Search Optimization SEO

On Page SEO

Once you know the keywords you are targeting, there are a number of basic things you should do to your site to give it the best chance to rank for these keywords.

 

 

It is important that the content on your page is readable by the search engines. As such, the content should typically be text in the html. It is important to note that the search engines can not read text that is in images, or a flash plug-in for example. You should have a reasonable amount of text on your page that the search engines can read. Your content must also be optimized for your keywords. This includes using your keyword(s) in your pages title, in the H1 tag and a couple of times in the content itself. It may also be useful to bold the keyword in the content. It is possible to look at the exact keyword density your page has, that is the general notion of how frequent the keyword is relative to the amount of text on the page. Different people have different ideas on what keyword density you should adopt, so you could do an analysis of your successful competitors to get an indication of this.

 

 

 

All this needs to be balanced with making the page natural to your users. Rather than trying to determine and exact keyword density in the content, it is often better to ensure the keyword is in there a couple of times, but in a way that the page still reads nicely to your audience.

 

 

 

Another very important issue in on page SEO is how you structure your internal links and your menu. Some of the key points here is that your menu are links, and this is the way the search engines will find all the pages on your site. Once again, the menu should be plain text links in the html. You should not have a javascript menu system as this will not be found by the search engines. Additionally, text links carry more weight than image links, so the links in your menu should be text rather than images. As discussed previously, the anchor text of external text links is very important. This is also the case with your internal links. As such the text of each of the menu items should correspond to the main keyword you are trying to optimize the page for that the menu item points to.

 

 

 

A final issue in on site optimization is your domain name and the url of the pages on your site. If your keyword is in your domain name, this will provide some benefit, and if your domain name is an exact match of your keyword, this will provide an enormous benefit. The naming of the directories in your url should be kept succinct, but the presence of your main words in your keyword, separated by – (for example www.mydomain.com/my-keyword/) will also provide some benefit.

 

 

 

These points present the basics of on page optimization, and to not have most of these points implemented will put you at a great disadvantage in your optimization efforts. On page optimization alone is never enough to take even moderate keywords, but when combined with a successful link building campaign, should provide positive results.