What Is On-Page Optimization?
Defined in its most simple form, on-page optimization is what you do on your website to help or hurt your SERPs. From my perspective, on-page optimization also refers to critical planning steps like understanding your niche, keyword research, and web strategy.
The best part of on-page optimization is that it’s fully in your control. If done correctly it can improve how search engines see your website, weigh your relevant content (keywords), and place your website within search results for a given term. Many Internet marketers debate the importance of on-page optimization when it comes to Google. I believe that the effects of onpage
optimization are more easily seen with other search engines like Yahoo! and BING when taken literally. However, I also believe that any Google optimization effort cannot be effective unless on-page optimization is thoroughly addressed at the start of your search engine optimization campaign.
Defined in its most simple form, on-page optimization is what you do on your website to help or hurt your SERPs. From my perspective, on-page optimization also refers to critical planning steps like understanding your niche, keyword research, and web strategy.
The best part of on-page optimization is that it’s fully in your control. If done correctly it can improve how search engines see your website, weigh your relevant content (keywords), and place your website within search results for a given term. Many Internet marketers debate the importance of on-page optimization when it comes to Google. I believe that the effects of onpage
optimization are more easily seen with other search engines like Yahoo! and BING when taken literally. However, I also believe that any Google optimization effort cannot be effective unless on-page optimization is thoroughly addressed at the start of your search engine optimization campaign.
What I’m referring to when I speak about specific on-page optimization factors is the proper use of meta tags, website URLs, formatting, internal linking, keyword development, and on-page placement. Let’s review each item in detail after you learn about the importance of keyword research. I’ll show you step-by-step what you need to know to ensure that your web pages are 100 percent optimized for Google and other major search engines.
Warning: Once you update your site with the proper on-page optimization tactics, you might very quickly find yourself ranked in the top five on some search engines like Yahoo! and BING. These particular engines, both of which are driven by the BING search algorithm, love on-page optimization!
Keyword Research
The more I learn about search engine optimization, the more I’ve come to rely on effective keyword research. Finding the search phrases that your website or blog should be optimized for is essential to any search engine optimization campaign. The goal is to find relevant, high traffic keywords that will be less competitive from an optimization perspective. Less competition means that
you’ll have a much better chance of achieving number one rankings for your chosen keyword phrase. Doing this takes a little work but is well worth it.
The value of selecting keywords strategically is very high. The “right” keywords allow your optimization efforts to happen quicker and produce the best organic result. Many of the companies I’ve consulted for over the past few years didn’t pay much attention to keyword research. As a result, they were either trying to optimize their websites for keywords they could never achieve number one rankings for, because an authority site like Wikipedia held the top position, or for keywords that had next to no search volume.
Not too long ago I had a conversation with a potential client. We were introduced through a mutual friend and sat down to dinner to discuss his online marketing needs. I started to ask him questions about his online marketing strategy, website, and so on. About thirty minutes into the conversation, he said, “I don’t need SEO. I’m already ranked number one for my keyword.” When I asked him what the keyword was, which I’m excluding for privacy reasons here, I looked it up on my phone’s web browser. I wanted to see how much search volume this particular keyword phrase had on a monthly basis.
Not surprisingly, the keyword that he was so enthusiastic about was getting less than four hundred searches per month. That’s it! It’s pretty difficult to build a business on only four hundred searches per month. He was surprised and said, “But in my industry that’s how everyone refers to our service.” I responded with, “That’s clearly not the case.”
After we started working together, I showed him the proper way to do keyword research and find the actual keyword phrases that people in his industry were typing into Google to find services like the ones he offered. With thorough research we found keyword phrases that his website could realistically rank well for in the short term and at the same time had enough traffic to sustain his business.
Before covering keyword research in detail, you must first understand the factors that are involved in proper on-page optimization and some off-page factors that influence website competitiveness. When I updated this book, I originally started with a complete article before on keyword research but quickly realized that unless you have a firm understanding of the factors that influence rankings, you would never fully grasp the various components of effective keyword research. Therefore, we’ll be covering basic on-page
optimization components followed by a thorough overview and deep dive on keyword research.
If you already have a basic understanding of SEO best practices and are eager to start your optimization effort, you can always skip forward to the keyword research section which appears later in this book. Keyword research will be the place you start any optimization effort once you’ve acquired a fundamental understanding of SEO. Armed with this knowledge, you can choose the right keywords for optimizing your website, blogs, affiliate landing pages and other online assets, resulting in a very quick rise to the top.
