Improving your search engine rankings always begins with thorough keyword research. By identifying the right keywords to help you achieve your optimization campaigns, you stay ahead of the competition and make the vision of number one rankings a reality. After you’ve selected the right keywords the next step is to focus your efforts towards on page optimization. This is where you apply some techniques to your web pages to ensure top rankings.
There are a number of factors to consider for purposes of 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 SEO, individuals often address these important areas incorrectly.
Meta tags are important to web site rankings because they provide some basic information to search engine spiders. Properly formatted meta tags go a long way towards enhancing search engine rankings. My research as shows that meta tags by themselves cannot radically improve rankings. However, they may be used to verify other aspects of your website and are important for getting users to click through from search engine results.
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 maximum that is 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.
Another meta tag is your keyword tag. This tag should include your most important keywords. I choose to keep my list concise, usually around 12 keywords. This shows Google and other search engines that your web page is both focused and relevant. Sites that engage in keyword stuffing are only hurting themselves. Consider doing to keyword research to determine which keywords get the most search engine traffic and use them.
When users search the web, they are not only looking for valuable content related to their query, they are also looking for well performing web sites. The second factor we need to look at for on page optimization is load time. Be aware of how quickly your web site pages load and continually work to make the faster. When sites load quickly, major search engines take notice and improve rankings. Focus on user experience in addition to a properly formatted web page and success happens more quickly
The final topic we are going to cover is URL structure. The ideal structure is to have your most important keyword in the URL root. The root of a site would be here: www.keyword.com. If a domain is not available that doesn’t include your keyword, use an aged domain that you can add a folder or subdirectory to. An example would be mysite.com/keyword or keyword.mysite.com. These examples, we are adding our keyword “root” to either domain. Again, this is not as good as having the keyword in your root but is valuable if the domain you need in not available.
When thinking about search engine optimization and embarking on your first optimization campaign, start with on page optimization. Focus your efforts on developing a web site that is easily searched and ranked with the help of the on page optimization factors we discussed. The topics we discussed including Meta tags, website load times and URL are among the most important on page optimization factors you can apply to improve your rankings.
Looking for help with your SEO? Check out our SEO training program. Also, if you’re looking to improve search engine rankings check out our Webmaster Training Guide.
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