Recommended Affiliate Programs
Important Elements of On Page SEO
By - Chris Beauchamp
In this guide, we'll take a look at six of the most important
on-page elements of search engine optimization:
Title Tags - One of the most crucial features of any
website's SEO strategy is the title. This tag is placed in the page's head area
and will tell the visitors and search engines what the page is actually about.
Further, the title tag is almost always used by the search engines when
displaying their list of results.
But why exactly are titles so important to SEO? Because the
search engines have deemed them to be one of the most crucial factors in
figuring out if a site is relevant for a particular term. For example, many
sites use something like: "Welcome to YourSite.com." And when someone
searches for yoursite.com, they will probably rank highly. However, it would be
much more valuable to use a title like "Low Cost Boots including Boot Deals
at YourSite.com." With the second example, you're now relevant for Low Cost
Boots, Boot Deals and still YourSite.com. The bottom line is, once you've
determined your keywords, changing the title is step #1.
Meta Tags - Much like the title tag, meta tags are placed in
the < head > area of a webpage. The two that we'll focus on are the
keywords and description meta tags. The description tag is much like the page
title, it helps search engines determine what your site is about and what
keywords it should rank for. Again, they will use this tag in the search results
to describe your site. Make sure you provide an accurate description that
includes your keywords.
Google itself has notified webmasters that they no longer use
the keyword meta tag in their search algorithms or results. However, there is
reason to believe that others still use it and it's a good strategy to continue
using it. Be sure to include just 3-5 keywords, though; as more will make your
site appear spammy.
Headings - Once you've covered the head section of the page,
it's time to move into the content. The < h1 >, ,< h2 >, etc. tags
do influence the search engines. Essentially, they give more weight to the
content in these tags than anywhere else on the page. Therefore, it's imperative
to include a header tag (there's not much difference in weight of H1 to H2, both
seem to get the same results) with your keywords. If you have a blog, chances
are your post title is a header tag (and also the page title) so it's important
to choose your headers carefully.
Keyword Density - We've all heard that content is king when
it comes to the search engines, and while I can't necessarily agree that content
is always #1, it is absolutely crucial. Optimal keyword density is approximately
2-3%. Any more than 2-3% and you'll raise a red flag, any less and your site
might not appear as relevant to your keywords. The best way to check keyword
density is, while you're still writing the article, do a search in the term and
see how many times it comes up; then view the total word count to get your
percentage.
Internal Linking - This includes two elements: clean links
from each page to the other pages, and a sitemap. The site should be programmed
so that all of the other pages are linked from every other page. This helps the
search engines "crawl" your site to find all of its pages. Of course,
if you have a blog with 1,000 posts, this wouldn't be practical, and you'll
simply want to include the most important ones.
Second, to help the search engines find each of your pages,
it's a good idea to create a sitemap. The best method of sitemap creation is a
html page with links to every page on your site (this can be done automatically
with a programming language). Plus, this type of sitemap can be helpful to
visitors as well, if they're browsing through your site.
Images - Lastly, an often overlooked element of search engine
optimization are images. Marketers don't think of images as "content"
and often ignore them. This is a mistake, because images are valuable for two
reasons. First, they can include an attribute tag titled "alt=" which
defines the text of this image, similar to a description tag for the webpage
itself. If you're using your site's keywords as the alt description, that will
help your seo efforts.
Finally, Google uses the alt tag to display relevant results
in it's image search. This means that if your page is ranked, you can also rank
highly for the image search of the same term - increasing the number of search
engine visitors.
-----------------------------------------------------------------
About The Author:
Does your site need better rankings? Find out about affordable link building services that get results, visit http://MarketingTide.com.
********************************************
Home Marketing Tips Helpful Resources Added Resources Articles
Helpful Links Recommended Affiliate Programs Free Newsletter
Contact Us Reciprocal Links Submit An Article
Copyright © AHomeBusinessOpportunity.net, All Rights
Reserved.
Unauthorized use of the contents or design of this website is prohibited.
You may not duplicate, or publish any of our materials without our express legal
consent.