Content quality
Some say that the content is king , but in my opinion it is simply the first factor to consider to improve the on-page SEO of a site. Moreover we can also write the best text ever written from the time when the first characters were recorded, but if nobody can read it due to technical problems or bad SEO configuration of our site will be like never having written anything .
Having said this with " quality of content " I simply mean to write a content that, if possible, provide more information to those already on the network and above all, and this is a key factor, bring new news compared to those already present on the site in which we are going to insert our content and if possible that deals with all the aspects of the topic we are going to talk about.
But apart from the phrases of circumstance the quality of a content is given by several factors:
- the information is reliable (for example, it is useful to cite the sources or bring data from researches whose data are in the public domain);
- the text is interesting and original . The content must be different from all those already proposed on the web and be relevant to users . Visitors at the end of reading a content should not feel that they have lost their time;
- the article interacts with the user's emotions , triggering surprise, admiration, curiosity or happiness. In some special cases you can think of triggering unhappy emotions, such as fear, terror and horror, but be careful to examine if it is appropriate!
- grammar and syntax must be correct , if it uses a person to review your texts and always remembers that the author of a text often escape their mistakes;
- the text answers all the questions that can be asked by the user about the subject matter;
For these reasons it is advisable to include within your content:
- visual elements : infographics, images or image galleries, citations, posts from social media, call to action, audio and video extracts;
- information elements : in-depth boxes, data tables, resource lists, FAQ areas
Relevance of the keywords with the contents
When it is said that before carrying out any SEO activity it is necessary to analyze the keywords with which to place a site is unveiling a palpable truth.
In the realization of new content it is necessary to have in mind about what keywords you want to work (and why, information this can only be obtained by means of a detailed analysis), as they are related to each other in the various meanings, synonyms, long tail, semantic area, and especially such as writing contents to be able to use them on our website, if possible by creating quality articles for each one.
Seniority and updating of contents
An article is older and gets more visibility on search engines, provided that its content is always updated . For this reason it is advisable to modify and increase the text with new information, warning users , in the case of new modifications.
Very important, in addition to updating old content, is to publish new ones , with a fair frequency and above all by increasing articles in relation to the keywords with which we want to place our site. It is therefore appropriate, in addition to creating "business" pages static and unchanging over time, to create a blog area or "news container" in which to publish new content periodically.
Layout optimized for all devices
In recent years, the devices used to browse the web have increased exponentially and users in addition to the computer began to use mobile devices such as tablets and smartphones and in some cases, larger screens such as televisions .
For this it is necessary to create layouts for our contents that adapt to the different user-agents , planning the organization of the contents for the different devices .
In this case, to improve the on-page SEO it will be necessary to make a redesign of the website , especially after the modification of the algorithm of Google in April 2015 that rewards sites with layout optimized for mobile devices .
uency of keywords
If once to reach the top positions of a search engine we could use techniques of keyword stuffing (fill in the keyword text) to date this type of technique is very discouraged (say by Google) because the algorithm of Google Penguin could penalize the contents that insert the same keyword over and over again in the same text. In fact, analyzing the keyword density of a text is useful only to avoid writing the keyword too many times, risking making our content incomprehensible to our readers or, at best, lowering its quality due to its boring and repetitive nature.
URLs optimized
In on-page SEO it is very important to realize the URLs of our page optimized according to the criteria defined by the search engines and the technique of realization of hypertexts, according to some basic and simple rules:
- use static and non-dynamic urls (for a more in-depth look at this topic, see my previous article on configuring permalinks on WordPress, but which concerns dynamic websites in general);
- use only letters and numbers and not special characters;
- do not insert spaces ;
- to separate the words use the characters _ or – (I prefer the latter because it improves the readability of the url);
- do not use "stop words", ie articles and prepositions;
- simplify the url as much as possible;
- enter the main keywords for which we would like to place the article
- embed the url within a navigation structure (eg www.example.tlp / example-1 / example-1-detail / );
Tag title
The title tag allows us to select the text that will appear in the SERP of the search engine. For this reason, with a view to SEO on-page optimization, it must be written by inserting the keyword we want to use, but at the same time thinking that it will be the first thing a user will see associated with our content: he will have to summarize the contentof the our text and in the meantime encourage the reading.