There are many factors that search engines use to categorize and rank your website. Unfortunately, nobody can tell you for certain what these factors are. What they can tell you are the various ways in which you can optimize your website so that it’s easier for the search engines to gather data, categorize your content and rank your website effectively.

With the effective use of these on-site SEO tweaks you can make your website friendlier and more usable for visitors and search engine bots alike. Taking the time to do so will increase your website’s ranking and boost the amount of traffic your website receives.

Create Fresh Content

Creating fresh, unique content on a regular basis is one of the most important things you can do to improve your website’s ranking. This lets you provide accurate up-to-date information to your visitors in a way that will set you apart from your competition. When creating this content, make sure that it’s relevant to your business, provides value to website visitors, and is distinct from what’s found elsewhere – even when you’re creating product descriptions. You never want any of your content to look the same as what’s found elsewhere even if it’s about the same topic or describes the same product or service.

Write Meta Descriptions for Each Page

Each webpage needs its own meta description that accurately describes that specific page’s content. Since this will show up under your title in the search results, make it as compelling as possible so it draws visitors into your website.

Write Unique Page Titles

Each page must also have a unique page title that sets it apart from your website’s other pages. These titles must be under 60 characters long, highly descriptive, and contain your targeted keywords. Since this is what shows up first in the search results, make sure your visitors can understand them and that they contain accurate information. In other words, you don’t want them to simply be a list of keywords.

Use Keywords in URLs

Use your keywords in your website URLs – which must also be short, descriptive, and keyword rich. As you do this, make sure they’re also friendly for both visitors and search engines alike. Doing this will provide additional ways to include descriptions and keywords in your website.

Use Heading Tags Correctly

This will help you organize your website’s information. When doing so, make sure you use H1 tags for your page’s main title, H2 tags for major subsections, and H3 to H6 tags to further divide your content. Doing so will make your content easier for visitors to scan and let search engines know when they’ve entered a new section or subsection on your page, so it’s easier for them to categorize your content and determine you website’s relevance based on the keywords you’re targeting.

Use ALT Tags Effectively

This is a great way to offer additional information to search engines and to your visitors. You’ll want to use this in case your image doesn’t load. Doing so gives your visitors an accurate explanation of what should have been there. This is also a convenient way to describe your content to search engines, which is why you should include keywords here when appropriate. Most importantly, make sure your descriptions are accurate and you only insert keywords if they’re appropriate. You don’t want to simply keyword stuff your ALT tag.

Use Internal Links

The effective use of internal links is a great way to keep your visitors engaged with your website. This also improves your search engine ranking if they contain an accurate description of the page you’re linking to and use keywords associated with that page. This is why you should try to include targeted keywords in these links when possible, but above all they must be both logical and user friendly.

Create a Sitemap

An XML sitemap that lists every page of your website is the easiest, most effective way to make sure they’re found. Once you’ve created one you’ll want to make sure you submit it to all the major search engines. This will provide quick, easy navigation throughout your website. It will increase your crawl rate and improve your website’s rankings. Fortunately, many of today’s content management systems (e.g. WordPress) can easily build one for you.

Use Keywords Effectively

Your page’s targeted keywords should always appear at least once naturally on your page. The more content you have, the more frequently you’ll want to include your keywords. Don’t use them too many times or in awkward or unnatural ways, because then your whole website could be classified as keyword spam.

Create Fast-Loading Pages

Creating quick loading pages improves your website’s functionality and also makes it easier for your website to be crawled by search engines. When it takes your pages too long to load, visitors and search engines will move on. This is why you must test your pages to make sure images, text, and other content on the page loads fast. Replace any content that slows your page down with faster loading content. You should also optimize your HTML, CSS, and Javascript files.

These simple and effective on-site SEO tweaks will help you create a high-quality, user-friendly website for your visitors – one that’s also easy for search engines to navigate and rank. Since these on-site SEO tweaks are quick and easy to implement, you’ll want to reap their benefits, but make sure you’re ready to handle more traffic before doing so.