Monday, March 22, 2010

On-page Search Engine Optimization Techniques

On Page Optimization is the most important and complex part of search engine optimization. "On Page" SEO simply refers to the text and content on your web site pages. Basically editing your page and content so the Search Engine can find your webpage when a surfer is searching for your web sites particular topic.

There are many factors for on page SEO technique that search engine optimization is considered in the evaluation process. Recognizing these factors: words in the web page URL, title tags, meta tags, headlines, sub headlines, keyword density, words start page, page content, words that are bold in touch, words, site navigation, website link structure and a number of other reasons.

I have tried to put together a small list of things that should not be overlooked when optimizing your site.

On Page Optimization Factors:


1. Domain Name:
If your domain name as possible, try to prime your targeted keywords. Having a keyword or words in URL will help you somewhat. Having a key word in your URL is not by any means a guarantee, but it never hurts.

2. Title Tag:
The page title is probably the most important on-page SEO aspect – often ignored by many webmasters. Place your top keywords here. Ideally you should have a unique title for each page on your site, as pages with identical titles tend to be treated as “duplicates” by Google. The best practices for page title tags are common sense: choose a title that communicates the content of the page and avoid using titles like “untitled” or titles that have nothing to do with the content. If the title is too long (usually more than 60 characters), is that Google will only show a snippet in the search results.

3. Meta Description:
Many search engines use the description tag at any time, but it is best to set it properly just in case. Meta descriptions should summarize accurately the page’s content, and you should avoid writing descriptions that are unrelated to the content of the page. You should also avoid using descriptions like “this is a webpage”, too short descriptions and keyword-stuffed descriptions. Copying the entire content of the visible text of your page into the description meta tag is a undesired as well: descriptions should usually be less than 160 characters. As with page titles, meta descriptions should be unique for each page of the site too.

4. Meta Keywords:
Many search is now not counted meta keywords, but use less engine search engine keyword tags, meta keywords using the search engine is still worth something to have your site rank. Keep it simple and relevant. 10 - 20 Keywords per page.

5. ALT Tags:
Alt tags are great for adding keywords to images, so take advantage of them. Alt tags in images help the search engine to "see" what the image is about. Alt tags are another place where you should insert your keywords to improve your rankings in SERPs. Even if your text already have keywords you could still improve and reinforce your most important keywords.

6. Links:
Any links you have on your site should have key terms in them. Never use "Click Here" or other unrelated words when creating links. Remember that all of your important pages should be short and static URLs.

7. Header Tags:
Header tag should be considered important. Make headers uniform on your site. H1, h2, and use the h3 title tag to define their key subject categories, and putting your keywords in style at least once a title.

8. Site Content:
The first paragraph of your site is a crucial part of your optimization. This will also be used as your site’s description. Be careful not to overdo it on the keywords. Make sure your content makes sense. Your keywords should make up a total of 6% to 8% of your page content. An average of three hundred words is a good rule of thumb.

9. Valid HTML:
Use the W3C HTML validator on your page's HTML is valid. A web page for more HTML errors will create not rank well in SERPS.

10. Robot. Txt:
The robots.txt file is a set of instructions for visiting robots (spiders) that index the content of your web site pages. For those spiders that obey the file, it provides a map for what they can, and cannot index. The file must reside in the root directory of your web. The URL path (web address) of your robots.txt file should look like this... /robots.txt

11. Sitemap:
Site maps are at the heart of Search Engine Friendly Design. They make it very quick and easy for the search engines to find and index every page on your web site by putting links to every page in one spot.

In Summary, Good on-page SEO is a big help in the crucial days before the launch of a website.