On-Page Optimization essentially involves making your website as user-friendly and search-friendly as possible. You want to make it easy for prospects to find you, understand your business, contact you and hire you. On-Page SEO helps do all of that by optimizing website structure, content, code and conversions.

Your keyword research and competitor analysis provides guidance on how to create your optimal website structure. For local on page SEO, you want to balance preparing an efficient website where your content is easy to discover through smart navigation with comprehensively covering your essential topics.

Local On-Page SEO: Optimize Your Web Page URL

Permalinks are the URL extensions to your domain name which show what page is being viewed. It is your web page address. For example, a website’s Services Web Page might look like this: www.yourwebsite.com/our-services

There are two types of permanlinks: Flat and multiple subdirectory.

Flat URL: Flat URL is one section after your domain name such as https://digitalmuzes.com/services.

Multiple Subdirectory: Multiple subdirectory includes several sections such as https://digitalmuzes.com/services/local-search-optimization/.

Both types have advantages and you can do both on a website. For most websites, flat works best since it keeps the focus on the keyword. Yet, when you have a big, complicated website with a lot of content, organizing content into sub-categories is efficient and helps with navigation.

The URL should be concise, describe the content of your page and include the primary keyword for the page. Avoid using underscores between words. Instead use hyphens which are easier to read. Avoid using numbers and capital letters in favor of using all lowercase. Keep your permalink as brief as possible, but sufficiently describe the content of the web page.

Local On-Page SEO: Optimize Your Title Tags

When you create a web page, you have to give it a title. The title of that webpage is that blue clickable link title that web searchers see when your web page shows up in the search engine results pages (SERPs).

One on-page SEO strategy that is very effective is optimizing web page titles to help rank. The page title tell Google what the page is about. The title of the page should include the keyword and secondary keyword. Always start with the keyword to eliminate ambiguity regarding the topic.

Title Tag Best Practices

• Limit your title to 60 characters so that it doesn’t get cut off in the SERPs. Always start with the keyword and then add a second keyword if feasible.
• Optimize for local searches by including geo-modifiers such as neighborhood, city and/or state.
• Add the geo-modifier at the before or after the keyword depending on your keyword analysis.
• Include additional modifiers to help with click-through rates such as “Free Estimate”, i.e. “Seattle Emergency Plumber – Free Estimates”
• Create separate pages and title tags for each business location.
• Avoid adding your phone number to the title tag (you want them to click through to your website rather than just call from the title tag.

Local On-Page SEO: Optimize Your Meta Descriptions

Meta descriptions are those little blurbs under the title tags in the SERPs. See the image below. These are great opportunities to encourage users click on your listing instead of your competitors’ descriptions.  Meta descriptions should be short and compelling to induce the web searcher to click through. Prospective clients are more likely to click through from the SERPs if your meta description is intriguing and addresses their needs.

For local on-page SEO benefits, always be sure to include your primary keyword and geographic location in your meta description. You will want to add a compelling reason for someone to click through.

Also avoid adding your business number in the meta description. You want the web searcher to click through to your web page. It helps with your rankings to have click through rates and it also helps the web searcher familiarize themselves with your business and services that you offer.

While meta descriptions no longer count as a ranking factor, a compelling description can have a positive impact on click-through rates which do affect rankings. Here are a few tips for optimizing meta descriptions:

• Limit character count to 140-160 characters long.
• Include your keyword
• If possible, add a call to action
• Avoid duplicate meta descriptions – create a unique meta description for every page
• Meta descriptions should be descriptive, helpful and match your content

For local on-page SEO benefits, include your niche, service and location in your meta description to further bolster your optimization.

Local On-Page SEO: Optimize Your Heading Tags

Heading tags are important SEO factors. They are also known as H1-H6 tags. The most important are the H1-H3 tags. These tags tell Google what your topic and sub-topics are all about. This is where you want to include your target keywords, related terms within each subheading and location.

For local on-page SEO benefits, your H1 tag should include your service and location such as “drain cleaning Seattle”, “dog-bite attorney Los Angeles”.

Local On-Page SEO: Add A Sitemap

A sitemap lists all your website pages and tells the search engines which you want crawled and indexed. The sitemap helps the search bots easily find and crawl your pages which then improves your online visibility. Creating a sitemap makes it easy for Google to understand the structure of your website and crawl all of your more important pages. 

As part of your local on-page SEO, you want to use plenty of images and video throughout your website to maximize the user-experience (UX). Yet, one of the problems with images is that they can slow down your web page speed. This can pose a problem for higher rankings, especially in competitive markets.

Google went “mobile-first” due to the proliferation of mobile devices. Consequently, when a web page takes too long to load, people will abandon the web page (bounce). High bounce rates will negatively affect your rankings. Faster loading websites with good content increase your dwell time which improves your rankings because the search engines interpret a higher dwell time with a better user experience.

Speed Up Your Website

Uncompressed images can often slow down website speed. The easy fix is to compress the images using website plug-in tools. Another option that we’ve been using more often is to convert the images to WebP rather than PNG or JPEG. WebP was created by Google to compress images without losing definition. It’s a very good local on-page SEO practice.

Additionally, you will want to name your images to be descriptive. It helps with rankings as well. Search any keyword and when you look up Images in the search results, you will see optimized images using descriptions and keywords. You will also want to use your keywords and secondary keywords as alt tags on the images.

Website Load Speed

Google recently completed a major update to their algorithm known as Core Web Vitals. This new update now measures every website for 3 important metrics: Interactivity, Visual Stability and Load Speed. If your website loads slowly, it will increase the rate of people abandoning your website which is called a bounce rate. A high bounce rate signals Google something is wrong which could lead to lower rankings. 

To improve site speed, test your website speed. If there are speed issues, then perform a website audit to repair the technical issues and modify your website as needed to improve speed performance.  

Check your website’s speed via Google’s PageSpeed Insights .

Geo-Tag Images

Taking photos in your region and uploading to your website and to your Google Business Profile is very beneficial for local on-page SEO. Digital images from mobile devices indicates location information, such as longitude and latitude. Google reads this information from your image and so it is beneficial in further anchoring your location that sends proximity signals for your local search results.

Internal links are links between your website pages. By adding anchor text from one page leading to another page on your website, you facilitate website navigation and improve rankings.

Internal linking shows Google context, relevancy and topical connections on your website. It also distributes link equity. To rank your most important website pages, you’ll want to internally link in addition to back linking from external websites.

Internal linking should be based on relevance. There should be a common connection between the source content and the destination content. Internal links should expand on information from the source content. 

Additionally, internal linking keeps users on your website longer which decreases your bounce rate and increases dwell time. Longer visits to your website and navigating through several pages positively influences your website rankings.

Moreover, internal links positively affect conversion rates. These more links that you have on your website leading prospects to a desired action, i.e. contact you, schedule a consultation, sign up for your newsletter, the higher your conversions.

Schema is a way of defining entities and actions through a code system on your webs pages. It basically speaks to the search engine bots to reveal what the structure of the data is.

For effective local on-page SEO, the most important structured data small business owners can add to their website is the “Local Business” schema. From there, depending on they type of business that you have, you can add additional schema mark-up such as legal services, real estate, etc. You can also add schema for sections of your website such as FAQ pages, location pages, service pages, etc.

Schema markups can make your website more relevant to those searching for information pertaining to your services and removes ambiguity about your website and web pages. This can lead to a higher rankings and click through rate. Schema markup helps businesses rank higher than those sites that don’t use it and is essential for effective local on-page SEO.

Learn more about schema mark-up by visiting Schema.org.