On Page SEO Guide 2020

marijuana seo on page seo guide

The idea of on-page SEO is pretty simple, but a lot goes into having an SEO optimized website.

On-Page SEO basically refers to optimizing your website so that it adheres to all of the latest SEO technical factors… Basically having optimized content, code and user experience.

I like to use cars as an analogy for on-page SEO. Each part of the car has to work together to make it run smoothly. If one part doesn’t work then your car may have some trouble running. You want each part of the car to work in order to have a car the runs smooth.

Same goes with on page SEO!

Here is a list of all the on-page SEO ranking factors that matter in 2019. Click ‘Learn More’ to scroll below and learn more about that particular on page factor.

27 Point On-Page SEO Check List

# Name Description
1 Meta Titles Meta titles briefly and concisely explain what each website page is about. Learn More
2 Meta Descriptions Meta Descriptions explain a summary of what each website page is about. Learn More
3 Canonical Tags These tags tell search engines what the correct URL of the page should be. Learn More
4 Schema Tags Schema tags help crawlers determine certain information about a website, business, product or video. Learn More
5 Heading Tags Heading tags are the section titles of your content. They should be structured correctly. Learn More
6 Alt Tags Alt tags tell search engines what your images are about since they can only read text. Learn More
7 Internal Linking Linking to all of your internal pages helps bots find all of your pages, as well as users. Learn More
8 External Linking Linking to relative and authority websites will help you rank with them. Learn More
9 Anchor Tags Google looks at the anchor tags in links to help decipher what a page is about. Learn More
10 Deep Linking having links to all levels of your website will help Google crawl it easier and create a good UI. Learn More
11 Page speed Having a fast website has never been more important for SEO and user experience. Learn More
12 Responsive Design With a mobile responsive website, you will rank better in the mobile index. Learn More
13 Fix any External Broken Links Linking to broken or nonexistent pages can hurt your own pages. Learn More
14 Fix any Internal Broken Links Linking to internal pages that are broken or redirected can have a bad effect on rankings. Learn More
15 LSI Keywords LSI (Latent Semantic Indexing) keywords are keywords phrases that mean the same thing. Learn More
16 Google Search Console Manage your website in Google eyes with Google Search Console. See rankings, errors and more. Learn More
17 Google Analytics Track your website traffic, usage and load times with Google’s free tracking software. Learn More
18 Open Graph Tags Tags that allow you to control what content shows when a webpage is shared on social media. Learn More
19 Security (HTTPS) Having a secure website can help build trust and will help you rank better. Learn More
20 SEO Friendly URLs Keywords are not only important in your content but your URLs as well. Learn More
21 Link Social Media Social media plays an indirect role to help you rank better in search engines. Learn More
22 Keyword Consistency The keywords most used on your pages are likely the keywords you will rank for. Learn More
23 Robots.txt This file tells robots what they can and can’t crawl on your website. Learn More
24 Add Business Address (with schema when prohibited) Adding your business address to your footer can help you rank better locally. Learn More
25 Content Heavy Pages Google loves content. The more content that’s on your pages, the more keywords, and traffic. Learn More
26 Website Structure The structure of your website and pages is important to ranking better in Google. Learn More
27 SEO Images Image searches are almost as popular as web so optimizing your website’s images is important for SEO. Learn More

Meta Titles

Meta titles show the name of a web page.

Usually, the web page title will be displayed at the top of the browser, as well as the top of your computer screen. That title gives readers an idea of what page they are on. When searching for a particular subject within a search engine, the first result of the search query will usually show up as a blue underlined title with bold lettering. All subsequent results will show up in identical fashion as a listing.

marijuana seo meta title

Standard practice in regards to SEO when coming up with a title for your webpage is not to make it too short nor too long. It needs to be at a reasonable length where search engines will filter out the appropriate search results when a visitor starts the initial query.

Code Example:

<title>On Page SEO Guide 2019 - Marijuana SEO</title>

Meta Descriptions

One of the two main elements of your meta tags (the other being meta keywords). They consist of 155 characters (an HTML tag) that summarizes the content of a webpage.

marijuana seo meta description

These titles are seen by visitors coming on to the website and read by search engine robots. A strong title will need to be considered for both your website’s visitors and the search engine robots.

