As an engineering company marketer, it makes sense for you to focus on improving your company’s position within Google search rankings.
If you’re familiar with the basics of SEO and Google search, you’ll know that rankings in the SERPs (Search Engine Results Page) are heavily influenced by the presence and prominence of certain on-page SEO elements, which may include HTML codes, domain names, URLs, headers, alt texts, and more.
Google uses these SEO on-page elements to crawl your website, helping the algorithm better match your content with what people are searching for in the Google search bar.
The better your on-page SEO, the more effectively Google can crawl your site – and, in turn, the more prominently the algorithm can feature your site in the SERPs.
But what exactly are these on-page SEO elements, and how can you improve yours to make sure your engineering company gets the best visibility on Google?
Below, I’ll take you through some of the on-page SEO essentials that I’ve found to be the most valuable.
1. High-quality content
It may go without saying, but the actual content of your website matters.
This has always been true, but it’s even more true now that Google has released their helpful content update, which puts a double-emphasis on content that’s useful and helps readers.
With that, the creation of high-quality engineering content must be the first step towards any successful on-page SEO strategy in your industry.
You can always ask yourself whether your engineering content is helpful, intriguing, entertaining, or shareable. If it isn’t one of these, you may need to go back to the drawing board and spend some more time on your content strategy.
Some ways to get great content ideas include looking at your competitors and analyzing what works for them, focusing on very niche subject matters or local areas, and focusing on engineering topics that directly address your audience’s concerns.
It’s worth noting that ChatGPT is a great way to brainstorm ideas that your target audience may be searching for. Of course, it’s important to validate these ideas in the usual ways.
Posting regular, unique, and high-quality content also encourages other engineers to visit your blog more frequently.
Don’t forget that content doesn’t only refer to text. You can also make your engineering blog stand out by focusing on graphics, infographics, images, animations, videos, GIFs, and more.
2. Relevant title tags
The title tag or meta title of a website should clearly state what your page is about.
While “title tag” refers to the technical HTML element in question, the term “meta title” can be used interchangeably, referring to the title element that appears in the SERPs.
Simply put, title tag and meta title refer to the title of the page as it appears on Google.
Importantly:
Title tags should be well-optimized to include the relevant target keywords, and they should be between 50 – 60 characters long to ensure they show up correctly in the SERPs. Longer titles will be cut off in the SERPs, which may negatively affect your click-through rates.
If, for example, you’ve written an article on the best civil engineering consultants in New York City, your meta title should reflect that information.
It won’t make sense to include a meta title that reads “My favorite consultants that are based in NYC” because this doesn’t actually tell Google – or the reader, for that matter – what the webpage is about.
Something along the lines of “Best Civil Engineering Consultants In NYC” will be a much better, more relevant title.
3. Succinct meta description
The meta description functions together with the meta title and appears in the SERPs.
This is the little text fragment that appears under the page’s headline on the search engine results page, and it helps both Google and readers identify what your article is about.
Now, Google has become smarter over the years and won’t always display the meta description you set. Very often, Google will pull its own meta description from text on your page that it thinks best matches the user’s search intent.
However, it is still a good idea to set your own meta description, limiting it to 150 – 170 characters and including your relevant keywords.
4. Descriptive URLs
The URL (Uniform Resource Locator) is the location of a specific website, page, or file on the internet.
Think of it as the home address. In order to find a house, you need to have the right address. And in order to get to your page, users will need to have the right URL.
Like meta descriptions and titles, URLs can assist both search engine bots and your target audience in determining your page’s purpose, and optimizing your URLs is a great strategy.
Make sure to keep your URLs short and to the point, with the right keywords in place.
For example, using the civil engineering scenario from above, the latter part of the URL for your article could be “/best-civil-engineering-consultants-new-york-city” (the first part of the URL will be your domain name).
This tells Google and potential readers exactly what the page is about.
5. Optimized images
All good website content contains images, but these can work against you if they’re not well-optimized for SEO.
Most importantly, perhaps, your images need to be compressed sufficiently so they don’t negatively affect your page loading speed (more on this a little further down).
You may need to accept some loss of quality, but the compression should also not be severe enough to result in pixelated images, which will negatively affect user experience. This is particularly true if you’re using graphics or images with texts or data that needs to be readable.
