Do you know that most search engine users will never look below the top 10 or 20 results? Search engines return thousands or even millions of results for any query the user types. That’s tremendous competition. If you ever hope to have visitors to your website, you need to optimize your results within search engine rankings, or risk being buried within the millions.
On-Page SEO (search engine optimization) refers to SEO techniques on your web page, usually involving relevant text within the web page and meta tags. The following techniques are some of the most important, with the more influential ones being listed first.
1. Keywords
Everything starts with choosing good keywords for your SEO. After all, SEO is all about “how high your website can rank with your keywords” in search engines. This should be your first step in planning your online business, even before you start building your first web page. Spend at least a few days researching keywords related to your site theme. Try to target relevant words that are not too competitive. Several keyword suggestion tools are available to assist you.
2. High Quality, Unique Content
As Google robots become smarter and the algorithms more efficient, the importance of having unique content increases. Google may penalize pages that appear to duplicate the content of other websites. Your page should focus on your keywords without stuffing them unnaturally into the text and should offer quality information relevant to your site theme. Don’t place your page content within a frame that will be ignored by spiders.
3. Domain Name
A domain name that features your keyword(s) or at least closely related words will also help boost your rankings. Similarly, your sub-domain names and other inner page URLs should also use words that are relevant to your keywords.
4. H1, H2 Tags
Use H1 and H2 tags properly. Your H1 tag should be near the top of your web page and include your most important keywords. Your second most important level of keywords should be listed in your H2 tag. If you have a third level, place it in an H3 tag. These tags are more important for results in Yahoo! and MSN search engines than Google.
5. Meta Tags
Even though a website can rank #1 at Google without having any meta tags, it is not wise to simply ignore them. Remember too that Google is not the only search engine. Meta tags can be more important factors for other search engines, such as Yahoo! and MSN. Insert your keywords in all meta tags, but don’t repeat the same keyword more than two times. Search engine robots may penalize keyword stuffing or spamming.
Title Tag
The title tag is the most important one, so focus on creating good phrases with each one containing two or three keywords rather than just making a list of keywords.
Keyword Tag
Again, never stuff or repeat your keywords in this tag. Also, do not insert any words that do not appear on the web page.
Description Tag
Write a good description of your website, using your keywords. Because this description appears in search engine result pages, it should appeal to potential visitors and make them want to visit your site.
6. Keyword Density
An old rule of thumb is that your keywords should make up about 3% of the text on your web page. Search engines today place less emphasis on this factor, but having keyword focused content is still important. Just remember to use your keywords as often as possible, but in a natural way as you create the content of your web page. Use good keyword-rich phrases, because unique combinations of keywords are more important than the simple use of keywords themselves.
7. Alt, Title Tags
Insert your keywords into these tags in the same manner as with meta tags. Use a keyword-rich sentence or phrase for each of these tags.
8. Inner Linking
Your home page should link to the most important inner pages. Those inner pages should include only links to nearby relevant pages and a link back to the home page. Don’t place links to all of your inner pages on every single page. The reason for this is to maximize PageRank points on your domain page URL (for example, www.yourdomain.com). Your domain page is the most important, so have a link to your domain URL on every page so that it receives any PR points from those pages. Don’t include a link to your “contact us” page on every page because you don’t need to promote your contact page. Another way to control PageRank point flow is through the use of no-follow tags.
More On-Page SEO considerations:
- Remove broken links
- Make Search Engine friendly URL
- Use bold, italic or underline on your keywords
- Adding new pages frequently
- Updating your pages frequently
Avoid these typical On-Page SEO mistakes:
- Keyword spamming
- Domain redirection (although 301 redirection is ok)
- Too many affiliate links
- Linking to link farms
- Excessive cross-linking
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