The end state of meta descriptions is to get somebody that is searching via Google or another search engine to click on your link. These descriptions generate click-throughs once these links are clicked. Meta descriptions are not a part of a search engine’s ranking algorithm. However, if multiple visitors click on your link within a given period of time, these collective actions provide an indirect benefit for your website. Google will consider your link to be a good result, and therefore end up with your website climbing in rankings SEO-wise.

Code Example:

<meta name="description" content="On-Page SEO basically refers to optimizing your website so that it adheres to all of the latest SEO technical factors."/>

Canonical Tags

A canonical tag is a tag that tells search engines that a specific URL is the master copy of a webpage.

marijuana seo ad

Implementing canonical tags prevents problems caused by identical or duplicate content showing up on multiple URLs. In practical terms, this specific tag tells search engines which version of a URL you want to appear in the search results.

When search engines crawl many URLs with similar or identical content, they can cause a number of SEO problems. The crawlers will have to wade through too much duplicate information, and could potentially skip content that is unique to your website. In addition, large-scale duplication could dilute your website’s ranking ability. In the event that the website even ranks, as a result, search engines could still pick the wrong URL as the “original” master copy of your page.

Code Example:

<link rel="canonical" href="https://www.marijuanaseo.com/on-page-seo-guide/" />

Schema Tags

Schema tags are part of the Schema.org markup. They’re microdata semantics that can be added to your HTML to improve how search engines display and represent your SERP (search engine results pages).

Schema.org resulted as part of a collaborative effort between Bing, Yandex, Yahoo and Google to help you supply their search engines with the relevant information needed to help understand your content and give searchers the best possible results at any given time. Including the Schema markup in your HTML architecture improves how your page shows up in the SERPs through the enhancement of snippets under the page title.

Code Example:

<script type="application/ld+json">
{ 
"@context": "http://schema.org/",
"@type": "Organization",
"name": "Marijuana SEO",
"url": "https://www.marijuanaseo.com"
}
</script>

Heading Tags

Heading tags are indicators in HTML to help to make your webpage structured through the lens of SEO, which essentially helps search engines such as Bing or Google to be able to read your content. Heading tags make up the hierarchal formatting of your page and range from H1-H6. H1/Heading tag 1 is the most important header in the eyes of the search engine and constitutes the title of your page.

One key difference to note between H1 and page title tags lies within the HTML writing itself. Title tags are expressed as “title” while the H1 tag is expressed as “h1”. They both serve to describe what your webpage is about.

Code Example:

<h1>On Page SEO Guide 2019</h1>

Alt Tags

Sometimes referred to as an alt description or alt attribute, alt tags are HTML attributes that are applied to image tags in order to provide a text alternative for search engines. Applying images to alt tags can have a positive impact on an e-commerce store when it comes to search engine rankings.

Search engines and other robots do not have the ability to interpret images. Imagery plays a crucial role in how visitors interpret specific web pages. Alt tags provide the solution by providing text read by search engines. When search engine crawlers such as Googlebot inspect a page, images that have properly formatted alt text will contribute to how a page is indexed and where it ranks.

Code Example:

<img alt="marijuana seo logo" src="https://www.marijuanaseo.com/wp-content/uploads/2018/11/marijuana-seo-logo.png"/>

Internal Linking

Internal links are links that point to another page or resource hosted within the same website domain. These links help users navigate a website, discern what the information hierarchy is for the website, and help spread ranking power around websites.

SEO best practices in this regard is to have internal links structured in a way that keeps the site architecture consistent and spread link equity (via URLs). When it comes to single pages, search engines need to be able to see ordered content in order to list pages based on keyword indices. They will also need to be able to access a link structure that is crawlable.

Code Example:

<a href="https://www.marijuanaseo.com/seo-statistics/">Insane SEO Statiistics</a>

External Linking

Not only is linking to your own website important but its also important to link out to other sites as well. External linking is a way to categorize your site with other similar website’s.

When you link out to other authority website’s in your industry, Google’s algorithm figures out that these are similar sites and you should all be ranked around each other.

It also provides a good user experience to your visitors if you link to quality and valuable content on other websites.

Code Example:

<a href="https://www.linkedin.com/showcase/marijuana-seo/">Marijuana SEO LinkedIn</a>

Anchor Tags

Anchor tags (aka anchor texts) are HTML tags that identify links within a body of text and are clickable. The anchor text should be relevant and give the viewer a basic understanding of what the link is about. When it comes to SEO, best practices dictate that links be blue and underline as the standard. While it’s possible to change colors, blue on black is easily the most distinctive when reading through numerous passages.

