Basic On-Page Search Engine Optimization
By Stephen Warren
There are 2 different types of search engine optimization, on-page and off page. Here you'll learn the differences between them, and basic tips to getting your website optimized for the search engines.
What Is The Difference Between On-Page And Off-Page Search Engine Optimization?
The difference is that on-page optimization involves changing elements of your actual webpages that most visitors to your site wont even notice. For example, having your keywords in specific places or writing the title a certain way. Basically it's tweaking all elements of a page which are a factor for ranking well in the search engines.
Where as off-page optimization, is partially out of your control. You do have some control over it, but it's largely dependant on what others think about your website, unless you take an active role in off-page optimization. Off page optimization is quite a large topic, so I'll talk about it in a separate article.
Basic On-Page Elements You Need To Tweak:
For starters, you need to give your pages a title between the < title >< /title > tags in the head section of the page. Make it a descriptive title with at least 1 keyword. 4 words maximum is usually enough. Please don't leave the title as "untitled", and don't set it to "home" or "Page 1" or anything like that. Doing so won't help your search engine rankings one bit.
Next you need to write a description using the description meta tag i.e. < meta name="Description" content="yourdescriptionhere" >. This should go in the head part of the html, after the tag preferably. This only need to be about 1 sentence long and contain your keywords once or twice. Any more than that and it might look a bit spammy.
Now You need to use the keyword meta tag. Just as a side note, most search engines don't often use meta tags anymore, but it certainly wont hurt your rankings. Here's what the keyword meta tag looks like, < meta name="Keywords" content="your,keywords,here" >. Include each keyword / keyphrase once. Do not repeat your keywords over and over in the keywords tag, once each is fine.
Ok now we need to change elements of the page than people will actually see. The stuff you just typed in will only be readable by search engine spiders when they crawl your pages, apart from the title of your page of course.
First you need to have a header in a "h1" tag. It doesn't look particularly pretty, but it's effective. It lets the search engine spider know, that the piece of test in the "h1" tag is important. Now you need to write a header in the "h1" that contains your keywords. It's pretty similar to just having the page title on the actual page. Doesn't need to be long, just a few descriptive words about what the following page is about.
This next one is the part I'm going to have to leave in your hands. If you haven't got any content on the page, then you need to write it. Try to include the keywords about 3 times in the top third of the page. Only put them where it will read correctly. For example don't put them all in one sentence because it will sound silly. Try to make your content an absolute minimum of about 400-500 words.
Do you have images on your webpage? Then you need to give them "alt" tags. These are just incase a user cannot display or chooses to not display images for whatever reason. Instead, they will see whatever you place into your alt tag. Only put in your keyword as part of the alt tag if it is relevant. The alt tag should be descriptive to the image.
Make the above changes to your webpages and you should see a nice rise in your search engine ranks when they next index your site. It will definately pay off in the end.
Best of luck
Stephen Warren is the creator of MakeAGreatSite.com
Learn how to make a great site and turn it into a money making machine in no time.
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