Starting any SEO campaign with anything other than keyword research is a waste of time. To be truly successful with SEO you must begin with a well thought through keyword strategy and analysis. Once you’ve identified the most important keywords for your campaign, the next step is to optimize web pages for top rankings. I have found a number of techniques that work especially well for on page optimization.
There are a number of areas to focus on when thinking about on page optimization. The most important factors include meta tags, load speed, and URLs. Although some of these may seem obvious to those of you who have spent just a little time learning about search engine optimization, individuals often address these important areas incorrectly.
Meta tags provide large search engines a quick way to identify what a web page is all about. When tags are formatted correctly, search engine spiders have an easy way of evaluating content and properly ranking web pages. Although meta tags alone can’t significantly improve a web site’s ranking, they can definitely hurt if not properly formatted. You need to integrate additional on page optimization best practices but properly formatted meta tags are vitally important.
The most important meta tags are the title and descriptions tags. The title tag should be limited to sixty characters and include your keyword phrase at the beginning. Sixty characters is the max displayed by Google and although the search engine may recognize additional characters, they will not be shown. Make sure that your description tag is compelling, less than one hundred fifty characters and include a keyword phrase two times.
The last meta tag worthy of description is the keyword tag. I see this tag misused all too often and it may actually be hurting your search engine rankings. When using a keyword tag, focus on only a dozen of your most important and highly trafficked keywords. Search engines should know that you are an authority site and worthy of top rankings. Do your research and only include the keywords that truly matter. You can also evaluate the sites in the top positions and model their keywords as long as they are included on your website.
Once you have your meta tags within your web page code it’s time to focus on the next on page optimization factor. The load time of your web pages matter a great deal to Google and other search engines. Not only does your web page need to be formatted correctly but it needs to load quickly. Fast loading web sites mean a better user experience. Search engines like Google reward you for providing the right information quickly to web site browsers. Try to keep load times to a minimum and continually work to improve the speed at which your site loads.
The final factor related to on page optimization we are discussing today is the web site URL. The best format is to have your keyword in root of the domain. For example, it may look something like www.keyword.com. Truthfully the days of picking up a domain like this are pretty much over but you can find some options on expired domain listings. You can also add your keyword next to the root URL by creating a separate page or folder on your main directory. The other strategy you can consider is a subdomain strategy where you would place your keyword before your domain. Most hosts offer this option.
Before you start any SEO campaign, evaluate your web site, landing page, or blog from the perspective of meta tags, load speed, and URLs. There are additional on page factors we’ll discuss in the next lesson, but the three mentioned herein are vitally important to your search engine optimization success.
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Tags: Best Practices, Load Speed, yahoo, Bing
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