Your on-page SEO (Search Engine Optimization) involves all the things that you do to your website in order to make it more search engine friendly. This is the only part of your SEO that you can control directly and with full-unhindered control. Here are four of the most important things you need to focus on, in order of importance.
1 - Content, Content, Content
Write this on the back of your hand for every time you write a new page or update an old one. You content is the part the viewers see and use. It is not the URL, navigation or formatting. It is the part that people read, see and use, and is the most important part of any website. Here we deal with written content because it is the most search engine friendly.
It has to be useful
People forget that the search engines are built around website use. They are trying to produce results that people will find useful. There is a lot of advice about SEO on the internet, but much of the advice is presupposing that the content of your website offers a use to the reader/user. A website that exists merely to exist is going to fail when it comes to search engine optimization. The search engines are going to try to identify your target audience, and without a use your website will not have one.
Well-crafted content is key
Assuming that your website has a use, you must now provide that use in a productive and efficient manner. For example, if your website’s use is to give horse racing results, then they must be easy to find, well laid out, and matched with relevant and useful text and information. Doing this will help your website later down the line when you have to compete with other websites that do the same thing. If you are both evenly matched SEO wise, it may simply be a case of which website delivers its use in the most efficient and user-friendly manner.
The content has to be targeted
When you read all of the information online about keyword use and placement, it is mostly about rising up through the search engine results. But, what you have to remember is that keywords are also the driving force behind targeting your potential website visitor.
There is little point in rising up through the search engine results for rabbit care, when your website sells toaster ovens. Your content and its subsequent keywords must appeal to your target website user.
Your content must be relevant
This is another factor that some people ignore as they climb up the search engine results. People concentrate so hard on finding the most popular keywords that they do not question whether the article/content they are putting them into is actually relevant. Everything on your website must be relevant to the theme or topic of your website (the same goes for blogs).
The content must be of a high quality
The term “high quality” is bandied about an awful lot when it comes to online content. The truth is that a whole book could be written in order to define what high quality content really is. It does not mean correct spelling and grammar, because some of the world’s best literature is full of purposeful misspellings and grammatical inaccuracies. If you need a guide then consider sticking to a “high school” level of grammatical accuracy, as any adherence to the rules that is more stringent will be overkill.
Ideally, high quality content should have a voice that is unique, individual and appropriate for the given content. It must provide ideas that are both important and interesting for the target viewers. Word choice should be non-repetitive, memorable and specific. It should be organized in a way that is effective and logical. Plus, any topic/genre/theme conventions must be communicative and correct.
Put some important words in bold
The first time your important keyword appears in your text, put it in a bold font. The first time that your second most important keyword appears, put that in bold too. Each article need only have two keywords in bold. The keywords in your title should not be put in bold (even though they may appear first on the page).
2 - Your Meta Tags
Many people have lost faith in their Meta keywords and Meta description tags because they do not understand what they do. They are used to radically affect the search engine optimization of a website in the early days, but do not seem to have any effect at all these days.
This does not mean that you should simply neglect them, or simply ignore them completely. They are still important, but you have to imagine them as if they are the foundations of a house. They may not appear to do much, and nobody really sees them, but just as with the foundations of a house, if they are not there then eventually things are going to start slipping.
The keyword Meta tag needs to have around 12 words or key-phrases in it. Some can be synonyms if you wish. This is what tells the search engine what you are trying to optimize your site for. Your web content, URLS, titles, headers, etc should be a further reflection of what you are trying to optimize your site for.
The Meta description tag should have a short description of about 120 characters (that includes spaces). This should describe your website in a way that will make people want to visit it. It should also have one or two keywords in it.
3 - Your website navigation
This is very important if you want your website to rise up through the search engine results page. Every page needs at least one text-based link pointing towards it. Each page should have at least three links on it that lead to other pages on your website. The navigation needs to be easy to use and must be intuitive so that people can find what they want without having to search too hard.
The navigation must not have any broken links in it and the links should all be done with HTML code. The only times when it is acceptable to use other types of links is if you are purposefully trying to hide web pages from the search engines. This is not recommended, but may be done if you wish to hide pages such as checkout pages or personal information pages.
You should also have a search bar; however, an absence of a search bar will not harm your website’s SEO. A search bar is more for the convenience of the website user. Also, try to vary your anchor text throughout your website. It is sometimes hard to create different types of anchor text for every link, but try to vary your anchor text as much as possible. An over duplication of anchor text may hurt your website’s SEO.
4 - Loading and rendering
Rendering is the part where the page goes from a blank browser screen, to having something appear. Sometimes the render time is too long and it frustrates your viewers. Many people will simply close the tab or click “Back.” Having a slow render time may not affect your website’s SEO very much, but it will affect your website’s popularity, which will hinder your SEO over time.
The loading time for your web page is important. Google measures it with Google Chrome. They measure how long it takes for web pages to finish loading, from render to fully loaded. If the loading time is too long then it will hinder your website’s SEO.
To make your page load faster, you need to have clean and well ordered/well-written page code. You also need to keep your page weight to a reasonable size. This means that you page must be no larger than a few megabytes in size. The “heavier” a website is, then the longer it usually takes to load. If you truly have trouble lowering the weight of your web page, then consider splitting the content between two web pages.
