TOP 10 On Page Optimizing Factors (Part 1 of 3)!
Mastering these 10 SEO On Page Optimizing Factors = Higher Rankings!
There are literally hundreds of on page optimization factors that the search engine takes into consideration when it determines the ranking for your site or a page on your site.
On-Page Optimizing can be defined as: factors that have an effect on your web site or web page that will be listed in the natural search engine results pages. Examples of on page optimization include the actual HTML code, meta tags, keyword placement and keyword density along with performing certain tasks to create a search-engine friendly site.
In this article I will cover 10 of the On-Page elements that should never be forgotten, that will help you move to the top positions of Google and other major search engines for your topic… you will also likely experience increased traffic to your web site.
We will start with the number one strategy to increase your chances of ranking above your competition… a successful organic search engine optimization campaign which is based on keywords.
The first order of business will be to locate searchable keywords and keyword phrases to place into your article. If you master this first task, ‘Keyword Research and Selection’, the rest of the on page optimizing will come easy to you.
1. Keyword Research and Selection – To begin the process of proper keyword research and analysis, you will need to think Like Your Visitors – Keep this in mind… do not base your keyword research or the optimizing of your page for keywords that you like or think should be associated with the topic you are writing about. You are optimizing for the keywords potential visitors associate with the information you are offering.
If you are a newly established web site with little authority in the eyes of search engines, you need to focus your efforts on long-tail keyword search terms and Semantically Related Keyword Research as part of your keyword search routine.
A favorite and Free to use keyword research tool is the Google Keyword Suggestion Tool. This allows you to type in a word or phrase associated with the topic of your article, it will then give you a list of associated words or phrases similar to your searched word(s).
2. Optimize Keywords in URL – Prior to publishing your page for readers, make sure your URL is optimized for search engines. Just as it makes sense to fill your web page with keywords relevant to the topic you are writing about, you should name the file after your main keyword phrase. Notice the URL file name for this article ‘on-page-optimization’?
Making your file names relevant to the content contained with-in the page is not only an important organization factor, but both search engines and your visitors associate the name of the page with the content that it contains.
If you have a WordPress based site, and your URL structure shows numbers directly after your domain name as apposed to words for the address, then visit my Keyword-Enriched Website Makeover to learn how to change your permalink settings.
3. Optimize Keywords in Title Tag – The title tag is possibly your most important consideration when you try to raise your search-engine rankings for a particular keyword or keyword phrase. Search engines use the text contained within the title tag as a primary factor to determine what the content of a certain web page is about.
Search-engines will display the title tag at the top of each item in the search engine results page (SERPs). The words you use for the title tag is also the text that is displayed at the top left corner of the browser window.
Because you have less than 10 seconds to attract the user’s attention, a well written title tag might increase the odds that a searcher will click your listing. Your title tag should be a concise statement summarizing the main point of your content, and should be compelling enough to encourage search-engine users to click the link and visit your site.
Limit your title tags to 65 characters or less because most search engines do not display any more than that. If you balance the need for SEO with the need for an impactful title tag, you generally get more clicks and a higher ranking.
4. Optimize Keywords in Description Meta Tag – You should optimize each and every meta description tag on your web site because meta description tags are part of the display information that visitors see when your site is listed in the search engine results pages.
Even though the meta description tags are not important to search engine rankings, they are extremely important in gaining user click-through from search engine result pages (SERPs). These short paragraphs are the author’s opportunity to create a few compelling sentences describing to searchers exactly what the given page has with regard to what they’re looking for.
The topic of your post should not to exceed 160 characters (most search-engines use the maximum of 160 characters in their search results pages), yet it should interest the potential visitor and tempt that person to click your search-engine results link.
If you have a WordPress based site, there is a solution for the Title tag, Meta Description and Keywords tags… the All in One SEO Pack plug-in. There are other plug-ins available, but this is the one that I use for my blog, and that I would recommend.
This plug-in allows you to create your own title and description, and it also counts the characters as you type showing you if you need to shorten your title or description wording.