Let’s start with important on-page optimization factors and then I’ll show you exactly how these factors will help you choose the right keywords for your website time and again. You can manage many of these on-page factors using your website editor (WISYWIG) or an html editor like PageBreeze, FrontPage, or Dreamweaver. If you don’t have HTML experience, you can
outsource this work but still need a basic understanding of what to do and how to do it. I cover everything you need to know about outsourcing later in this book so take a deep breath and relax. Effective SEO is easier than you think.
The more I learn about search engine optimization, the more I’ve come to rely on effective keyword research. Finding the search phrases that your website or blog should be optimized for is essential to any search engine optimization campaign. The goal is to find relevant, high traffic keywords that will be less competitive from an optimization perspective. Less competition means that
you’ll have a much better chance of achieving number one rankings for your chosen keyword phrase. Doing this takes a little work but is well worth it.
The value of selecting keywords strategically is very high. The “right” keywords allow your optimization efforts to happen quicker and produce the best organic result. Many of the companies I’ve consulted for over the past few years didn’t pay much attention to keyword research. As a result, they were either trying to optimize their websites for keywords they could never achieve number one rankings for, because an authority site like Wikipedia held the top position, or for keywords that had next to no search volume.
Not too long ago I had a conversation with a potential client. We were introduced through a mutual friend and sat down to dinner to discuss his online marketing needs. I started to ask him questions about his online marketing strategy, website, and so on. About thirty minutes into the conversation, he said, “I don’t need SEO. I’m already ranked number one for my keyword.” When I asked him what the keyword was, which I’m excluding for privacy reasons here, I looked it up on my phone’s web browser. I wanted to see how much search volume this particular keyword phrase had on a monthly basis.
Not surprisingly, the keyword that he was so enthusiastic about was getting less than four hundred searches per month. That’s it! It’s pretty difficult to build a business on only four hundred searches per month. He was surprised and said, “But in my industry that’s how everyone refers to our service.” I responded with, “That’s clearly not the case.”
After we started working together, I showed him the proper way to do keyword research and find the actual keyword phrases that people in his industry were typing into Google to find services like the ones he offered. With thorough research we found keyword phrases that his website could realistically rank well for in the short term and at the same time had enough traffic to sustain his business.
Before covering keyword research in detail, you must first understand the factors that are involved in proper on-page optimization and some off-page factors that influence website competitiveness. When I updated this book, I originally started with a complete article before on keyword research but quickly realized that unless you have a firm understanding of the factors that influence rankings, you would never fully grasp the various components of effective keyword research. Therefore, we’ll be covering basic on-page
optimization components followed by a thorough overview and deep dive on keyword research.
If you already have a basic understanding of SEO best practices and are eager to start your optimization effort, you can always skip forward to the keyword research section which appears later in this book. Keyword research will be the place you start any optimization effort once you’ve acquired a fundamental understanding of SEO. Armed with this knowledge, you can choose the right keywords for optimizing your website, blogs, affiliate landing pages and other online assets, resulting in a very quick rise to the top.
Let’s start with important on-page optimization factors and then I’ll show you exactly how these factors will help you choose the right keywords for your website time and again. You can manage many of these on-page factors using your website editor (WISYWIG) or an html editor like PageBreeze, FrontPage, or Dreamweaver. If you don’t have HTML experience, you can
outsource this work but still need a basic understanding of what to do and how to do it. I cover everything you need to know about outsourcing later in this book so take a deep breath and relax. Effective SEO is easier than you think.
Meta Tags
A meta tag is any one of a variety of labels you give your web page. Although there are quite a number of different types of meta tags, we will discuss the most common ones here. These “tags” or labels are essential for helping search engines understand the name of your website’s pages, know what information the pages contain, display a small description for search engine result listings, and understand how to treat each page when indexed.
Meta tags are important because different search engines weigh the information in these tags differently. It is believed that Google uses them in relation to other factors, ensuring consistency and validating page rank. It’s good practice to make sure that your meta tags are complete, accurate, and up-to-date.
Note: Make sure that each page found on your website has its own unique set of meta tags. Duplicate tags can really hurt your rankings.
Here’s an example of the meta tags I use to describe just one of my many blogs, webcreation-d.blogspot.com:
<title>Website Creation | Website Building Secrets</title>
<meta name=“Description” content=“Website creating expert reveals powerful Website Building secrets. Search our Website Creating expert database, Website Creating service providers, and more.”>
<meta name=“Keywords” content=“Website Creation, Website Buildingsecrets, Website Buildingexpert.”>
<meta name=“Robots” content=“all”>
You will notice from the example above that I’ve used four primary meta tags. These tags include the Title tag, Description tag, Keywords tag, and Robots tag. More meta tags exist but these are the basic ones you’ll need to use when thinking about improving your SERPs. Let’s discuss each one separately and make sure you understand how to create each individual tag.
