The 5 Most Significant On-Site SEO Factors

5 On-Site SEO Techniques Used by Top SEO Companies

When most businesses think of search engine optimization, the first thing that comes up is Google or search engine rankings. While ranking is an essential aspect of SEO marketing, it is not the only thing to consider. Any legitimate SEO company knows that quality SEO must also focus on the user experience.

Not only are search engine algorithms getting more sophisticated, but users are also becoming more demanding. The typical consumer is not willing to sift through pages of useless content or click close buttons repeatedly trying to access the information they want.

There was a time when keywords were king. All a company needed to do was find the right keywords and rankings, and profits would follow, but no more. While keywords are important, they are no longer the ruler of the SEO kingdom. SEO is now more complex, with the number of strategies reaching the hundreds and even thousands. However, for your business, focus on the top five onsite SEO techniques.

1. Quality Content

The core of digital marketing is content creation. Still, it is no longer enough to create content around keywords, longtail or otherwise. As the future of search engine development, content must focus on user intent. Content written without understanding or acknowledging user intent is devalued and often won’t rank well.

An SEO company in Santa Rosa can help your business by taking a deeper dive into the keywords you want to focus your marketing efforts on. The service will:

• Research keyword intent (Navigation, shopping, information) 
• Review semantic similarities to optimize content to keywords 
• Analyze SERPs for content ranking under specified keywords 

Additionally, your site should contain a healthy mix of short and long-form content. When discussing long-form content, SEO experts refer to content length ranges of 800 and 2,500 words.

2. Mobile-Friendly Design

If you are familiar with search engine ranking systems, you have likely heard of Google’s mobile-first index. The listings in the mobile-specific index are updated before Google’s primary index, meaning mobile optimization is crucial to any SEO strategy.

Most users will use their smart devices to search for products, businesses, and information. If your website is not set up for mobile viewing, you miss out on a huge consumer base. When developing your website for mobile devices, focus on long scrolls and load speed rather than interconnected pages. Additionally, focus on a few key issues to optimize pages:

• Properly compressing images for mobile viewports
• Minify onsite resources to improve speed 
• Use responsive web design 

3. User Engagement

An SEO company designs for search engines and people. However, a critical aspect of SEO is user engagement. How a user interacts with your website can affect your page’s listing. For instance, the amount of time a user spends on your website and the number of pages they view before leaving it are two critical metrics found in Google Analytics under the headings “duration” and “pages per session.”

The most important takeaway from these metrics is engagement. Analyzing the data from these two metrics can enlighten content strategy and conversion funnels. To use each dataset, a skilled SEO firm will:

• Inspect and assess pages with high bounce rates 
• Insert navigation options, encouraging more page views 
• Include CTA, encouraging higher conversions 

4. Interlinking

Interlinking content or providing internal links for users is an excellent approach to improving user engagement, but it is also an essential element to maintaining and providing relevance to multiple pages on your site. Using SEO strategies like deep linking can give authority to numerous pages on your site while encouraging users to see you as an expert.

However, when discussing interlinking, it is necessary to understand it as more than a user engagement tool. The strategy is essential to multiple facets of SEO strategy, including:

• UX and IA 
• Link building 
• Crawlability 
• Content 

When developing an interlinking strategy, focus on orphaned pages and topic hierarchy. You want your website to have a purpose and an apparent flow.

5. Technical Design

The foundation of SEO is technical design, everything from crawlability to security. Without a technical structure, your content strategy will fail. An SEO company in Santa Rosa will focus on interlinking strategies to ensure search engine crawlers have access to all pages. They will also maintain an HTTPS secure website while allowing for mixed content. Finally, they will ensure all links connect to clean URLs, with no broken links or redirected pages.

There are many SEO strategies for businesses of all sizes, but the above five represent the fundamental techniques for quality web design and performance. While a company can attempt such tactics on its own, DIY strategies are rarely as effective as working with qualified professionals. If you need help with website performance, consider hiring an SEO company in Santa Rosa. For more information from qualified professionals, contact one of the top firms in Santa Rosa, Fitz Designz.