5. Optimize Keywords in Heading Tags – h1, h2, h3 tags – The headlines to the articles you write are crucial… as I mentioned in the Title Tags area, you have less than 10 seconds to attract the user’s attention.
Your headline, which will be the description of the post on your blog, is around 90 percent of the reason anyone will read your article, so make sure your headline title will interest the reader enough to pull them in immediately, while clearly explaining the content.
Use the header tags to apply significance to topics on your page… be sure to include keywords or phrases within all the heading tags if possible. Placing a selection of text within a header tag tells the search-engine spiders that the text is of a certain level of importance. Search-engine ranking algorithms place emphasis on text enclosed within header tags when determining where pages should be ranked for those terms.
The Header Tags help structure the content on your page semantically, and are useful for targeting the key topic of the page. The h1 tag should be similar to the title tag with some variation, and should serve as the overview of the content written. The h2 tags and subsequent tags can narrow the focus… make sure you use only one h1 tag for your article, however repeated h2 and lower tags are acceptable.
6. Optimize Keywords in Anchor Text – Another element of organic SEO that can be classified as important as your web site content is cross-linking, anchor text on your page. Anchor text is linkable wording that would be included in your navigation to outside sources, and internal linking structure within your site.
Links can be incoming, outgoing, or internal, and where those links lead or come from is as important as the context in which the links are provided. While you are writing your article, if you mention something that you have previously written about, link to it.
While creating these anchor links, double check to make sure they are linked correctly. Visitors should have easy direction to connecting pages from every page of your website… this will help reduce your bounce rate and aid in user experience.
7. Optimize Your Keyword Density – Keyword Density is a measurement of the number of times your keyword or keyword phrase appears on the page of your article, versus the number of words on the page… a ratio in other words.
We’ve covered placing your keyword or keyword phrase in the title tag, the description tag and the heading tags, now let’s cover your content. While strategically placing your keywords or phrases in the beginning and end of your article, avoid keyword stuffing and make sure you sprinkle a few variations of your keyword or phrase throughout your site where it looks natural and makes sense.
It will also help your SEO efforts to include Keyword Prominence and Proximity which you can read about in my Keyword Density article using the link above… these two steps will help you set yourself apart from your competition.
If you are like me, and you would like to automate your On-Page SEO, then follow the link for an under $50.00, one-time purchase, plug-in that will intelligently guide you with time-tested and proven tweaks that you can do with your content to outrank 90% of web pages on the internet.
8. Text Modifiers to Emphasize Your Keywords – Use the BOLD or STRONG tags to emphasize your keyword or keyword phrase. It is a good practice to bold the targeted term or keyword phrase at least once.
You can also italicize your targeted term or phrase… this tag appears to carry slightly more weight with rankings than the bold tag, so I suggest you use it in your text for your targeted keyword or keyword phrase at least once too.
9. Optimize Image ALT tag - Optimize image file names and Alt attributes for all images. Image optimizations are included in SEO best practices and aid in determining relevancy as spiders crawl the site. Name the images with dash-separated keywords, and fill out the Alt attribute with a short descriptive phrase about the image to include your keyword or keyword phrase.
Do not repeat the same words over and over again, and never repeat the same Alt Image tag more than once unless the image itself is repeated.
10. Last but Not Least, Proof Read – Avoid poor: grammar, spelling, punctuation, capitalization and sentence structure! The search-engine spiders are aware that clumsy sentences and poor grammar are displeasing to human readers; therefore, your grammar should be of the highest caliber.
Search engines tend to devalue any content containing awkward sentences, clichés, erroneous grammar, or writing considered aesthetically abrasive to a reader.
By keeping your story elegant and distinctive, you increase your web site’s chance of attaining high search-engine rankings. It is also important to keep your content accessible to the average reader.
BONUS - Ping Your Blog when you have added new content or updated your blog. Pinging services allow you to automatically notify blog directories and search engines that your blog has been updated.
Closing Comments About the On Page Optimization (SEO) Checklist!
These on-page optimizing factors are the most important elements to master if you want to rank above your competition for the keyword or keyword phrase you are targeting.
