By this time, you should be done with keyword research, the most important step. You should have already come up with a refined keyword list that you will use for the process of on-site optimization.
There are basically two fundamentals that comprise SEO – on-site optimization and off-site optimization. While both pertain to everything that is done to make your site “friendly” to search engines, the first refers to what is actually done to the website itself while the latter refers to things done outside of your site. Whether you have an existing website which you want to edit for better optimization, or you are in the planning stage for a new site that you want optimized from the get go, the same process will apply.
Generally, it is more difficult to optimize an existing website than to build one that considers SEO right from the beginning as more work is involved. It is also important to note that basic knowledge in HTML coding is necessary for many on-site optimization activities. If you think this will be a problem, you can always have a web designer edit the pages that need to be worked on.
Keep in mind this: Search engines crawl and index web pages. Not web sites. Hence, it is essential to apply on-page optimization on all your pages.
8 Most Important On-Page SEO Elements
A lot of materials have been written about on-site optimization and all touch on the essential components that each website must have. How each page can be optimized will depend on the website design and how it is built. Joomla, WordPress, and Adobe Dreamweaver are some of the more popular tools for creating a website. Following are the most important on-page search engine optimization elements that every website needs to have:
1. Title Tag
<title> tags are the most important on-page ranking factor. This is the name of the page and will appear as the link in the search results.
Your primary keywords (2-3) should place in the <title> tag. The most important keyword should place at the beginning of the <title> tag and possible repeat once in some variation later.
There is increasing evident that click through rates in search results do affect website ranking. It is much better if you come up with a natural-sounding title that contains few of the primary keywords. Limit your title tag to not more than 65 characters for optimum display results.
2. Meta Tags
These tags are important because they basically present an introduction or a summary to the site, and help search engines make sense of what the website is all about. There are two basic Meta tags, namely:
Description Tag
Description meta tag is the only important meta tags from SEO perspective.
You can put the page description here. The information placed in this tag is what displays in search results. The content must be relevant as this provides a very good opportunity for a click through; a mini advertisement is a good idea. Especially if your site is ranking well, you must take advantage of this chance which some sites just waste by putting drab copies that do not encourage click through.
Craft a well-written description that include your primary keywords. For best results, limit your descriptions to 155 characters or less while spreading keywords here and there.
Keywords Tag
You can insert your keywords here and separated by a comma. Although the major search engines such as Google & Bing does not bother with this tag, some smaller search engines still find this tag relevant. Also some on-site search engines may utilize this tag, so in some situations the meta keyword tag may be useful.
3. Header Tags
Placing keywords in H1, H2 and H3 tags are an effective way to increase rankings. All search engines typically respond to this on-page optimization.
Without header tags, search engines would see your headings as mere normal text. The best approach is to place your primary keyword in a single H1 tag near the top of your page. If it sounds natural, a second keyword may be included H2 subheading for section of paragraphs of the page. If it will not be natural-sounding, do not force to use the keyword in H2 & H3 or people may not be able to understand your content.
4. Content
When it comes to SEO, content is of primary importance. Your website must always have fresh, unique, and quality content if you intend to reach and keep your target audience. For ranking, search engines tend to pay attention to keywords found within certain tags, especially bold, italics, underline and bullet (or list) tags.
Keyword density is still important but just not so much as it once was. To calculate keyword density, you take the number of keywords divide it by the total number of words in that page and multiply by 100%. For example, if the keyword appear once in a 100 words page, the keyword density is 1%.
In SEO circles, the topic on the ideal keyword density is constantly under hot debate. There isn’t an exact number but you can get an idea of the keyword density of your #1 to #3 ranking competitors by using keyword density tool. Usually, you will find it is within 2% – 5%.
To be on the safe side, always avoid stuffing keywords and try to use them in context as naturally as possible. Otherwise, your readers will not find your content useful; worse, search engines can see through these tactics and penalize the site.
Keeping your contents fresh and interesting at all times also helps to keep your website search engine-friendly. This is because most search engines prefer to crawl or visit regularly updated websites to keep their rankings updated. By maintaining fresh content all the time, you site may eventually be ranked for keywords other than those you have initially selected. This is one great benefit that comes with content creation that makes the investment in time and effort worthwhile. A good tip would be to include a simple blog (such as a WordPress blog) to your site that will enable you to easily add articles, news, and other stuff anytime you need to. Likewise, Google is well-known to be partial to blogs so this may even help in your optimization efforts.
5. Image Tags Alt and Title Atributes
Because search engines cannot see and interpret pictures the same way that people do, they need to have alt image and title tags so search engines can identify them. The alt tag must be descriptive of the pictures and you can use related keywords for this purpose. This will enable search engines to find pictures just as they would any other regular web content. Even though, the title attribute is less important than the alt attribute, it can still have a very small positive effect.
6. File Names
It is strongly recommended to have a file name or directory that includes a keyword. It works similar to domain addresses. If your website, for example, has a page dedicated to penang property, it is recommended the page to have a file name along the lines of
www.abc.com/penang-property.html or www.abc.com/penang-property/ or other extensions.
Even though it is reported that keyword in file or directory names is only a minor ranking factor, however using keywords in file and directories will increase click-throughs. Having short URLs which are keyword rich is certainly highly preferable to having long, dynamic URLs which is hard for both spiders and people to make sense of.
7. Links
There are two type links – internal links and external links (outbound links).
A stable internal linking structure is essential for any optimization undertaking as this helps search engines understand what the website is all about. SEO is useless if search engines cannot make sense of your site. Be sure to use keyword-rich anchor text in your site’s internal linking.
External links also carry weight in search engines’ eye. Linking to sites that violate search engine guidelines will get you penalized, however linking out to authoritative sites within your topic can actually help in minor ranking boost. Hence, it is recommended to find non-competitive, information rich sites that are using your keywords to link to.
8. Page Size
Google used to recommend webmaster to limit their file size to 101KB but these day Google will index pages of large size. We always see MB pdf files listed in search results. However, it is always recommended to control the page size as slow loading speed will adversely affect your visitors on site. Try to limit your content to less than 1000 words and optimize the image files.
