Eight On-page SEO Tips
January 22, 2011 by FTS
Filed under Basic SEO Tips
When it comes to onpage SEO, it is usually estimated that Google checks as much as two hundred onpage SEO parameters. Furthermore since Google keeps its ranking algorithms a secret, nobody actually knows what these checks are or even if the approximation is anywhere close to correct. However none of that matters when it comes down to it. As long as you can utilize a handful of the principal onpage SEO techniques, you can get your websites to rank and pull traffic.
Select the Correct Keyphrase for Onpage SEO
If you need a web page in one of the top ten search engine positions, you will need to perform your SEO on a search term or key phrase which does not have excessive competition. You won’t want to take on search terms that the big guys are throwing lots of money at or one that too many people are competing for. It is not that you cannot reach page one of the search engines but it would be harder to achieve and maintain. First you want to get to page one then you want a decent chance of remaining there.
There is one method of analysing key phrases that is not foolproof but could give you an edge.
1. Choose key terms and key phrases that fit the following criteria::
a. Find key phrases that get greater than 1000 searches per month on Google. You can verify this using the free Google keyword tool.
b. Go to the Google search page and search on your keyphrase with the word ‘allintitle:’ before it (remember to include the colon). So for instance, a key phrase of ‘dog training’ you would search on allintitle: dog training.
c. Once the search is entered, look at the top of the google search screen to see what number of webpages are returned for that search. The quantity of websites must be fewer than 100,000
This method of keyword analysis is easy and free of charge but suffers from one main disadvantage. It assesses the competition by finding the number of webpages that the search finds. This provides a guide to the amount of competitors for that search term but does not provide any indicaton of the strength of the competition. I do not know of any easy free method to do that but you can find tools available that can give that information without costing a lot.
After you have chosen the key phrase that you want your page to rank for, you need to apply some onpage SEO techniques to it. The search engines will look for the internet pages that best match the search term that the user enters. Hence the need for 1000 searches a month or more. It’s no good optimizing for a search term that no one searches on. So now you know that a reasonable number of people are searching for your selected key phrase, you will need to ensure that your web page makes good use of that keyphrase. Here are seven on-page SEO techniques you can use to ensure that the search engines take notice of your page for that search term.
2. Purchase a domain name that matches your key phrase.
For instance, if your search phrase to rank on is dog training, the ideal domain name would be dogtraining.com. If you can’t obtain an precise match, try using hyphens to break up words or else add a word as a suffix such as dogtriningmethods.com. You could add a prefix word but suffix words tend to rank better with the search engines.
3. Get your key phrase into the URL of the page.
This is already taken care of if your search phrase is in the domain name but you can perform onpage SEO on subpages too. So for instance you may have a URL like yourdomain.com/dog-training.
4. Make sure the key phrase appears in the title of the website page and in the meta keywords tag.
If you do not know what this means, you need to be sure your web developer understands your requirement for this. The keywords tag is not as important as it was once but it’s still worth using as part of your onpage SEO approach.
5. Put your search phrase into headings.
If you can place your key phrase into heading text like heading 1, heading 2, etc, this will highlight it to the search engines. Ideally get your keyphrase into level 1, level 2 and level 3 headers.
6. Make the keyphrase stand out.
Identify your key phrase to search engines by placing it in bold, underline or italic. Search engines view words with special formatting as important.
7. If you’ve got an image on your web page, put your keyphrase into the ‘alt’ tag of the image.
If you do not have an image on your web page, it might be worth finding a relevant image for the subject. Not only are you able to use it for your onpage SEO but it can add interest for the reader.
8. Make your key phrase prominent
in the opening sentence and the last sentence of the text on your web page. Apparenly, the search engines frequently pay more attention to the beginning and end of the content on your page.
Keyword Density for Onpage SEO
You will want to scatter your key phrase throughout your web page’s content. Keyword density is generally measured as a percentage of the total content that is made up of keywords. So if your web page contains 100 words and your key phrase appears three times, your keyword density should be three percent (assuming your search phrase is just one word). You might suppose that the higher the keyword density, the better it is for onpage SEO but this is not necessarily the case. Too high a keyword density will get your page penalized by the search engines. Besides, overloading your content with your search phrase will make your content less readable and therefore less interesting to your readers. There is no point getting people to your web page only to see them leave again out of boredom or frustration.
A keyword density of around three percent would be roughly the best to aim for but a density somewhere between one and five percent is fine. The caveat to all this is that it must read sensibly so do not get too hung up on getting precisely three percent; it is much more important to keep your visitor’s attention so they keep reading. On-page SEO is here to serve the needs of your web site; do not make your website a slave to onpage SEO.
Ray Whittaker is an Internet Marketer, coach and adviser. He is a member of the Six Figure Mentors.
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Great post. Also remember that content is king as the user experience should be the main focus, but still it’s the spiders that do the ranking. Ultimately it’s a fine line to walk.
Another tip is having a blog. I’m amazed how often my blog sends searchers my way for all kinds of long-tail keywords I had no intention of marketing. Free WordPress blogs work great for this, and then you can have links to more static websites.