A meta tag is any one of a variety of labels you give your web page. Although there are quite a number of different types of meta tags, we will discuss the most common ones here. These “tags” or labels are essential for helping search engines understand the name of your website’s pages, know what information the pages contain, display a small description for search engine result listings, and understand how to treat each page when indexed.
Meta tags are important because different search engines weigh the information in these tags differently. It is believed that Google uses them in relation to other factors, ensuring consistency and validating page rank. It’s good practice to make sure that your meta tags are complete, accurate, and up-to-date.
Note: Make sure that each page found on your website has its own unique set of meta tags. Duplicate tags can really hurt your rankings.
Here’s an example of the meta tags I use to describe just one of my many blogs, webcreation-d.blogspot.com:
<title>Website Creation | Website Building Secrets</title>
<meta name=“Description” content=“Website creating expert reveals powerful Website Building secrets. Search our Website Creating expert database, Website Creating service providers, and more.”>
<meta name=“Keywords” content=“Website Creation, Website Buildingsecrets, Website Buildingexpert.”>
<meta name=“Robots” content=“all”>
You will notice from the example above that I’ve used four primary meta tags. These tags include the Title tag, Description tag, Keywords tag, and Robots tag. More meta tags exist but these are the basic ones you’ll need to use when thinking about improving your SERPs. Let’s discuss each one separately and make sure you understand how to create each individual tag.
Title
This tag is the page title. Not only does it tell a search engine what the main theme of your page is, it also shows up as the title of your website on a search engine results page. For example, using the title on the previous page you’ll see that it appears as the highlighted title in the Google results (sample below). The title tag also shows up at the very top of your web browser for each web page you visit.
As a rule of thumb, make sure your title tag is no more than seven words and less than sixty five characters, including spaces. This is the maximum number of letters and spaces displayed as a Google title. If your title is longer, it will run off and include three trailing dots when appearing in the Google search results listing.
The reason you want to limit your title tag to only seven words is because Google places a weight (level of importance) on each word in your title tag. Therefore, the more words you have, the less weight applied to each word. This is why it’s so important that your title tag contains the key theme of your web page or website and focuses on your specific keywords.
Note: Place your keywords in the title tag! I’ll be covering keywords in the next section. For the time being, just remember that your title tag should include your keywords, as keywords are the terms your potential customers use when searching for you online.
I’ve used two keyword phrases as part of my title tag, separating them with a post (example: Internet Marketing Expert | Marketing Secrets). The post is found on your keyboard above the enter key. By separating these terms with a post, Google sees them as being separate and distinct phrases without taking up valuable title tag real estate. Keep in mind that by using up to seven words in your tag, you can develop many keyword combinations, mixing and matching terms. For example, my title tag has helped achieve first page Google placements for Internet marketing expert, marketing expert, and Internet marketing secrets.
This tag is the page title. Not only does it tell a search engine what the main theme of your page is, it also shows up as the title of your website on a search engine results page. For example, using the title on the previous page you’ll see that it appears as the highlighted title in the Google results (sample below). The title tag also shows up at the very top of your web browser for each web page you visit.
As a rule of thumb, make sure your title tag is no more than seven words and less than sixty five characters, including spaces. This is the maximum number of letters and spaces displayed as a Google title. If your title is longer, it will run off and include three trailing dots when appearing in the Google search results listing.
The reason you want to limit your title tag to only seven words is because Google places a weight (level of importance) on each word in your title tag. Therefore, the more words you have, the less weight applied to each word. This is why it’s so important that your title tag contains the key theme of your web page or website and focuses on your specific keywords.
Note: Place your keywords in the title tag! I’ll be covering keywords in the next section. For the time being, just remember that your title tag should include your keywords, as keywords are the terms your potential customers use when searching for you online.
I’ve used two keyword phrases as part of my title tag, separating them with a post (example: Internet Marketing Expert | Marketing Secrets). The post is found on your keyboard above the enter key. By separating these terms with a post, Google sees them as being separate and distinct phrases without taking up valuable title tag real estate. Keep in mind that by using up to seven words in your tag, you can develop many keyword combinations, mixing and matching terms. For example, my title tag has helped achieve first page Google placements for Internet marketing expert, marketing expert, and Internet marketing secrets.
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This post first appeared on SEO—Search Engine Optimization Tips By Dipen, please read the originial post: here