About the Author:
Author bio: Korah Morrison, working for College-Paper.org – the best student’s helper.
1 - Content, Content, Content
Write this on the back of your hand for every time you write a new page or update an old one. You content is the part the viewers see and use. It is not the URL, navigation or formatting. It is the part that people read, see and use, and is the most important part of any website. Here we deal with written content because it is the most search engine friendly.
It has to be useful
People forget that the search engines are built around website use. They are trying to produce results that people will find useful. There is a lot of advice about SEO on the internet, but much of the advice is presupposing that the content of your website offers a use to the reader/user. A website that exists merely to exist is going to fail when it comes to search engine optimization. The search engines are going to try to identify your target audience, and without a use your website will not have one.
Well-crafted content is key
Assuming that your website has a use, you must now provide that use in a productive and efficient manner. For example, if your website’s use is to give horse racing results, then they must be easy to find, well laid out, and matched with relevant and useful text and information. Doing this will help your website later down the line when you have to compete with other websites that do the same thing. If you are both evenly matched SEO wise, it may simply be a case of which website delivers its use in the most efficient and user-friendly manner.
The content has to be targeted
When you read all of the information online about keyword use and placement, it is mostly about rising up through the search engine results. But, what you have to remember is that keywords are also the driving force behind targeting your potential website visitor.
There is little point in rising up through the search engine results for rabbit care, when your website sells toaster ovens. Your content and its subsequent keywords must appeal to your target website user.
Your content must be relevant
This is another factor that some people ignore as they climb up the search engine results. People concentrate so hard on finding the most popular keywords that they do not question whether the article/content they are putting them into is actually relevant. Everything on your website must be relevant to the theme or topic of your website (the same goes for blogs).
The term “high quality” is bandied about an awful lot when it comes to online content. The truth is that a whole book could be written in order to define what high quality content really is. It does not mean correct spelling and grammar, because some of the world’s best literature is full of purposeful misspellings and grammatical inaccuracies. If you need a guide then consider sticking to a “high school” level of grammatical accuracy, as any adherence to the rules that is more stringent will be overkill.
Ideally, high quality content should have a voice that is unique, individual and appropriate for the given content. It must provide ideas that are both important and interesting for the target viewers. Word choice should be non-repetitive, memorable and specific. It should be organized in a way that is effective and logical. Plus, any topic/genre/theme conventions must be communicative and correct.
Put some important words in bold
The first time your important keyword appears in your text, put it in a bold font. The first time that your second most important keyword appears, put that in bold too. Each article need only have two keywords in bold. The keywords in your title should not be put in bold (even though they may appear first on the page).
2 - Your Meta Tags
Many people have lost faith in their Meta keywords and Meta description tags because they do not understand what they do. They are used to radically affect the search engine optimization of a website in the early days, but do not seem to have any effect at all these days.
This does not mean that you should simply neglect them, or simply ignore them completely. They are still important, but you have to imagine them as if they are the foundations of a house. They may not appear to do much, and nobody really sees them, but just as with the foundations of a house, if they are not there then eventually things are going to start slipping.
The keyword Meta tag needs to have around 12 words or key-phrases in it. Some can be synonyms if you wish. This is what tells the search engine what you are trying to optimize your site for. Your web content, URLS, titles, headers, etc should be a further reflection of what you are trying to optimize your site for.
The Meta description tag should have a short description of about 120 characters (that includes spaces). This should describe your website in a way that will make people want to visit it. It should also have one or two keywords in it.
3 - Your website navigation
This is very important if you want your website to rise up through the search engine results page. Every page needs at least one text-based link pointing towards it. Each page should have at least three links on it that lead to other pages on your website. The navigation needs to be easy to use and must be intuitive so that people can find what they want without having to search too hard.
The navigation must not have any broken links in it and the links should all be done with HTML code. The only times when it is acceptable to use other types of links is if you are purposefully trying to hide web pages from the search engines. This is not recommended, but may be done if you wish to hide pages such as checkout pages or personal information pages.
You should also have a search bar; however, an absence of a search bar will not harm your website’s SEO. A search bar is more for the convenience of the website user. Also, try to vary your anchor text throughout your website. It is sometimes hard to create different types of anchor text for every link, but try to vary your anchor text as much as possible. An over duplication of anchor text may hurt your website’s SEO.
4 - Loading and rendering
Rendering is the part where the page goes from a blank browser screen, to having something appear. Sometimes the render time is too long and it frustrates your viewers. Many people will simply close the tab or click “Back.” Having a slow render time may not affect your website’s SEO very much, but it will affect your website’s popularity, which will hinder your SEO over time.
The loading time for your web page is important. Google measures it with Google Chrome. They measure how long it takes for web pages to finish loading, from render to fully loaded. If the loading time is too long then it will hinder your website’s SEO.
To make your page load faster, you need to have clean and well ordered/well-written page code. You also need to keep your page weight to a reasonable size. This means that you page must be no larger than a few megabytes in size. The “heavier” a website is, then the longer it usually takes to load. If you truly have trouble lowering the weight of your web page, then consider splitting the content between two web pages.
About the Author:
Author bio: Korah Morrison, working for College-Paper.org – the best student’s helper.
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