These tags alternatively referred to as the link title or link label.

Code Example:

<a href="https://www.marijuanaseo.com/">Marijuana SEO</a>

Deep Linking

Deep linking is the practice of including hyperlinks within a page’s content that directs the visitor to deeper parts of the website. This is a method that is utilized as a part of web marketing to help direct traffic to pages that contain content that is more informative, as well as calls to action, in order to improve online conversions for businesses.

When it comes to SEO campaigns, the link will be placed on a phrase or keyword that brings visitors to related texts or conversion pages on a website. This also provides the benefit of making it easier to increase your site’s ranking and help with audience engagement that could potentially lead to business conversions.

Page speed

Page speed is one of the signals used by Google’s algorithms to rank pages in a search query. In relation to SEO, it measures how fast the content of a web page loads up. Oftentimes it is confused with site speed, which dictates how fast the entirety of a website loads on a web browser.

PageSpeed Insights (a Google product) can help evaluate how fast a page loads. The two data points that are measured with this product include DOMContentLoaded (DCL) and First Contentful Paint (FCP). Site speed (and page speed thereafter) are signals for Google to rank pages using its algorithm.

Slow page speed can negatively affect indexation and make your page’s rankings take a dive.

Responsive Design

marijuana seo responsive design

Responsive design revolves around the reformatting of layout, text, and images on a website and makes it easier for visitors to navigate websites on different devices, no matter what the screen size is.

Business owners usually want a mobile-friendly version of their website available for access to consumers on devices like netbooks, Kindle, iPad, iPhone, and Android phones. A responsive web design contributes to a positive user experience and ultimately better rankings.

While it’s impossible to accommodate for every screen resolution that comes out with every new device, responsive design was conceived as a means to respond to the user’s environment and behavior based on orientation, screen size, and platform. This consists of a mix of layouts, images, grids, and CSS media queries. No matter what device the customer is using, the website should be able to automatically switch between an iPhone and desktop computer and navigate through the website with ease.

Fix any External Broken Links

Broken links are attributed to a negative user experience, especially with all the amount of work you’ve put into your website. These links can push away users and cause your website’s ranking to tank. In order to avoid this, you’ll need to periodically check to make sure that all of your website’s links are working.

Here are steps you can take in order to prevent any frustration that for your visitors:

  1. Find the broken links: Use analytics tools to scan your website for links that are not directing traffic to the intended destination.
  2. Make a report and track any changes: Having an Excel spreadsheet on hand and inputting the relevant data will help make it easier for you to track which links are broken on your website.
  3. Analyze the information and figure out which pages need to be redirected: Peruse through the information generated by your analytics tools. In this case: Xenu and Google Analytics will provide you the links that are broken.
  4. Redirect via CMS: use your content management system (CMS) to fix the broken links and redirect your users to functioning pages using 301 redirects.

Fix any Internal Broken Links

The steps to fixing internal links within your website will follow the same process as fixing external links:

  1. Find the broken links: Use analytics tools to scan your website for links that are not directing traffic to the intended destination.
  2. Make a report and track any changes: Having an Excel spreadsheet on hand and inputting the relevant data will help make it easier for you to track which links are broken on your website.
  3. Analyze the information and figure out which pages need to be redirected: Peruse through the information generated by your analytics tools. In this case: Xenu and Google Analytics will provide you the links that are broken.
  4. Redirect via CMS: use your content management system (CMS) to fix the broken links and redirect your users to functioning pages.

LSI Keywords

The core definition of LSI is not something that is easy to define, so we’ll break it down for you. Essentially, LSI (Latent Semantic Indexing) keywords are keywords that help provide search engines with a deep understanding of what your webpage’s content is about. In the early days of SEO, keyword density played a much larger role when it came to website rankings. If keywords weren’t used multiple times, search engines would not be able to know that your site was about those specific keywords.

Fast-forward several years later to the present, and you will find that Google, in particular, has gotten better. It focuses on what a page’s overall topic is. Google is heavily reliant on LSI keywords; let’s say you wrote a post on Pembroke Welsh Corgis, Google will focus on searching for the keywords through you image tags, page title, etc. for Pembroke Welsh Corgis. It will also scan for other keywords in relation to that topic such as care, costs, fur, and so on.

You can view some LSI keywords in Google when you perform a normal search. They will show up at the bottom as ‘related searches’:

marijuana seo lsi keywords

Google Search Console

The Google Search Console is a collection of resources and tools that aim to help webmasters, owners, marketers and SEO specialists monitor how a website performs within the Google search index.