SEO is a comprehensive approach to improving your search engine rankings. As such, it requires attention to your whole site. It does little good to optimize portions of your site and leave other areas lacking the same attention to detail. If you feel that your site is in need of optimizing, do it right and make sure you hit all of the elements as you go.
We’ve covered on page optimization, now follow the link for (Part 2 of 3), ‘Off Page Optimization for SEO Ranking‘.
Then head on over and check out my 12 Tips for Whole Site Optimization (Part 3 of 3)! This post will cover tips and tricks to impress Google, aid in higher rankings and increase user friendliness (which also scores brownie points with Google)!
Master on page optimization along with whole site and off page optimization and you will find yourself ruling the Internet.
ON ANOTHER NOTE!
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Category: Blogging, Content Writing, Featured, Keywords Tips, Linking Tips, SEO
About the Author (Author Profile)
John Engle, known as ‘The Blog Optimizer’, is a Search Engine Optimization Blogging Specialist Taking SEO by Storm! He Specializes in Keyword Research and On Page Optimization. If You are a Busy Entrepreneur that Would Rather Concentrate on What You Do Best, Leave the Keyword Research and Optimization to an SEO Specialist, Hire John as Your SEO Blog Post, On Page Optimizing Specialist.
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Sites That Link to this Post
- Off Page Optimization – a Critical Step for SEO Ranking! | owndailyarticles.org | April 29, 2012
- Off Page Optimization – a Critical Step for SEO Ranking! | articleshub11.in | April 20, 2012
- Off Page Optimization – a Critical Step for SEO Ranking! | | April 19, 2012
- OFF PAGE OPTIMIZATION – A CRITICAL STEP FOR SEO RANKING! | Alexa Resources | April 18, 2012
- My 7 Step Blog Post Optimization Process! | | April 10, 2012
- freelance-kid.com » Keyword Optimization – How to Optimize for Google Search Results! | March 2, 2012
This is a wonderful post John very informative. Its good that you talk about pinging, It can be very useful for telling Google of new content. It is odd how this is not talked about more when people think of SEO. But, this should be one of the first things you do after you publish new content.
Hey Peter,
I know pinging my site works for me… Thanks for stopping by and taking the time to comment!
John Engle – The On Page Optimizer!
On-Page optimization process is very important in SEO. If you have not done On-Page well cannot get good results from Off-page optimization and vice versa. Great Article and plenty to learn.
Epic site!!! I am definitely looking forward to reading more!
!!
Thanks for sharing your info. I really appreciate your efforts and I will be waiting for your further write ups thanks once again.
html5 range slider
I Appreciate you stopping by and taking the time to comment!
Have an awesome day!
John Engle – The On Page Optimizer!
Internal links structure plays a vital role in ranking its better if you can create better navigation structure and all you pages connected to each other in genuine way.
Content should be media rich in order to increase user experience.
You make some very good points… thank you for your input.
Thanks for stopping by and taking the time to comment.
John Engle – The On Page Optimizer!
I think on page optimization and off page optimization both plays important role in ranking. On page and off page optimization work can be divide as 70 percent for on page and 30 percent for off page optimization.
Doing both on page optimization along with off page optimization do play a huge role in your SEO success.
I’m curious… where did you get your percentages between the two?
John Engle – The Blog Optimizer!
woow, great idea. King on page and queen SEO. Nice Your write idea. I try tips your write. Thanks
Thanks for stopping by and taking the time to comment.
John Engle – The On Page Optimizer!
I was suggested this website by means of my cousin. I am now not sure whether or not this put up is written by way of him as no one else understand such unique about my problem. You are incredible! Thanks!
Hi there, You’ve done a great job. I’ll definitely digg it and for my part recommend to my friends. I am sure they’ll be benefited from this site.
Hi Kampanie,
Thank you for the nice words… having people benefit from these articles is what it’s all about.
Thank you for stopping by and taking the time to comment.
John Engle – The On Page Optimizing Specialist!
