{"id":113026,"date":"2017-10-12T17:53:07","date_gmt":"2017-10-12T09:53:07","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/seo-hacker.com\/?p=13026"},"modified":"2022-04-08T16:58:47","modified_gmt":"2022-04-08T08:58:47","slug":"hack-on-page-seo","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/seo-hacker.com\/hack-on-page-seo\/","title":{"rendered":"Three Powerful Strategies to Hack On-Page SEO [Case Study]"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"Three<\/a><\/p>\n

As part of the <\/span>WordLift<\/span><\/a> team and as a blogger<\/a><\/span>, I run several experiments each week to see what kind of strategies can help hack on-page SEO. <\/span>These experiments provided more in-depth information regarding on-page SEO, along with the discovery of how to properly do it to help my SEO campaign.<\/p>\n

<\/p>\n

In this article, I want to show you three factors that affect on-page SEO up to the point that if you learn to leverage them, you can hack on-page SEO.<\/span><\/p>\n

We\u2019ll start with a practical case study. I asked Google \u201cwhat is a featured snippet,\u201d and this is what I got:<\/span><\/p>\n

\"featured<\/a><\/p>\n

How did they know what to show? And why is this crucial for your on-page SEO?<\/span><\/p>\n

But, before we delve on the case study, let me clarify the main difference between on-page and off-page SEO and what they really mean:<\/span><\/p>\n

SEO 101: Off-Page vs. On-Page SEO<\/b><\/h2>\n

When you want to make your website rank through search engines, like Google, you learn right away that there are two kinds of strategies to adopt: on-page and off-page. Often the two walk hand in hand. Yet some content marketers choose either the former or the latter. <\/span><\/p>\n

What is the main difference?<\/strong><\/p>\n

Each time Google ranks a page, it crawls and indexes the page. Therefore, before your pages get in Google\u2019s ranking, you may want to make sure that the previous steps of the process are taken care of, which you can do by simply publishing content or submitting your sitemap to search engines. <\/span><\/p>\n

What we look at in this article is the final part of the process- ranking. How does a search engine decide whether a page or website deserves to rank?<\/span><\/p>\n

It looks at authority<\/a> and relevance.<\/span><\/p>\n

Simply put, authority is about off-page SEO; while relevance is about on-page SEO.<\/b><\/p>\n

A good proxy for authority is <\/span>domain and page authority<\/b><\/a>. Those are two metrics that MOZ created to assess how a domain or a page are seen through Google\u2019s lenses.<\/p>\n

Domain authority is connected to off-page SEO activity. In short, when other sites link to your website, from your website\u2019s perspective those are called backlinks. The more quality backlinks you get, the more your domain authority will improve over time.<\/span><\/p>\n

The other factor is relevance<\/b>. Relevance is about on-page SEO. How is relevance assessed? There are several ways to evaluate how relevant a page can be. The main ones would be: keywords<\/a>, internal linking<\/a>, page formatting, user experience<\/a>, and quality of data.<\/p>\n

If I had to put it in a simple diagram, it would be:<\/span><\/p>\n

\"Ranking<\/a><\/p>\n

Now that we clarified the distinction between on-page and off-page SEO let\u2019s jump into the three steps to hack your on-page.<\/span><\/p>\n

Step One: Target the Featured Snippet<\/b><\/h2>\n

A <\/span>featured snippet<\/span><\/a> is a box you see before any result on Google.<\/span><\/p>\n

\"featured<\/a><\/p>\n

The objective is clear: give a quick answer to a user\u2019s question.<\/span><\/p>\n

By targeting the featured snippet, you’re going after Rank Zero. In other words, you\u2019re not anymore targeting the first positions in Google\u2019s <\/span>SERP<\/span><\/a> (Search Engine Results Page).<\/span><\/p>\n

You may ask, why do I go for the featured snippet when I don\u2019t even get my page to rank first? That\u2019s the thing. Ranking first on Google isn\u2019t enough anymore. In fact, in a few cases, Google takes content that comes from the other nine results and places it as a featured snippet. <\/span><\/p>\n

You can see it also in this example:<\/span><\/p>\n

\"Ahrefs<\/a><\/p>\n

On the long-tail query \u201cwhat is a featured snippet\u201d, Google is using the content coming from Ahrefs.com<\/a><\/span> even though it is ranking 9th in the SERP.<\/span><\/p>\n

Yet this is not the primary reason you want to target the featured snippet. For instance, when I compared Ahrefs<\/a> and Search Engine Watch’s domain and page authority with<\/span> Open Site Explorer<\/span><\/a> I was stunned with the results:<\/span><\/p>\n

\"open<\/a><\/p>\n

Although the authority of both pages are 68; when it comes to domain authority, Ahrefs loses against Search Engine Watch.<\/span><\/p>\n

So, why did Ahrefs gain the featured snippet? And how can you get a featured snippet when your domain authority is lower, and you\u2019re not even ranking as number one?<\/span><\/p>\n

First, regarding this long-tail keyword<\/a>, Ahrefs<\/span> won because it targeted Google\u2019s featured snippet. In fact, when you focus on the featured snippet you shift your mindset. Therefore, your overall on-page SEO strategy changes accordingly. <\/span><\/p>\n

How? You start doing the following things:<\/span><\/p>\n