For best results, you can rely on web compression tools available with most professional photo editing platforms, like Adobe PhotoShop. If you’re running on a CMS like WordPress, you can also install image-compression plugins like Smush to assist. Images and graphics with text will also be more space-savvy while preserving quality if saved in a .png.
Once your image is compressed and ready for web upload, you should name your image correctly to adequately describe what the image is about. If, for example, you’re uploading an infographic on the best civil engineering consultants in New York City, your image name should reflect that and not simply be titled something random like Image101.
Finally, once your image is uploaded, you also need to set the right alt text in your backend. Alt text serves a dual purpose. On the one hand, it tells Google what your image is about, allowing it to be correctly indexed and come up in Google image results. On the other hand, alt text is used to describe the content and context of the image, which is helpful for people with visual disabilities and in situations where the image doesn’t load correctly.
By SEO-optimizing your images, you can ensure that these work for you.
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6. Internal linking
An effective internal linking strategy guarantees that any page you publish on your website also links to other pages on your website.
Say, for example, you’re writing an article on engineering designs of Car Brand A but you also have similar articles about other car brands. You can then list and link the other car brand articles in your article on Car Brand A.
This encourages visitors to spend more time exploring your engineering content, clicking over to other articles linked within one article that they may find interesting.
A good internal linking strategy can help improve your site’s overall traffic and the time each visitor spends on your site. It also helps Google index your site better.
Remember that it’s important to use descriptive keywords in the anchor text where you add the internal link so that users (and Google) know exactly what sort of content they’ll be clicking over to.
7. Headings and subheadings
Headings and subheadings make your engineering blog content more readable.
Search engines examine your article by subdividing it into sections, and breaking your article up into logical chunks improves the bot’s accuracy.
Of course, a well-structured article with thought-out headings and subheadings also helps your reader navigate your content more effectively. It’s a well-known fact that most internet users skim content instead of reading it word-for-word, and a good structure with relevant sub-headings really helps readers hop through your content effectively and focus on the parts most interesting to them.
In SEO terms, your first heading will be the H1, followed by H2s (sub-headings) and H3s (sub-sub-headings) and so on. By utilizing these H tags when crafting your engineering content, you can help Google identify each section better.
It is usually a good idea to include your keyword or a variation of your keyword in the sub-headings, but it isn’t always required – not if it’ll make your content chunky or unnatural to read.
8. Responsive websites
Responsive websites are designed to change the way they’re displayed depending on the type of screen and screen size they’re displayed on.
Roughly 60% of users access the internet via their mobile devices, and not via traditional desktop computers. If your website is only designed to look nice on a desktop, you’re disadvantaging a massive part of your audience.
Desktops and laptops already have differing screen sizes, but this becomes even more notable once you add a variety of mobile phones and tablet devices to the mix.
By focusing on a responsive website design, you can ensure your site automatically adapts to the display requirements of the device being used. This, in turn, ensures that your readers have the best website experience possible no matter how they access your site.
9. Page loading speed
Websites need to load fast, ideally within 1 – 2 seconds.
Statistics show that even a 2-second delay in loading time can lead to 87% of users abandoning the site.
This means that in order to keep users on your site, page loading speed has to be a priority.
There are many factors that may impact page loading speed, including the speed of your host and server and the size of elements (especially images) on your site.
You can visit PageSpeed Insights to check how fast your website loads and address any issues.
Optimizing your website with on-page SEO elements
By focusing on these on-page SEO essentials, you can ensure your engineering website has the highest chance of ranking well.
But you don’t have to do it alone. If you need help prioritizing your on-page SEO elements, contact me to assist.
On-Page SEO Elements FAQs
How can I best optimize images?
Images affect your on-page SEO in multiple ways. Make sure your images are compressed (to reduce page load times), mobile-friendly (so they’re clearly visible and aesthetically pleasing), and that you use descriptive file names and alt texts in each image to optimize for keywords.
How often should I update my on-page SEO elements?
Unfortunately, SEO is an ongoing process. It’s important to go over your content and review essential on-page SEO elements at least once a year to ensure your content can still rank well.
What is schema markup?
Schema markup is microdata that helps Google better understand the content of your website. Examples include star ratings for reviews, event dates, or product information. By including schema markup, your content is more informative and Google can better display this information in the SERPs.
