On Page SEOFactors to Not Forget
One of the most basic things which a webmaster should understand is how to do on page SEO and the on page SEO factors to consider when both creating a new website or when adding new content and pages to an existing website.
On page SEO predominantly pertains to tweaking your site’s code, choosing the right keywords, and optimizing your content overall to make it more attractive and identifiable to Google and other search engines’ web crawling bots so that they will in turn rank your site higher in the SERPs (Search Engines Results Pages).
Here I’ve expanded on the major techniques which you should implement on your site if you want to rank and rank well at that. Keep in mind that the weight which search engines place on these techniques is subjective as no one knows for sure the algorithms behind Google’s and other engine’s ranking practices. No one factor is ever been unanimously considered to be more paramount than all others, so don’t overlook any of these techniques. Most of them are quick and simple to implement, so there’s really no reason not to, either.
Keyword On Page SEO Factors
I’ve said it before and I’ll say it again: keywords are the gateways to your site and they play a huge role in on page SEO.
Once you know what is a good keyword and how to do keyword research, then you can find the keywords which you should be using for your on page SEO. WordPress combined with a good free SEO plugin like All in One SEO Pack makes implementing most of the following keyword related on page SEO factors simple as can be, but let’s take a look at where we need to make sure to effectively use our keywords.
Keyword(s) In Title Tags - The title tag is the line of clickable text which appears in Google’s SERPs for each ranking page. This is also the text which appears at the top of your browser’s window in naming or identifying the page which you are currently browsing. It’s important to work your best (most relevant, highest searched, lowest competition) keywords into your title tags as Google will consider this over most factors when indexing and ranking your page and in general in determining what it’s about.
Keywords In Heading Tags - Effective use of heading tags helps Google know what is most important on your site, and what text it should pick out over the rest. It’s been estimated that most people when opening a new page will first instinctively read the top left of your page before other elements. Consequently, your most important message using your most important keyword that you want to get across should be here and ideally using the H1 tag.
From here, less important keywords should be put in H2, and even less important but still noteworthy keywords should be in H3, and so on. An effective use of heading tags is a valuable skill to have in on page SEO.
Keywords In the Body - There is no substitute for good content, and in SEO a large part of good content is effectively including keywords where applicable. This means no over saturation because as I mentioned in the last chapter this will get you penalized and possibly de-indexed. A number of SEOers have argued for years over just the right saturation which will get you ranking well but not penalized and they have thrown out different figures to try to answer this magical ratio.
My advice is to not waste your time trying to crunch ratios as there is no perfect ratio. Besides, you have better things to do with your time and other ways to optimize your site. Just make it look natural and don’t over think it and you’ll be fine.
Words Surrounding Keywords - This all may seem a bit redundant, but the words around the keywords are just as important as the keywords which you include to begin with.
Google not only looks at the keywords which you are targeting, but it looks at the words surrounding them to get a better idea of what your site is about, not to mention that it does this to check you on keyword stuffing and make sure you’re not doing anything “black hat” which could get you in trouble.
Keyword In Domain Name - This takes some careful planning, but many SEOers agree that this has a decent amount of bearing on how Google ranks a site for a keyword. In continuing with this point, you can set your site up as it expands to be more SEO friendly by naming subdomains after keywords, as well. So be as specific as possible when naming if you can. For example name a subdomain of a music site “Gibson-guitars” rather than just “guitars”.
Note the use of the hyphen in the example. Hyphens represent spaces, so if you are using keywords in your URLs, break them up. While keywords in the subdomains don’t carry quite as much weight as the top level of the domain, they’re nonetheless important and helpful to Google in identifying what your site is about.
