On-Page Optimization
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| on page seo |
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.
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
Watch my previous post – Link
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.
Robots
The simplest of all meta tags, the robots tag, signals the
Googlebot, Google’s search engine spider, to crawl your entire website. In
order to index your website properly and include all of your web pages, search
engines send their spiders to review and scan your website on a regular basis.
Google does this every two or three days.
When the spiders view your meta tags and see that your
robots tag indicates “all,” they simply start crawling. Although some spiders
would search the majority of your site without the tag, having it provides the
added direction to search engine crawlers. Make sure the robots tag is included
in your meta tags to improve crawling.
There are some Internet marketers or webmasters who
recommend submitting each page of your site directly to the search engines via
single page submission. This isn’t necessary, especially if you are including
the robots tag. Search engine crawlers do the work for you.
What’s important is that Google indexes your site, and when
it does, it can find all of your content. The robots tag can help with that
process. Equally, if not more important, is compliance with W3C standards
(industry accepted HTML standards) and a sitemap. When you combine the robots
tag with an easily indexed website, Google and other major search engines can
find and index all of the pages on your website or blog.
URLs
Many people believe that if you have a special URL, one that
contains the keyword you’re trying to rank highly for, you’ll be number one on
Google. This isn’t always true. The
reality is that having your keyword in your URL can help in some instances but
is virtually meaningless in the overall Google ranking algorithm unless many
other websites are linking to yours.
Let’s explore this idea a little further. If this URL theory
were correct, my site MarketingScoop.com
would never be able to outrank a website like www marketingexpert.com for the
keyword phrase marketing expert. At
the time of this writing, my site was in the first position on Google and the
website www marketingexpert.com wasn’t even on the first three pages of search
results.
So where does having your keyword phrase in the URL help? It
helps with search engines like Yahoo! and BING and when you’re link building
for Google. Each search engine has its own ranking algorithm, placing different
weights on website criteria like URL, external links, and more. BING is
notorious for placing significant weight on the URL itself.
To see this in action simply go to BING and do a search for marketing expert. You’ll see that the
first five results, and those that follow, all have marketing expert in the URL.
Another way that having your keywords in the URL helps is
when it comes to link building for Google. Each time a website links to your
website using only your URL, if that URL is comprised of your keywords, it
provides a boost to Google search results. As I’ll show you later, all linking
coming into your website should contain your keyword phrase, and this can be
accomplished without owning a particular URL.
A great example of this concept is the keyword phrase “click
here.” Go to Google and enter the search term, “click here.” If the URL theory
was correct—that you have to own the URL that contains only your keywords—you
would expect the first search result to be www.clickhere.com. However, the first result is
for Adobe® Reader.
All that said it never hurts to have your keywords in the
URL itself. When others link to your site using just your URL, it will include
your keywords. This helps when building links from sites that do not allow you
to customize the link being placed or include your keywords in the anchor text.
Another technique that I have found to be particularly
useful from an SEO perspective is buying aged domains. An aged domain is one
that was established some time ago and may even have some traffic coming to it.
You can search for and buy aged domains using GoDaddy or Sedo.com. If you can
purchase an aged domain that already has your keyword included, all the better.
This can give you a jump start when launching your website because it has been
indexed by Google, likely has inbound links, and may currently rank for the
keywords for which you’re trying to optimize.
Formatting
The manner
in which you organize and format your web page can have a huge impact on your
SERPs. I’m going to show you how to make sure that Google and other major
search engines are reading the text of your page prior to reading “other” page
elements such as navigational items. Additionally, I’ll show you where on your
web pages to place your keywords and in what format.
Did you know?
You
can see what elements of your page are viewed as text by leading search engines
simply by visiting your website and pressing Ctrl-a on your keyboard.
There are a few basic things to keep in mind when formatting
your website for top Google placement. The most important elements include content first, clean code (W3C, no Flash), heading
tags, alt tags, proper keyword placement, no Flash and JavaScript external, and sitemaps.
If you get these elements correct, you can move on to address additional
optimization factors.
Content First
When I originally designed my website, I came to learn that
the layout was completely wrong. Even though I had my meta tags in place at the
top of my coded page, search engine spiders had to sift through my navigational
items (which were JavaScript, not HTML) before they could reach my keyword-rich
content.
A great way to ensure that search engine spiders read your
text first is to lay out your site with the appropriate content at the top.
Search engines read from left to right and top to bottom. Many websites have a
left-hand column that contains navigation links. As a result, Google will read
all of the text in the left-hand column before the main content area of your
site. The preferred method is to have Google read the text from the main
section of your page first so that keywords and other optimization factors are
recognized. In order to force Google to read the main content of your web
page before the left-hand column, you
need to structure your site appropriately
Clean Code (W3C, no Flash)
As mentioned previously, I’m not a programmer, and, in fact,
I know little or nothing about web development. But I do know there is a right
way and a wrong way to design a website. How do I know? I learned my lesson the
hard way—through trial and error. Once I made the appropriate changes, my SERPs
began to climb. That’s how I discovered the importance of proper formatting and
coding.
Heading Tags (<h1>, <h2>, and <h3>)
Heading tags (sometimes referred to as headers) are used to emphasize text on a web page. Search engines
love to see these header tags because pages with large headings indicate the
substance and importance of the content. Use the tag—either <h1>,
<h2>, or <h3>—that’s appropriate for your page and be sure to
include your keywords in the tag. For
example: <h1>free marketing articles</h1>.
Using the <h1> tag will display your text in a rather
large format unless altered via CSS. The <h2> tag displays text slightly
smaller than an <h1>. The <h3> tag displays text smaller than
<h2> and so on. Try to use at least one <h1> tag on the page you
are trying to optimize.
Don’t overdo
it on your heading tags. One to three is sufficient. The key is to make it flow
well with your page and appear natural. Placing tags that make your text appear
unnatural will only hurt your website’s readability and click-through rate.
Alt Tags
Do you use graphics or images on your website? If you do,
each image should contain an alt tag. An alt tag is simply the practice of
naming a photo, image, or icon. You can check to see if your website images
already have alt tags associated with them by running your mouse over the
image. If an alt tag is in place, text should display. If text does not
display, an alt tag is not present and needs to be added.
The literal benefit of an alt tag is that the text displays
while your website images are loading, giving users information about the
content included on your page. The primary purpose for alt text is to ensure
people with disabilities can read the page. Blind users who use a page reader
cannot see an image. The alt text tells them what the image is. The secondary
benefit (or primary SEO benefit) is that Google takes these keyword phrases
into account when evaluating your website.
Sitemaps
A sitemap is a single page on your website that provides
access to all other pages on your site, at least the most important ones.
Sitemaps serve two purposes. First, they make it easy for visitors to find
content on your site, and second, they enable search engines to spider your
site much quicker.
When the spider arrives at your website, it will read the
first page of your site and then start looking at your navigational links
(which include a link to your sitemap). When the search engine spider reaches
your sitemap, it begins visiting and indexing each link contained on your map.
It’s a good idea to have more than an index of links on your
sitemap. Try to include short paragraphs of descriptive text for each link,
which of course should contain your keywords
Internal Linking
One of the most important on-page optimization opportunities
you have is to develop a simple and direct internal linking strategy. Internal
linking refers to the linking structure your site uses to link to secondary
pages on your website. How you link from one page to another is very important.
Many sites significantly improve their rankings based on a strong internal
linking strategy.
Internal linking provides direct access to your web pages in
order of importance. The best practice for internal linking is to link to your
main category pages from your website’s homepage. To illustrate, I’ve created a
fictitious website related to clothing.
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