The console displays important information such as crawl data, search traffic, search appearance, and status updates. Formerly known as Google Webmaster Tools, the GSC a powerful SEO tool that helps improve your SEO.

Here’s a breakdown of how the information is shown as you view it:

  • Search appearance: shows what your website looks like in the search results.
  • Search traffic: Gives data on top performing pages, bring out a disavow file, and internal links telling you what Google sees.
  • Google index: Generates reports how Google is crawling and indexing your keywords and your website.
  • Crawl: Gives a report on Googlebot’s site crawl rate, sitemap, URL parameters, any errors detected, and the Fetch as Google tool.
  • Security issues: This section will let you know if your website is vulnerable to hacking or not.
  • Other resources: Gives you a collection of helpers, testers, and tools that are available on Google to help you with your website.

Google Analytics

Google Analytics is a free tool designed to help business owners monitor for organic traffic of their websites. It can also be utilized to optimize SEO campaigns and draw in additional traffic, which results in increased revenue. More than half of the websites that populate the Internet already have Google Analytics tied into their platform.

google analytics screenshot

Quantifying the value that SEO delivers for your website is something that CEOs and SMB (small-medium business) owners undervalue. Gathering data via organic searches (SEO) will give you an idea how much non-paid traffic is coming from search engines and redirect visitors to your website.

Open Graph Tags

Open graph tags are a form of Meta tags designed for segmentation, allowing you to control what content shows when a webpage is displayed on social media platforms such as Twitter or Facebook. In the realm of SEO, these can provide huge boosts to your social media returns.

The strength of open graph tags is that they provide greater click-through rates (CTRs). Not having these tags included increases the chance that an image unrelated to your content will show up once your website is shared, or the description will be inaccurate. Here are some of the most commonly used open graph tags:

  • og: title – Displays the title of your webpage.
  • og:site_name – Displays the name of your website.
  • og:description – Offers a brief description of your site.
  • og:type – A tag that is used to determine the type of content the viewer sees.
  • og:image – A tag that is used to tie a URL to an image you want to show.

Code Example:

<meta property="og:locale" content="en_US" />
<meta property="og:type" content="article" />
<meta property="og:title" content="On Page SEO Guide 2019 &ndash; Marijuana SEO" />
<meta property="og:description" content="On-Page SEO basically refers to optimizing your website so that it adheres to all of the latest SEO technical factors. Check out this on Page SEO Guide." />
<meta property="og:url" content="https://www.marijuanaseo.com/on-page-seo-guide/" />
<meta property="og:site_name" content="Marijuana SEO" />

Security (HTTPS)

HTTPS (hypertext translation protocol secure) is another flavor of HTTP that keeps standard web traffic secure through the use of encryption. This encryption prevents outside parties from viewing confidential or otherwise sensitive data such as credit card info or personally identifiable information (PII) from being exposed.

secure vs insecure content https seo

HTTPS uses port 443 by default to transmit and receive data across all machines and works in concert with the Secure Sockets Layer Protocol (SSL) to transport data in a controlled and secure manner.

The importance of HTTPS cannot be understated. Cyber-attacks have become more prevalent throughout the years, prompting responses from government agencies and cybersecurity organizations to prop up defenses in response to these attacks.

SEO Friendly URLs

These URLs are links that are optimized for search engines and designed to help ease the user experience. SEO-friendly URLs are typically structured in such a way to be both enticing and accurate to their visitors so that they’ll want to click on the link and visit the connected website. These URLs will give the user an idea of what the content is about once they click on it.

Keywords will also be included as part of the title description of that same content. When it comes to SEO, these links will need to be short, and sometimes use static, non-changeable URLs to guide visitors to the content they’re looking for.

Link Social Media

Linking your social media pages to your website can give you multiple benefits that will help your website ultimately rank better in search engines.

Not only should you add DoFollow links to your social media platforms but you should also add schema tags that link your organization, website, and social media pages so Google knows you are all connected.

When you add links to your social media pages, you are passing link juice from your website to your social media pages. This will help them rank higher in Google allowing your branded search to take over the whole first page with your branded keyword.

Adding the correct schema tags to your website can also connect your social media in Google eyes. You can even have your social media profiles displayed on the right side of Google SERPs which can increase traffic.

