If you’ve done your keyword research using one of the many tools freely available, such as Google Keyword Tool, as suggested in my last post. Analyse your competition to see what they are ranking for and gauge their success. Have a look at their link profile and develop your link building strategy. On-page SEO is just one aspect of the bigger picture, albeit a significant one, and as such, you should spend time on this.
Having your keywords finalised for each page is a step in the right direction. I would recommend that you focus on three keywords, at the most, per page normally. Remember that you don’t have to try and fit all your keywords to just the homepage; use another page of your website.
Once you have decided on which page to use for your chosen keywords, I would page attention to the important on-page factors as follows:
- Title Tags – The title tag of each page is one of the most important factors for on-page optimisation and overall in search engine optimisation. This tag is used to explain to the search engine bots what the page is about, and this is what is shown in bold or blue text after you search for something; therefore, it is essential to place your keyword in the title tag, not just for the search engines, but for your customers, so that they know what is on your website page. The key to writing a search engine-friendly title that effectively targets your keywords is to make the title look natural whilst still including the target keywords and to limit the character length (including spaces) to between 60 and 65.
- Meta Description – This is another important part of on-page optimisation. The meta description is shown under the title in the search engine results, and typically, Google will display around 150-160 characters here. Spend time on these, make sure each meta description is unique, and include your keywords here while not making it look or read unnaturally. Think of the meta description as a brief sales pitch to your potential customers.
- Content – The first part to look at is the page heading which should normally be in h1 tags. Also, try and include the page keywords with this tag, as it is good from an SEO point of view, as the search engines give this weight over other on-page factors. For subtitles and other important headings, use h2, and h3 tags, as these, carry less weight but will still be picked up by the search engines. Note well, though, not to spam the page with keywords, don’t force a keyword into all h2 and h3 tags, only if it reads and makes sense to do so. Next, the content on the page should be relevant to the keywords for the page; it’s quite straightforward. Another tip for using is to bold, italicise or underline your keywords within the content on the page; again, don’t overuse these.
- Alt Tags – Alt tags can be found when you hover over an image; usually, some text will appear, which is the ‘alternate tag’. These can also be a good method of adding either keywords or related content to the keywords to describe the image.
- Video – Placing a video on your website can be a good way to keep visitors on your site for longer. And if you upload the video via YouTube, you can create a nice link back to your site from an authoritative site, which is ideal for SEO.
- Contextual Links – In effect, internal links using keyword anchor text. For example, if you create a page within your website that targets ‘small business SEO’, you can link from another page that mentions these keywords or similar, thus creating a contextual anchor link. The best way to acquire quality inbound links is to pursue a blogger outreach strategy by a reputed SEO agency.
- Keyword Domains – Domains that contain keywords are ideal for increasing search engine results positions, but these aren’t always available or appropriate. But the next best thing is to create keyword-rich sub-URLs. An example would be if the keyword is small SEO tools, the best URL would be something like https://smallseotools.uk
It would be best to have a reasonable understanding of on-page optimisation. If your site lacks the above, make the changes and allow the search engines to cache (re-index) the page and see what happens to the search engine results position for your chosen keywords. If you don’t know how to carry these techniques out or don’t have the time, get in touch today!
Credit: Coveragely