We’ve all heard a mom — whether ours or someone else’s — tell a young child to use their words because “I can’t read your mind if you don’t tell me.”
Well, looks like mom was right, even when it comes to your business’ marketing. You’ve got to use your words when it comes to SEO… it sounds silly, but let me explain.
There are two parts to SEO: on-page and off-page. On-page pertains to your website and off-page is all about backlinks going to your website. You can’t have one without the other, but for some reason, businesses — and many, many SEO companies — don’t know what they are doing when it comes to on-page SEO.
It’s often overlooked, partially due to the fact that most people don’t even know what to do with it (which we’ll get to some practical tips here shortly). Even crazier: most businesses that I come across that use another SEO company don’t have their on-page SEO done properly — let that sink in… people are paying a so-called ‘SEO company’ who have no clue what they are doing.
It’s like building a house without a foundation… that house is going to collapse (or fail to even be built).
Google only knows what you tell it. Google can’t read your mind about what your business does; you’ve got to use your words & tell them!!!
Before doing press releases, local citations, web 2.0’s and all other off-page SEO tactics, you’ve got to tell Google who you are and what you’re all about.
Before we get into practical tips, let me show you just a handful of clients & their rankings before and after on-page SEO is done. You’ll see 2 screenshots together. The first one is BEFORE on-page SEO was done, and the second is anywhere from the next day to 5 days after on-page SEO is completed. The jumps these businesses experienced are mind-boggling.
This first screenshot is where their site was before we started, and the second screenshot is just 4 days later! They only had 11 total keywords ranking in the top 100, but four days later they had 25 in the top 100 — 10 keywords ranking in the top 10 & 6 ranking in the top 3!!
Same thing here, just 4 days after we completed their on-page SEO, their rankings skyrocketed with 29 keywords in the top 10 & 27 in the top 3!!!
These screenshots are less than 24 hours apart!! This client went from nothing to being ranked in the top 3 for multiple keywords overnight.
These screenshots are less than 48 hours apart!! This client didn’t even have a website prior to us taking over. We finished editing this site on a Friday afternoon and this screenshot is from Sunday morning!
Did these clients only see this one-time gain in their rankings? Of course not! They signed on and trusted Steel Marketing’s process of on-page & off-page SEO. Now, all these clients (and the many more that aren’t shown) are having phenomenal success because we coupled proper on-page SEO with incredible off-page SEO to get them over the hump into the top 3 on page 1 for most, if not all, of their keywords.
I could give you examples all day long until I’m blue in the face… but let’s give you some practical examples of how you can improve your on-page SEO!
Practical On-Page SEO Tips
Google is like a lazy college kid: they want to skim over the materials to use get the gist of it. So help Google out! Give them the short gist of who you are!
You can do that by using Headings — H1 through H6 tags — while making sure you keep a good ratio. No more than one H1 tag or eight H2 tags.
Installing a good SEO plugin like Yoast is something that’s a must to fill out your SEO Title, Focus Keyword & Meta Data.
Making sure your content has a good ratio of keywords throughout (roughly 3-5 times per 500 words), and you have to have a decent amount of content… at least 500 words per page. Google wants to give search users results that could not only help them with what they are currently searching , but they want to try to give them websites that they predict could help answer future questions based on their current searches.
Here’s a big one that people almost seem to never, ever do: build city-specific landing pages. By doing this for each & every city you serve, it will make you a local authority there in Google’s eyes. Yes, you’ve got to build everything out properly, but this is a huge thing that most SEO companies don’t do because honestly… they are too lazy to do it because it’s a lot of work.
I highly recommend WordPress because you have 100% control over these things & more. Using a site like Wix, Weebly, or Squarespace can make it difficult to fully optimize everything. I would bet that at least 8 of the top 10 rankings for just about any keyword in any location are held by WordPress websites.
There are obviously many more things you could do to further optimize your site, but this is a good start without getting too technical on you!
If you want to go deeper into your on-page SEO, schedule a consultation with us! You can book a phone call whenever you’re available, but if your availability does not coincide with the availability shown, submit a contact form to us because we’ll work with you to book a time that works for you!
Plus, if you’re too busy or aren’t the most tech savvy person, Steel Marketing can help you optimize your website! You can check out our A La Carte Services, or if you want both on-page and off-page SEO, then our SEO Services are for you!!