B2B SEO – 12 On-Page SEO Best Practices to Follow

Today's post is an excerpt from The MFS Guide to B2B SEO: How to Integrate SEO into a Broader B2B Marketing Strategy.

With on-page SEO, you are more in the realm of minimum acceptable requirements than strategic concerns. There are certain guidelines you should follow for every page to give that page the best chance at ranking on Google. The one thing to keep in mind here is that you should balance these on-page requirements alongside issues like messaging, value proposition, and how you would like your brand to be portrayed on your website.

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One typical example of where you might need to pull back from an on-page tip that might help you rank is the use of keywords in header tags. If the header fits into the page in a readable and sensible fashion, then by all means you should add the target keyword to a header tag. However, if the header is completely unnecessary and serves to only disrupt the readability of the page, then you need to consider the trade off at play - do you sacrifice a bit of readability for some possible SEO benefits that would help the page get seen in the first place? In general though, this type of trade off is not that common and, in terms of on-page SEO, there are some key guidelines to follow that will leave your website in good stead.

On-Page SEO - 12 Best Practices

1. Page Structure - Best practice for page structure is to organize your pages into sections using headings - H1, H2, H3, etc. - where applicable. This structure will help Google’s search engine to crawl and index your page and will also help with readability.

2. Keyword Placement - If you create a page with the goal of targeting a particular keyword, then you should consider keyword placement as you build the web page. The best policy here is to place your keyword strategically throughout the page targeting, in particular, the following areas:

Page title
Meta description
URL
Headings and subheadings
Opening sentences
Image alt text

3. Optimize URLs - Include targeted keywords in the URL of the webpage. The best practice here is to use short to mid-length URLs that are descriptive and contain your target keyword.

4. Internal Linking - Adding some internal links to pages will help you share SEO equity around your site.

5. External Links to Authoritative Sources - If you add an external link to a high quality domain then you are giving Google a signal that your page contains relevant information that is sourced from authoritative sources. Best practice is to add one or two high quality external links per page. There may be pages on your site however where you will want to totally ignore this external linking best practice. If, for example, you have created a page that targets visitors who are quite far along in their decision-making process - maybe it is a competitor comparison page or something to that effect - then, the last thing you need to do is add an external link that may cause a visitor to leave your website at an inopportune time.

6. Title Tags - Title tags should be between 50 and 60 characters and contain your target keyword.

7. Meta Descriptions - Meta descriptions should be under 160 characters and should also include your target keyword.

8. Image Alt Text - Adding descriptive alt tags to your images is another on-page best practice and can be another place to add your target keyword. Just be careful not to indulge in a spot of keyword stuffing which can lead to demotion or delisting by Google.

9. Page Speed - Page speed is something that we have already covered under technical SEO and if you have conducted a site audit and implemented all fixes, then you should already be in good shape here. If you are adding new pages to your site, it is no harm to run them through Google’s Page Speed tool to see how your new page is performing and if there are any new issues emerging.

10. Mobile Friendliness - Similarly, the issue of mobile friendliness has been covered in our technical SEO section, but, again, as you create new pages on your site - keep a mobile-first approach in mind. Page builders like WordPress Elementor will show you mobile versions of your page as you build them, and it is good practice to check each new page on mobile for any possible issues.

11. Conversion Rate Optimization - Not strictly speaking an on-page SEO best practice, but conversion rate optimization is significantly related that it is worth including here. With each page you create, keep your conversion rate in mind. Ask yourself if there are some additions you can make to a page that will help you convert more web visitors to leads. Possible actions here could be the addition of a website chat function or bot, adding or relocating a form, or even changing the color of a contact us button.

12. Social Sharing Buttons - Add social sharing buttons to every page for ease of sharing. There are any number of social sharing plugins you can use here to implement this step very quickly.

This post is an excerpt from the MFS Guide to B2B SEO: How to Integrate SEO into a Broader B2B Marketing Strategy. If you would like to read more you can access the guide in full here. If you have a marketing challenge you are looking for support with, you are welcome to set up a no obligation initial strategy consultation with our team.