The Importance of On-Page Optimization in SEO

SEO AND ON - PAGE OPTIMIZATION IN SEO

SEO stands for Search Engine Optimization.  SEO is all about optimizing a website for search engines.  Most usefull SEO technique are designing and developing a website to rank well in search engine results,  improving the volume and quality of traffic to a website from search engines, marketing by understanding how search algorithms work,  and what human visitors might search.

When you search any keyword using a search engine,  it displays thousands of results found in its database.  A page ranking is measured by the position of web pages displayed in the search engine results.  If a search engine is putting your web page on the first position,  then your web page rank will be number 1 and it will be assumed as the page with the highest rank. SEO is the process of designing and developing a website to attain a high rank in search engine results.

Seo optimization is classified into two category one is On-Page Optimization and Off-Page Optimization.

·        On-Page SEO -  It includes providing good content,  good keywords selection,  putting keywords on correct places,  giving appropriate title to every page,  etc.

·        Off-Page SEO - It includes link building,  increasing link popularity by submitting open directories,  search engines,  link exchange,  etc.

ON - PAGE SEO

On-Page SEO refers to how well your website’s content is presented to search engines.  On page optimization involves ensuring whether a particular webpage is structured in a manner so that it gets

found by the search engines for given keywords and key phrases.  It not only helps in getting good search engine ranking but also increases overall readability of the site.  The best part is that not much has changed about the on-page optimization approach.  It can still be improved immediately by tweaking incorrect elements on a webpage.

1. Page copy

A good content copy is really the key to your success.  It is an open secret that you need to produce original,  unique and high quality content of relevance on a continuous basis to perform well and rank high on search engines.  There are few things you need to keep in mind while creating the content copy.

Keyword

Each piece of content should be created keeping the focus primarily on a single keyword or a key phrase.  This word or phrase should at least be mentioned for a specific number of times in the whole content and this process is known as keyword density.  Each content copy is supposed to maintain a keyword density of 3-5% as par industry standard.  Keep a mix of primary and secondary keywords and key phrases in your content but optimize your content around only those keywords and phrases on which you desire to achieve top organic search rankings.

Quality over quantity

You don’t essentially need longer articles for better search engine rankings.  Web pages with more content intensity and depth have started performing better on search engine ranking since the 2011 Google algorithm update.

2. Title Tags

Arguably title tag is the most important element among the  “big three” ,  the other two being page copy and inbound links.  Title tag contains the words which appear in the clickable link of the search engine result.  Google has limited the page titles up to 70 characters,  so it is extremely important that your title tags are keyword-relevant yet concise.  For example,  when looking up in Google for a query,  you might have noticed the chopped off title tags in few results,  that’s because the title tags for that page are too long.  To optimize the title tags primary keywords and secondary keywords should be mentioned in the same order and the branded keywords at the end,  this is a rule to follow except for the home page.

3. Meta Data

Meta data is a well-written description summarizing the content of a particular webpage.  It used to be one of the most important factors affecting search engine optimization in pre-Panda era.  Meta data completely lost its importance in influencing Search Engine rankings from September 2009 after Google’s declaration. It was majorly devalued because of a wide practice of spam techniques. Google crawlers though look at the Meta keywords to get an idea about the topicality of the page content. Meta descriptions have to be created within a limit of 155- 160 characters which essentially should not include anything but alphanumeric characters. It can’t influence search engine rankings but do help in getting a high click through rate.

Meta description works more as an ad copy for the organic search results which influences the readers to click on a particular link. It can also intelligently accommodate the primary keywords within it, Google especially highlights them if searched key phrase contains the exact key words.

4. Heading Tags

These are the tags which define the content of your page section wise, just like traditional headings and subheadings. There should be one <h1> tag every page, which should include the most relevant key phrase or key word. This tag can be created up till <h6>, though general practice is to use this till <h3>.

Apart from the primary keyword mentioned in the <h1>, you can include the other important key phrases in <h2> and <h3> tags to define the other sections of the content. The <h1> tag should be optimized well as search engines still give this some value.

5. Interlinking

Strategically, linking one of your website pages to other similar pages on your website provides context to the search engine and to the readers as well. Some best practices are:

1. Include links in the main content of each page.
2. Paragraph links carry the most weight.
3. Use keyword-rich anchor text in links.
4. Avoid using non-descriptive anchor text (for example, read more, click here, etc).
5. Link to relevant, deep pages.
6. Use breadcrumb navigation on every page
7. Monitor your inbound links through Google Webmaster Tools.
8. Avoid multiple links to the same page from a single page.
9. Less links= More authority per link.

The most common practice of showing “related links” or “tags” at the end of a page or in a sidebar is done to thematically relate one page to another.

SARATH MM