Basic On-Page Search Engine Optimization
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 </title<
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!
About the Author: Stephen Warren is the creator of
MakeAGreatSite.com
There you'll learn how to make a great site and turn it into a
money making machine in no time. Your free to publish this
article on any website, providing it is unedited and complete,
this resource box is there and the link back to my site is
clickable.
Back to Top
|
|