SEO Onpage | Onsite Optimization
The onpage or onsite optimization elements are about the usage of keywords and phrases. Placing relevant keywords in the right elements of the website strategically will have a positive impact on the rankings of a website in search engines. The algorithmic weights of the keywords in different elements are vary between search engines. Onpage optimization is the first and easiest thing that you can optimize to help improve your search engine ranking. Before you start to optimize your website, you should firstly pick and analyze the keywords you want to utilize.
The first part of SEO is making your site SEO friendly. To let search engines understand what your site is about. Onpage optimization is not difficult. It does however take time to make sure all the pieces are in place. Onpage optimization should occur not only on the main webpage of a website, but on every single content page within that site. The easiest way to optimize your site for search engines is to follow the steps below:-
1. Title Tag
Title tags represent the title of the web page which is displayed at the top of a browser window. Title tags are also shown in the search results as the title of the document. From search engine optimization perspective, title-tags should describe the contents of the page with a few words, preferably including the key term(s) for that particular web page. It is important to note that each page of a web site should have a unique title instead of using one title for the entire site.
Check the title of the homepage and inner pages and rewrite them so that they target the main keywords of each page. You can as well add your brand’s name at the beginning or the end of the title for branding purposes but remember to sort these keyword phrases in order of importance. Put your most important keywords as the first key-phase in the Title Tag as it will be the first words crawled. Do not overcharge it with keywords or you will make it look spammy, try to make it under 65 characters and make the title unique across all pages. The title tags should appear at the top of the page inside the <Head> tags. The code for the Title Tag would look like this:
<title>The Blogger Tips</title>
2. Meta Tag Description
The meta tag description from a crawlers perspective carries less weight than the Title Tag and is more meant for human eyes. Modyfying your meta tag description will have a minimal impact on your search engine rankings but if written correctly, the Click Through Rate (CTR) would increase attracting more visitors that if you would have let search engine to pick the description for your search listing. The keyword meta-tag contains a list of keywords that are related to the web document. This meta-tag attribute is not used at all by most search engines, because it has been used for excessive keyword stuffing in the past. However, some search engines still put weight on the description meta-tag in their algorithm. As a result, having a keyword rich meta description might improve the search ranking of a website. Many search engines display the meta tag description attribute in the search result under the TitleTag. The code for the Meta tag description would look like this:
<meta name=”keywords” content=”Keyword 1, Keyword 2, etc”></meta>
<meta name=”description” content=”website description”></meta>
You can generate the Meta Tag using the SEO tools or the following Meta Tag generator or analyzer:-
a) SEO Centro
c) AddMe
d) Any Browser
e) Web Design
3. Headings Tag
If the site has not proper defined heading tags, add them to the homepage and inner pages using the keywords you want to target for each page on each of them. Make it look naturally and do not put all your keywords on one h1 tag. Try to use only one h1 tags. Yyou can also use from h2 to h6 tags for keywords of less importance. The code for the heading tag would look like this:
<h1>Onpage Optimization</h1>
4. Content Optimization
“Content is king” is one of the most used phrases in the SEO community and is rightfully. Unique and high-quality with rich content has been and will be one of the most important elements of search engine optimization. Text content is important in SEO because search engines spider bots will “read” the web pages and according to their text content to determine what the pages are about. Furthermore, good content is very helpful in off-site optimization as it attracts inbound links to your website. The text is also important and you must always remember that this is first for visitors before search engines. 200 words of unique content is recommended at least on each of your pages. Do not forget to use the keywords on the body and avoid using them too much (high keyword density). Try to reach a keyword density that makes the content look naturally. Try to put the keywords between strong tags but do not overdoit. Try to keep the content of the page focused on a single keyword. If you are targeting multiple keywords then create individual pages for those keywords with the content tightly focused.
5. Domain URLs
In search engine eyes regardless you like it or not, most newly indexed URLs are considered suspect and are automatically buried in the back-end of the results until they become trusted. Google does this to minimize spammy websites from showing up in their results. URLs must prove themselves worthy over time before Google accepts them as authoritative. Try to use static URLs if you can, don’t ever use spaces in your URLs, instead replace them with dashes (-). If you have not choosen the domain name yet, try to select one that has the main keyword you are targeting. Register the URLs with 2 to 3 words because one word URL is very difficult to target on SEO and it is also hard to get through registration.
6. Images with Alternative Tag (ALT Tag)
Search engines cannot read the content of images and therefore must use other means of determining what the image represents. ALT-Tags or Alternative text is used to create a small description of each image for the visually impaired visitors and search engine spider bots. We have to remember that robots are blind and cannot see images and we have to describe them to the spider bot. We have to use relevant keywords on file name on alt and title tags. It is also important to put them on a related page (Title and Content related) and use the keywords near the image.
<img src=”TheBloggerTips.jpg” mce_src=”TheBloggerTips.jpg” alt=”The Blogger Tips” />
7. Internal Linking or Navigation
The internal link structure counts towards the SEO rankings. A good inbound links to your site cannot be underestimated in SEO. Follow the internal linking structure throughout your site but always remember to keep your links readable and understandable to humans. Using the correct internal link structure is a little known and underused SEO method that really pays off in the SEO techniques. Add rel nofollow tag to the pages that are not important if you do not want to rank such as your terms of service, contact information, etc. Make all the pages reachable within two clicks from the homepage. Try use sitemap if you cannot do this because your site has got many pages. Link to internal pages by creating related blog posts with your creativity where you list categories and archive them in the blog pages. Remember to use the keywords you are targetting in anchor texts for internal links. Try avoid using “click here“, “visit here” and so on.
February 17th, 2008 at 8:37 pm
[...] unknown wrote an interesting post today onHere’s a quick excerptThe onpage or onsite optimization elements are about the usage of keywords and phrases. Placing relevant keywords in the right elements of the website strategically will have a positive impact on the… [[ This is a content summary only … [...]
February 25th, 2008 at 8:26 pm
Hi , I like a lot your blog post expecially the article for keyword density tools and your post regarding gger Tips , it looks very interesting. Nice to share it with us. I found you on Ask Jeeves while searching for keyword density tools . I just Digged it on Monday so will notice also an increase of blog traffic in exchange.
February 26th, 2008 at 12:58 pm
Thanks for drop a note here.
March 7th, 2008 at 6:17 pm
[...] Google Rankings - Google’s Ranking System - Finding Pages That Match The Keywords In Question - On-Page Ranking Factors (Google On-Site Optimization) - Off-Page Ranking Factors (Off-Site Google [...]
June 23rd, 2008 at 9:20 pm
Thanks, it really helped me a lot
I’m such a newbie for blog creating, it’s like a week since I started my blog..
by the way,, it’s bsnreviewer.blogspot.com