Climb up the stairs to top rankings with on-page optimization and through professional SEO

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On-Page Optimization Needs to be Performed on Each and Every Page on Your Website


On-Page Optimization:


It all Starts with Those Little Things You Do to Your Web Pages…

Many website designers have started to ignore some of the on-page optimization aspects because they don't think it's important anymore. The fact is, on-page optimization is important to getting your website and pages on the top positions of the search engine results pages (SERPs). It's just not the cure-all that it was in the 1990's.

There are some very important on-page factors that you must pay attention to...

On-Page Factors that affect optimization

On-Page factors are those that relate directly to the content and structure of the website. This primarily consists of pages written in HTML but also applies to other document formats that are indexed by search engines. Microsoft Word docs or PDF formats fit into the pages that should also be optimized.

Many search engines now discount the weight given to on-page factors that they used to because they give too much leeway for abuse by SEO experts. In theory, it's the visible parts of a web-page are less prone to manipulation as they have to make sense to visitors. However, many website designers still use doorway pages with redirections and clever use of style sheets enable "cloaking" with different content to be served to search engines and end users.

Keyword Usage

On-page optimization involves modifying the keyword frequency in the URL of each page, the Title Tag, Headers, Hypertext Links and Body text. It may also involve reducing page "cruft" and redundant HTML codes produced by web page authoring tools (especially WYSIWYGs) and restructuring the site to produce a "themed" structure with better linking patterns and theme-oriented page content.

Optimally, each page should target between two and four keywords/phrases directly related to the page content. Your page URL should contain keywords, separated by hyphens without being too long. Google will index around 128 characters which is a sensible upper limit for the entire URL length.

Title and Header Tags

The Title tag should contain the keywords with no stop words but arranged to make sense. The title is the first tag in the "Head" section of the page. It should describe what the theme of the page is. Search engines give more weight to factors higher up the page therefore, the title is one of the most important elements on the whole page.

The content should be properly structured with the use of Header (H1, H2, H3 etc) tags containing relevant keywords and dividing the content into eye-appealing segments. Search-engines will only index a limited amount of text in HTML tags. Using too many keywords will dilute the focus and might be considered search engine spamming. The lesson is to never spam any of these tags. This won't be effective and increase your rankings but could result in a penalty.

Meta Tags

Many website designers put a lot of time and thought into creating Keyword and Description meta tags. Although these may be read by search engines, for example the description tag is used by both Google and Yahoo! to provide a short description of the site in the Search Engine Results Pages (SERP's), they are not used for ranking pages by the major search engines. Minor search engines may still use them though.

Google, Yahoo! and MSN Search will use the text they find on the page as a description in their SERP's if you don't use a meta description tag. Make sure your first header and sentence describe the page content and theme. Some search engine watchers say that the new Microsoft search engine, Live.com, puts some weight on meta-tags.

There is also evidence to suggest that search engines give more prominence to content seen earlier in the page and some engines will only index a limited amount of body text so make sure the first paragraph sets the page theme. I still place the meta keywords tag on the page as I've found that it contains the theme keywords and may set the stage for certain search engines to understand your content.

Alt Tags for Images

Many believe that ALT tags are only indexed where the image is part of a hyperlink. However ALT tags are useful for non-graphical browsing by some searchers and should be employed correctly. They should include your page keyword or phrase to be effective. I prefer those that read like a sentence and provide information about the image.

Body Content

It is often quoted that "Content is King". This is so true. Search engine surfers are looking for information and the search engines try hard to serve up relevant information for those searches. Information is in the content of the page. This makes content strategically important to your on-page optimization.

Write natural copy aimed at the end user and not search engines for the best results but always keep the search engines in the back of your mind as you write. There's no need to worry about keyword density for the contents anymore except when your keywords appear too dense and may red-flag the search engines that you might be keyword stuffing. Include your keywords combined in different phrases and orders throughout the page. Create anchor text to related internal pages with your keywords and phrases in them.

Keep the number of links in your body content to fewer than 50. Less is even better and don't repeat identical anchor text and outbound-links. Theme related pages should be at the same level in the site hierarchy, preferably in "silos" and be linked through the site's menu structure and site map. At least one page in the silo should link back to the home page so that search engines that have traversed through a deep-link can index the rest of the website.

Alternate Document Formats

For any other document format other than HTML and PHP (e.g. PowerPoint, Adobe PDF etc), make sure you at least have a descriptive document title that the spiders can extract the theme of the document from. Try to avoid formats that search engines find hard to understand or completely un-crawlable like Flash, Shockwave and javascript. Avoid using images to replace text, except occasionally in hyperlinks with good ALT tags.

Always avoid HTML Frames which some search engines find hard to navigate, use Cascading Style Sheets (CSS) instead. Style Sheets should also be used to reduce the amount of formatting and to reduce cruft within documents whenever possible. Try to keep pages to less than 100 kilobytes. Search engines like not much more than a screen full of text. Where Javascript or Flash menus are used include plain-text links at the bottom of the page so search engines can still navigate and crawl the website to index it.

Other on-page factors which are directly under the control of the website is the amount of content. Large websites generally rank better than small websites because of the amount of content and for a number of other reasons. Search engines prefer fresh content and will spider a website more frequently if it is periodically changing with fresh content. A regularly updated news page, even a blog, can provide fresh content and deep links to the rest of the website.

We now offer a FREE Search Engine Optimization Whitepaper Report explaining SEO and what you need to do to your website to properly prepare it for the highest search engine rankings. Receive it by filling out and submitting the following form:

**Note** After you submit this form, you will receive an email from SEO-whitepaper@aweber.com asking for you to confirm your request. Once you click on the confirmation link, you will be sent your download link.