Thanks for the awesome info!!
I’m totally a newbie to SEO. Your tips are really awesome. I planed to implement your steps to my site. I would like share few more tips which i got from some other website http://indiate.ch/on-page-optimization-and-off-page-optimization/
Thank you for sharing your tips…
Wow, wonderful weblog format! How long have you ever been blogging for? you make blogging look easy. The entire look of your site is excellent, neatly as the content!
Such a great 10 factors are very important for seo. It is very useful for get good ranking and traffic on your website. Thanks for sharing best Seo on page optimization tips. I really happy with your post.
Hey! I just would like to give an enormous thumbs up for the great data you could have here on this post. I can be coming again to your weblog for extra soon.
Did you said anything new here?
Manish,
I welcome any thing to add to this article about On-Page Optimization factors.
There are many bloggers that are not familiar with what is required to optimize their content, so this is for those people.
Thank You for stopping by and commenting!
John Engle
We all are very happy and really thankful to you John for writing us this informative precious valuable priceless story. A big big thanks to you John Engle.!!
Thank you for the nice words… thanks for stopping by and taking the time to comment!
John Engle – The On Page Optimizer!
Hello John,
I am working hard at making my blog posts fully SEO. I realize I neglected the All In SEO plug-in uses, even though I have it.
Question: I read on Darren Rowse’s Pro Blogger site, in a comment by someone, that metatags are not very useful any more. Why would some people say that?
Philippe
Hi Philippe,
To answer your question in a round about way… in September of 2009, Google announced that the meta descriptions and meta keywords tags will not factor into Google’s ranking algorithms. Google uses meta descriptions to return results when searchers use advanced search operators to match meta tag content.
Even though the meta description tags are not important to search engine rankings, they are extremely important in gaining user click-through from search engine result pages (SERPs). These short paragraphs are the author’s opportunity to advertise content to searchers and let them know exactly what the given page has with regard to what they’re looking for.
The meta description should employ the keywords intelligently, but also create a compelling description that a searcher will want to click. Direct relevance to the page and uniqueness between each page’s meta description is key. The description should optimally be between 150-160 characters.
I hope I have answered your question.
Thank You for stopping by and commenting.
John Engle
Onpage is more important for our page traffic. It’s more useful to identify our content on web.
It’s require all of the onpage field.
On page and Off page both are the terms of Search Engine Optimization. Off page optimization is a technique to create good links for the websites. More links on a website helps to attract huge traffic towards the site. On the other hand On page activities are helpful to pull the website towards better ranking in search engine. Thanks to share these important tips with us.
Off-Page optimization most definitely an important SEO factor in gaining traffic, yet at the same time the on-page optimization is much more within our control.
Thank You too for your insight!
Stop by any time!
John Engle
Hello,
Thanks for the great post. But i didn’t understand keyword Density..?? I like your keyword research part very much.
Great post John!
These are great tips and I especially like the part about keyword density as I seem to overlook that as I am creating my posts.
Thanks for the awesome info!!
Hey Molly,
I’m glad you liked the article… thank you for your kind words!
Keyword density seems to be quite a factor for on-page optimization… to add to the keywords density thought, follow the Keyword Prominence and Proximity ideas also. While you are writing your articles, throw some variations of your keyword or keyword phrase in too (the LSI related keywords), Google loves it from what I’ve heard.
Thanks for stopping by and commenting!
John Engle
Onpage optimization will not guarantee any top rating within a search engine, only offpage optimization can offer that guarantee.
Let me see if I understand you correctly… to quote you, you are saying “On-page optimization will not guarantee any top rating within a search engine, that only off-page optimization can offer that guarantee.”
I believe that most people understand that there are no guarantee’s of any sorts for search engine optimization, but to have an attitude like yours I wonder how much you actually know about SEO.
To begin with, according to Matt Cutts, a software engineer with Google, there are over 200 Ranking factors taken into consideration by the algorithm when the search-engine spider crawls your site. Each search engine has their own algorithm, so rankings can show differently between the search engine results pages of different search engines.