Here is an example schema tag that will tell search engines which social media pages belong to your organization:

<script type="application/ld+json">
{
"@context": "https://schema.org",
"@type": "Organization",
"name": "Marijuana SEO",
"url": "https://www.marijuanaseo.com",
"sameAs": [
"https://www.facebook.com/mjseocompany/",
"https://twitter.com/marijuana_seo",
"https://www.instagram.com/mjseocompany/",
"https://www.linkedin.com/company/marijuanaseo-com/"
]
}
</script>

Keyword Consistency

This is defined as having one keyword or a set of keywords that you want to rank spread across elements of a web page. Keyword consistency is used to help webpages rank consistently on searches based on the keywords that are used. Keyword density within websites was originally considered as a ranking factor by Google, where a keyword is used multiple times as part of a webpage’s content.

Some key things to take into consideration when it comes to SEO for your page include:

  • Meta Title
  • Meta Description
  • Header Tag
  • Website Body
  • Anchor Text
  • Image Alt tags
  • URL

Accounting for all of these factors on a regular basis for your website will help it rank consistently when people search via Google and it populates in the results page.

Robots.txt

Alternatively referred to as the robots exclusion protocol, the robots.txt file is a text file that provides specific instructions to search engine robots on which pages of your website to crawl.

They are designed to regulate how robots crawl the web, index and access content, and serve relevant content to its user base. REP includes additional directives through the use of meta robots, such as site-wide instructions on how to treat links (“nofollow” or “follow”) and subdirectory behaviors.

A basic format for a robots.txt file would be shown like this:

User-agent: [user-agent name]
Disallow: [URL string not to be crawled]

These two lines comprise the standard makeup of a complete robot.txt file. A single robots file can still contain additional directives and user agents.

Search engines operate on two specific tasks:

  1. Crawling the web to find content
  2. Indexing said content and delivering it to searchers that are looking for specific pieces of information.

Add Business Address (with schema when prohibited)

For local, retail and brick/mortar businesses, adding your address using schema markup will help you rank better locally.

You will also want to add your Google My Business profile that includes the exact address details from your website. That way when people are searching for your product or services in your local area, your listing is more likely to show up.

Content Heavy Pages

Content, in general, is anything that comprises of text, image and audio-based material that forms the makeup of a website.

Pages that are loaded with content, but are not structured in an orderly way sometimes can be counterintuitive. Ultimately, a website’s content should aim to help a visitor come to a decision when it comes to searching for answers to any problems they have. Here are some of the best principles and tools that should be on the mindset of every designer and owner that operate their websites with SEO:

  • Boxes, borders & graphical planes: Segmenting information via visual categories.
  • Strong information hierarchy: Laying out the content through consistent design.
  • Grids: Keep content within a consistent, rigid structure to help reduce having to process the information displayed.
  • Visual hierarchy: Differentiate the importance of different areas through headlines, pull-quotes, sub-headings, etc.
  • White space: Allowing your visitor’s eyes’ to relax with some spaces in-between content displays.
  • Intuitive searching: Allowing users to search for the information they need on the spot.

Website Structure

Also known as site structure, this plays an important role in SEO in relation to how your website’s content is organized. Websites usually have their content organized and grouped by topics, and further subdivided into pages and postings to their visitors. If the website is well-structured, they will benefit from the visitor growth due to their pages being easy to navigate by design.

Since content is added regularly onto websites, there is an increased chance of clutter. It is necessary to organize the content neatly so that it will be easier for your visitors and search engines to be able to find what they’re looking for. Disorganization can lead to loss of visitors, along with search engines being unable to determine what information needs to be shown to the viewer.

SEO Images

Naming images and sizing them when it comes to SEO will increase organic traffic and search rankings. Properly integrated images with bodies of texts such as blog posts make them easier to read, opens up keywording opportunities, and can spread your social media presence.

Standard practice is to copy and paste keywords from your headline URL into your images. Doing so boosts the visibility of your content in the Images section of Google, and provide a great user experience.

Here are some steps to follow when naming your images for SEO:

  1. Optimize your keyword phrase for your page URL
  2. Copy the keyword phrase / edited URL
  3. Copy your blog post title’s keyword phrase

Additional tips to follow for SEO are:

  1. Use high-quality images
  2. Use alt tags
  3. Determine the quality-to-size ratio
  4. Customize the file name of your images
  5. Choose the right image file type, usually JPG, GIF or PNG
  6. Add images throughout your sitemap
  7. Use your website’s hosting service to host your images

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