Advanced On-Page SEO Tips
Discover advanced on-page SEO tips essential to getting an edge over the competition with Search Hustle.
About 40% of website traffic starts with a search query. That’s why knowing how to utilize SEO is key. Google’s algorithms are continually updated, making it vital to stay up-to-date on the latest change.
What does that mean for you? It means digging deeper into the more advanced strategies of SEO. To stay ahead of the competition, you need to know more than just keyword research basics.
Once you utilize more advanced on-page SEO practices, you will have a better chance of ranking at the top of the first page of Google. When a web page ranks in the top spot, that leads to higher traffic, more conversions, and likely, increased revenue.
Here are some advanced SEO techniques to implement on your website.
1. Perform an SEO Audit
By auditing a website, you can discover why search traffic and web leads might be lower than you like. An SEO audit can help illuminate overall site performance. Then, your team can create goals and implement tactics to help achieve those goals.
Before you begin the SEO audit of the website, have a checklist on hand. The checklist should include questions such as:
- Do all pages have titles and meta descriptions?
- Does every page include keywords? What densities? H1s/H2s?
- Is the URL structure optimized for search engines?
- Do images include keywords in the alt text?
- Is the page mobile-friendly?
- What are the page load times?
- Does the page have internal links/backlinks?
- Are there any broken internal links or busted pages? 4XXs? 5XXs?
- Is the site optimized for UX?
This list is far from exhaustive regarding what a site audit should analyze. To ensure the audit is done well and catches errors and opportunities for improvement, utilize the services of an SEO professional. Tools like Screaming Frog, Google Lighthouse, AHREFS Audits, Fullstory, Hotjar, Amplitude, and Lucky Orange are great places to spot technical deficiencies.
2. Create Optimized Landing Pages
It should go without saying, but the more organically purposeful pages a website has, the more search traffic you’ll get and then hopefully conversions as well. It’s imperative to ensure the landing pages are well-designed and optimized. By using the proper keyword research, evergreen techniques, and testing you can boost the conversion rate by 300% or more.
Many businesses use a call to action (CTA) in organic content or paid ads that leads to a designated webpage. While the homepage is important, we don’t want most CTAs to be directing clicks there if the hope is converting them into leads. Ads, social media, and other referrers should be directing traffic to a squeeze page.
There are a few qualities that a good landing/funnel page (Squeeze page) should include:
- Zero navigation so that the user stays on the landing page
- Informative, high-value content
- A call to action
A landing page’s primary purpose is to convert visitors into leads. In order for the landing page to earn those visitors, though, you need to make sure to provide opportunities for people to actually get to these landing pages (paid or referral). From there, make sure the content uses mental triggers, is built to convert, and is well-written.
3. Term Frequency-Inverse Document Frequency
Term Frequency can measure the raw number of times a keyword appears in a document or an average by dividing the term by all words.
With term frequency, we ensure the main keyword, keyword variants, and the keyword cloud have ample representation on the page but not to the point readability suffers.
The inverse document frequency of the word is measured across a set of documents, allowing us to calculate how common or rare a word is in the document set. The closer it is to 0, the more common. The closer to 1, the less common.
Content creators should include synonyms, semantics, rarely used words, and general, in-topic dialogue for effective copywriting.
Think about it this way: How often would you use the keyword naturally if it takes 1,000 words on average to cover a topic? How often would you expect a synonym or plural version? What is the language that you would use when discussing this topic? Is there a word you might rarely use in written form but would likely use when discussing that topic?
This is how we embed these principles into our work. It isn’t a trick—more a reminder to stay within scope and dominate the topic with helpful information. Aim to give the reader a newfound mastery of the content.
4. Synonyms of Keywords
Google’s algorithm is continuously changing. AI is constantly learning and becoming more efficient. When a user types a query into the search box, Google does its best to determine what the searcher means (searcher intent) to deliver the most relevant results. That’s why synonyms of keywords are so important. Did you ever watch Ralph Breaks The Internet? KnowsMore is pretty much the Google AI.
Instead of sticking to a single, strict keyword on a page, sprinkle in variants and synonyms of the term as secondary keywords. By doing this, Google can better determine the context of the page’s content. While staying on topic is important, don’t be afraid to cover secondary topics. You want your content to answer ALL the questions a reader might have.
Here’s an example that demonstrates the importance of synonyms:
Look at “plant” and “factory.” These two terms can mean the same thing. They refer to a manufacturing site. However, they also can differ in their definitions. Plant can also mean vegetation. When you sprinkle in keyword synonyms, you add context and deeper semantic meaning to the topic.
Create Long-Form Content
Backlinko conducted a study showing the highest-ranking posts had at least 1,447 words.
Research has repeatedly shown that pages with a higher word count do better than short posts containing 500 or fewer words. So, while long-form content doesn’t guarantee SERP success, it does improve your chances.
However, that doesn’t mean long-form content can serve up low-quality content. The content must still offer relevant information and be well-written. The key is to cover one topic in-depth with every detail related to that topic so that the entire post is valuable.
Page Segmentation
The placement of words on a page is important too. Web pages contain certain key elements: headers, footers, meta titles, internal links, and sidebars, for instance.
According to Google, content in the main body of a post is one of the most critical sections. This is also where HTML carries more weight.
Page segmentation continues to grow in importance with Google’s shift toward mobile-first indexing. Many developers hide portions of the website on mobile devices, which contributes heavily to the SEO value of those pages. This can be a huge mistake.
Search engines are designed to give users the best possible experience and show the portion of the page with relevant content. This is the area that should receive the greatest weight. Hence, you need to consider meta titles and descriptions with care, along with H1s, H2s, etc. You can also use HTML5 to define sections of a web page better.
Voice Search
As mobile devices become the primary means of interacting with search engines, the importance of voice search continues to grow. One of the best ways to optimize content for voice search is by creating FAQ sections in your pages.
Many factors go into optimizing content that appeals to voice search. Research has shown that voice searches are longer, question-based queries. Therefore, to target those types of search queries, FAQs are an ideal format for this type of search.
Stay Ahead of the Curve With Advanced On-Page SEO
As we’ve said, Google’s algorithm is constantly changing and growing more complex. Search engines are always striving to find ways to offer the best possible user experience and answer users’ queries with the most relevant information out there.
Given how crowded the internet space is, there’s more competition than ever to rank in the top position of the search results. However, if you implement the advanced on-page SEO tips mentioned in this article, you’ll already be ahead of most of your competition and have an improved chance at claiming the number one seat in the search engine results pages.
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