If a website owner were to follow the SEO advice that is being offered by people that know what they are talking about, and they stay away from Black-Hat SEO, then a person should rank pretty well for the targeted keyword terms of their site.
So according to your comment about Off-Page optimization, which is mostly tied to Link Popularity from directories, article submission sites, and other related websites, you are are saying that this is the Golden Rule?
Off-Page Optimization does play a HUGE role in SEO rankings, because outside sources cannot be manipulated by the website owner, and the search engines know that; but it is not going to be the only thing to help you rank well.
Example… if you have crappy content on your site, would any other website owner in their right mind want to link back to your site? Will the search-engines want to give the Internet searcher the experience of visiting a site that has content not worth reading… in comes the over 200 ranking factors in the algorithm to judge your site for its worthiness and authority?
If you are expecting Off-Page Optimization to be the Golden Ticket for your site, without any On-Page Optimization taken into consideration, then your site won’t make it.
Even if you have submitted articles to article submission sites, submitted your website to search engine directories, etc, your rankings will not be great if the content on your site is not worth looking at.
The engineers behind the ranking algorithm know this, so links that lead back to your site need to pass the on-page optimization judgement of the algorithm to be worth indexing in their results pages!
The only other method to guarantee the top listing without organic results would be paid advertisements… for those reading this, if you are not familiar with what paid advertising is, it is an agreement by the website owner to pay the Search Engine a fee when an Internet user clicks on the website owners ad that leads to their site… known as Pay Per Click, Adsense etc.!
Even if you pay a high click rate for your listing to get on the front page of Google for your keyword term, let’s say $2.00 a click as an example, you will not get any leads, sales or anything if your content is not worth reading, or doesn’t appear trustworthy!
I did Pay Per Click advertising years ago and it’s not easy to master. So, if you don’t want to possibly lose your bank roll with paid advertising if you aren’t familiar with it, and you would like search engine rankings without having to pay for them, then you need to do your diligence for On-Page and Off-Page optimization, and pay attention to what is proven.
To the person that left the comment… if you were looking to get a backlink because of your controversial response, you got it!
If you were wanting people to click on your link, I don’t see who would trust you as a website designer considering your attitude and ignorance towards Search Engine Optimization.
Funny thing is that the site that your link leads to has a Google PageRank of 0, and an Alexa Ranking of 1,219,659 which is poor, and your domain age is from April of 2001… I guess a site that is 10 years old that has a PageRank of Zero, and a high Alexa Ranking has a lot of Search Engine Optimization to do.
Good Luck!
Thanks for you comment!
John Engle
If anybody else has anything to add, please have at it, lets get a dialogue going… if you disagree with me, please say so!
You are welcome to do your own research to back my comments… you can search for terms like: “on-page optimization”, “off-page optimization” and “link popularity” and see what others have to say!
Good answer John;)
Why thank you kind lady!
I think you made your point John
Hi John,
Yeah, I got carried away… I think the person was just looking for a backlink to their site for SEO purposes, but at the same time I wanted to back up my article!
I’m just not sure who would be so brave, especially a website designer, to put themselves out there like that and make such a statement!
Thanks for being part of the discussion!
John Engle
Phenomenal post John, it was well worth the wait
I want to better understand how to use header tags, here are a few quick questions.
Can they be scattered along the article or do they have to be at the top?
How would you enter a H1 tag on the article title?
Have you ever written an article JUST about header tags?
Hey John,
Good to see you again!
Yes you can use heading tags throughout your post… the h1 tag with the highest level of importance all the way down to the h6 least important. Most people don’t ever go beyond the h3 tag… I have used the h4 tag on occasion, but it’s been rare.
Your theme software should already use the h1 tag for your page title when you type it into the title area of your Edit Post box. It should be automatic with your theme scripting.
I have not written an article just about heading tags… it is on my list of articles to write along with about 30 others at the moment. I do go into a little more depth about the Heading Tags in my SEO Boot Camp for Bloggers, lesson 4.
I hope I have answered your questions John!
John Engle
Thanks for the info John