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First Off, What is On-Page SEO?

On-Page SEO is the practical advancement of the optimization of a single website page for search engines and users.

There are a handful of different factors that make up on-page SEO such as optimizing title tags, content, internal links and URLs.

But what will be the critical elements in 2021?

In a post we uploaded recently, we actually discussed the upcoming changes in Google’s Algorithm, and how it’s going to affect your clients.

If you haven't seen the upcoming changes, look at these.

But now, we’re going to specifically be drilling down into why on-page SEO is so critical to the success of your clients in 2021.

Why Is On-Page SEO So Critical for 2021?

You might be wondering how you can possibly optimize your client’s pages even more? Well, it all starts with the experience any traffic has during their visit.

Think of it almost like going to the grocery store. If you go inside, and you’re able to find the exact item you were looking for, and can checkout quickly, you’d say you had a pretty good experience, right?

It’s the same case for any traffic coming to a website. And, now that sites are getting faster, and internet speeds are faster than ever, as well as the implementation of 5G networks for mobile devices, our traffic, and users.

Any traffic coming to a website expects a couple of things.

  • It uploads to their mobile or desktop device quickly
  • The content looks fresh, rather than old or like web 1.0
  • It has been updated to fit the current day
  • The content within the page is relevant to a user’s search

And although there are still things like keywords and meta descriptions that are important to Google’s algorithm update to come in 2021, they are not as important as how Google measures the bullets above.

We can use a couple of tools ourselves to monitor what is important: Google Search Console and PageSpeed Insights.

You can see in the photo what Google is particularly looking for:

lab data from google search console

These are items like:

  • First Contentful Paint
  • Time to Interactive
  • Speed Index
  • Total Blocking Time
  • Largest Contentful Paint
  • Cumulative Layout Shift

Click into any of the links to be taken on how to achieve better performance scores in HubSpot.

Then, PageSpeed Insights will give suggestions as to how you can make these scores even better:

opportunities & diagnostics from pagespeed insights

 

Unfortunately, since we're working within the HubSpot platform, there are some things that we just can't change and are built into the system.

However, here are some things that you can do:

  • Properly size images
  • Defer offscreen images
  • Minify CSS
  • Serve images in next-gen formats
  • Use video formats for animated content

 

This is a really great opportunity to beat out the competition. Your competitors may not be as tech-savvy as you are, or aren't paying as much attention to their SEO.

When Google starts to implement the changes, your website will have the opportunity to beat out competitors and move up the ranks as the search engines start to bid you against higher-ranking pages. Since your upload and experience within the page will be better, they'll rank you even higher.

Good luck!

Tags:
UI/UX
Austin Walker
Post by Austin Walker
January 21, 2021
Pulling analytical data from the HubSpot platform is Austin's favorite pastime! He loves to see which pages are performing the worst and the best and continues to massage the elements for continual site improvements.