SERP, now officially matters for rankings, because it’s one of the most basic requirements to provide a pleasant user experience. No one likes to wait for a page loading when looking for some products or information on the web. In general, page-load of fewer than three seconds – two for e-commerce websites – are considered as good.
Meta-tags
Meta-tags, including title tag, image alt text and meta description, are elements that help Google identify a page and the role that each of its components has in relation to the topic and keywords. Hence, it’s important that they are all clear and coherent with each other.
SEO on-page optimization services to boost your rankings
How to successfully understand and manage those essential ranking factors? There are several key SEO on page optimization tools and other services that experts could offer you and could help you.
First of all, run an easy Google Mobile friendly test to understand if your webpage is ready for the revolution of the mobile-first indexing. Second, think about contacting a digital agency or SEO expert to run an SEO audit on your website. An SEO audit (errors, accessibility, compatibility, standards, search, usability and so on) is an extremely detailed analysis on the state of optimization of your website for search engines. It provides a crucial guide to on page content and HTML source code optimisation, including keywords and meta-tags, key element to have your page ranking high.
Moreover, having an underpinned content strategy is key for on-page SEO: the topics, the quality and the structure of on-page content matters. It’s time to carefully plan and write web copy and blog posts in order to perform well in organic search and drive traffic to your website.
Finally, if in doubt, you could ask the help of an SEO expert, who can better investigate how search engines like Google read the content of your website, how’s the user experience of your content, the overall URL structure. Most crucially, an SEO expert can pick the best keywords to optimise your webpage, including a competitive analysis.
Let’s look at your website
Our free video audit will take a look at your website and the UX-design of your website. We will send you a short video with an analysis from one of our talented team-members.
To wrap it up
With more than 3.5 billion Google searches performed every day, a good on-page SEO strategy is crucial for your business to flourish. In this article, we have explored the best tools and techniques to achieve high rankings. However, one advice stands above all: curate your content and make it valuable. Quality is everything and you should invest time and resources on it; time — and website traffic! — will tell.