How to Prepare Your Website for Google Ranking: On-Page Factors

The ranking of a website on Google through SEO is essential to gain visibility and attract the target audience of the company. To achieve this, it is crucial to have a clear understanding of the business characteristics, what the competition is doing, and which buyer persona the company wishes to target.

The On-Page SEO, which is executed in the design of the website itself, is a key piece for improving ranking on Google. If you want to prepare your website to significantly improve its ranking, it is essential to pay attention to On-Page factors such as those presented in this article.

On-Page SEO Factors to Rank on Google

Below, I detail how to prepare your website for ranking on Google by working on these On-Page SEO factors:

Keyword Research

It is essential to conduct a keyword research. It serves to rank on Google for those terms or words that are of interest to the company, with the aim of being visible to potential customers.

To do this, you need to know the business and the characteristics of the company's products or services, finding out how consumers search for them online.

You should prioritize the keywords of the most profitable products and consider the entire decision-making process (reflective purchase, impulsive, awareness, perceived risk, urgent need, brand recognition…). Similarly, you should position keywords from all stages of the conversion funnel and the customer journey (awareness, consideration, purchase, retention, and promotion).

The company must respond to user needs with the choice of keywords and recognize their search intentions, motivations, and objections. Each keyword should be used along with terms that are synonyms or related, both in plural and singular.

There are tools like SEMRush or Ahrefs that you can use to research which keywords have a higher search volume among those related to your business or activity. Thus, you can use them in the anchor text, in titles, in headers, or in the blog of the website.

Website Architecture

The website architecture should be designed based on keyword research, the company's catalog, business priorities, and the needs of its target audience. Above all, you must think about the user, favoring the usability of the website and its ease of navigation.

There are different types of website architecture (horizontal, vertical, closed silos, permissive…) that you should consider to decide how to categorize information, how to represent it in an orderly manner, and establish how to navigate within the website. To do this, you need to define different categories or taxonomies based on the business model of the company.

The goal should be to facilitate search engines' crawling and indexing of the website, making it easy for users to go from one page to another to find what they are looking for. You should prioritize accessibility to the most profitable or priority products of the company and promote internal linking between different pages or sections, considering the semantics and the anchor text surrounding the link introduced.

Title Tag

The title or title tag should have a maximum of 55 characters to favor ranking on Google, and the main keyword should be placed as far to the left as possible within the title.

Ideally, it should be descriptive and concise, as well as attractive, with the aim of catching the user's attention to make them click on it. When necessary and relevant, the brand name can be included in the title.

Meta Description

The meta description should have a maximum of 155 characters and allows for greater freedom in choosing where to position the main keyword within the text, as it is not considered an important ranking factor for Google.

However, it should be noted that the meta description must contain attractive and relevant information that leaves the user wanting to know more. To do this, you can include a strong CTA (Call To Action).

Hn Headers

The headers also play a key role in On-Page ranking. The H1 must be unique and different from the title, trying not to be too lengthy. These headers are used to improve content readability, organizing it and dividing it into sections, which also enhances usability.

It is important to use Hn headers hierarchically and take the opportunity to include secondary and related keywords in them with the title or theme of the content.

URL Syntax or Architecture

URLs should be friendly for Google to favor ranking. It is important that they are short (approximately 50 or 60 characters), readable and easy to understand.

You should not include filler words, connectors, or prepositions, and you should avoid using strange characters, numbers, or uppercase letters. It is always recommended to use hyphens and to always opt for HTTPS instead of HTTP to improve the site's security.

Website Content

When we talk about content, we refer to any text, image, video, or audio that a user can consult on the Internet. Content provides a large number of benefits: it adds value to your audience, boosts your brand recognition, web positioning, traffic, and sales; it is an informative resource, retains customers, and attracts new clients…

To create content, it is important to write with the user's needs in mind and optimize the content for SEO, based on the results of keyword research and users' search intentions.

In text content, it is important that the writing is natural, with rich syntax and semantics, always aiming for quality and interesting and relevant content while avoiding filler.

Avoiding rehashed content from previous works is essential, as well as copies and plagiarism from other websites or competitors. The goal should be to resolve users' doubts, facilitate their actions, or respond to their desires. Images should always be representative, and whenever possible, you should opt for diagrams and infographics.

Video content should be useful for the user and is one of the most interesting types, as it increases the time spent on the website. All content (text, image, and video) should be oriented towards marketing purposes, especially to enhance Inbound.

Image Optimization

In image optimization to favor On-Page SEO, you should consider the following:

• ALT attribute or alternative text

This attribute was created to improve accessibility for visually impaired people (blind) or when a browser cannot display the image (the ALT is shown in this case, describing the image). It should briefly describe the image including a keyword and using clear and simple language. Not introducing keywords in a forced manner is essential. If the image is used decoratively, there is no need to fill in the ALT, only if it is used as anchor text.

• Title

This is not relevant for SEO and should appear when a user hovers over the image.

• File Name

It should be descriptive and brief, using hyphens (-) instead of spaces to separate words. The most recommended image formats are JPEG, GIF, PNG, BMP, and WebP.

Structured Data

Structured data helps search engines better understand the information contained on a webpage. We are talking about structured data for products, contact pages, articles, local businesses, or the “about us” section, among others. There are tools to generate structured data and validate them. You can always make use of the Schema library.

Responsive Design

Responsive design consists of adapting the website for all types of devices. It involves resizing and placing the elements of the website so that they fit the width of each device, allowing for correct viewing and a better user experience.

It is important to prioritize mobile design, which is currently the most used device for browsing the Internet. The design should be adapted while ensuring that navigation is equally easy and fast. Responsive design increases conversion and the time spent on the website, in addition to generating greater trust in the site.

WPO (Loading Time)

Techniques to make a website load faster and display in less time in the user's browser. This improves web positioning and the usability of the site, as well as favoring user retention. You can use a CDN or content delivery network to promote faster delivery of each content on your website.

It is also important to optimize both the database and the images on the website (weight, size, and format) and use quality hosting or server that guarantees high speed.

All these are determining On-Page factors to improve the ranking of a website in search engines like Google. Working on each of them can significantly help improve your website's visibility on the Internet.

I hope these tips have been helpful.

See you in the next post!