The most important on-page SEO techniques
Anyone who runs a homepage and wants it to be listed as high as possible in the Google search engine will quickly come across the keyword SEO optimization. SEO stands for “Search Engine Optimized” and means that the page is designed in such a way that the Google bot classifies it as high quality and useful for the user. The better the content of a website is judged by the Google algorithm to match a search query, the higher its ranking on the search results page.
So-called CMS, “content management systems”, can help with these optimizations. Joomla Onpage offers such a content management system with many different features to easily design websites in an SEO-optimized manner.
What does on-page SEO mean?
When it comes to designing web content to be search engine friendly, a distinction is made between on-page and off-page optimization. Off-page SEO is mainly concerned with so-called backlinks, i.e. links that lead from external pages to the one to be optimized. The more backlinks there are, the better the website is rated by Google. But the quality of the links also counts. For example, it is important that the essential keywords are also mentioned in the headings. Because these headings are used as link names by many bloggers and social websites.
On-page optimizations are the essential factors for good search engine rankings and are more versatile than off-page methods. You are particularly influenced by the authors of the text content on a website. The most important and best-known measure is the targeted use of so-called keywords, i.e. certain keywords that the user searches for using Google or other search engines. But there are also numerous other factors that can be adjusted very easily and clearly with Joomla SEO.
What are the most important on-page SEO techniques?
Meta title and meta description
Meta-information is a short description of a larger volume of information. In SEO, this refers to the title of a website displayed in the search engine list and the short information text below it. Anyone who has ever searched for something on Google knows how important this short, usually gray text can be when selecting results. It decides – together with a catchy, “crunchy” meta title – whether the user clicks on the result or not.
The Joomla onpage settings allow you to easily customize this information. The page title (also meta title) can consist of around 55 – 70 characters and contain the most important keywords. The main keyword should come first. Ideally, the website title should only appear once on the entire website.
The meta description can be a call to action and a summary of the website content with a maximum of 156 characters (including spaces). To be more noticeable, Unicode characters such as checkmarks or arrows can be used. It is important to know that the meta description is not directly evaluated by Google's algorithm, but Google does record the user's click behavior. And with a good meta description, a search result is clicked much more often.
Headings in H1 and H6
Every landing page on a website should have a meaningful H1 heading, but only one per page. All other subheadings should be formatted correctly with Hx. The Google bot evaluates the frequent use of subheadings and paragraphs positively, and such text is also more reader-friendly. Joomla search engine optimization offers various ready-made templates that automatically format the page headings with H1. Using the editor, the headings can easily be set in H1 to H6, even without knowledge of HTML.
The internet thrives on images
Images are particularly important for the attractive design of websites. Google also likes to see images; users often end up on certain pages through image searches. However, there are a few points to consider:
- The image files should not be too large so that they can be loaded quickly. Before integrating them into a website, you should definitely reduce the size of image files accordingly. Loading times that are too long worsen the Google rating and also annoy users.
- The file should have a meaningful name and not just an automatically generated numbering or date code. Of course, the best thing is a file name that matches the image content.
- A short image description is often hidden in image files, the so-called alt tag. Joomla search engine optimization allows you to enter and change such an image description using the editor.
Breadcrumbs on the homepage
The so-called breadcrumb navigation contributes very well to a high search engine ranking and helps users with orientation. The breadcrumb navigation makes the path through the homepage comprehensible via several internal links and the visitor can find his way back to the homepage or other levels more quickly. The Google bot evaluates a high internal website link as positive.
The URL structure should be clean
As already mentioned above, SEO adjustment of the URL structure is more of an onsite optimization technique, but the boundaries are fluid. A “clean” URL is an important evaluation factor for the search engine’s evaluation. Joomla SEO offers some useful tools for this, which can be activated with just one click using the “Search engine friendly URL” function. This tool modifies the URL by removing unnecessary parts such as: E.g. "index.php" or ".html" disappears. It is also possible to display special characters such as umlauts or Chinese characters correctly, but this can lead to problems in the browser when using German. This feature is more commonly used for other languages.
Last but not least: the content
The content of a website should not be written for the Google bot, but for the users. The content of the text provided is therefore the most important indicator of the quality of a homepage. In addition to the correct presentation of information and interesting wording, the focus should be on clarity and rapid knowledge transfer. Otherwise, visitors may quickly lose interest in the site.
The Joomla CMS makes it particularly easy to create new content for your website. Joomla SEO helps to improve the ranking of the site by adhering to the most important SEO rules.
The search engine ranking also looks for so-called “unique content”, i.e. content that is unique in this form. Copied text passages from other websites are an absolute no-go.
The tags or keywords that users enter via the search engine should appear in the right proportion on the website. Keyword density gives the Google bot information about how heavily a particular topic is covered on the page. This means that the search engine then knows whether the content could be useful for the user and whether it matches their search query. However, the keywords should not be packed too densely into the text, otherwise the content will appear less high-quality. The longer a text is, the more frequently the corresponding keywords can be used in it.
What else affects the Google bot?
The Google algorithm records many factors in order to evaluate a website and display it accordingly in the ranking. For Google, an important measurement for the quality of a website content are the links it contains. These are evaluated according to their number and quality as well as the anchor text used (the text that contains clickable, i.e. linked, words). A high level of internal linking is also welcome and makes it easier for the user to navigate the website.
Google also evaluates the quality of a website based on user behavior. If a user immediately returns to the search engine after a quick look at the page, Google registers this as a “short click” and evaluates it negatively. This is called "Return to SERP Rate", where SERP stands for "Search Engine Ranking Page", i.e. the search engine results list. In general, high visitor numbers contribute to a good evaluation of a search result.
Another tool that is rated positively by search engines is a sitemap. This can be easily hidden in the footer of a website and offers an overview of all subpages on a homepage.
Of course, you don't have to deal with all of these tasks and you can simply book our Joomla SEO techniques. Because there is a lot more to do than this rough overview!