Starting any search engine optimization campaign with anything other than keyword research is a waste of time. To be truly successful with SEO you must begin with a well thought through keyword strategy and analysis. Once you′ve identified the most important keywords for your campaign, the next step is to optimize web pages for top rankings. I have found a number of techniques that work especially well for on page optimization.
There are variety of optimization factors to consider when optimizing your web pages. I have found three factors in particular to have more of an impact than others when correlating them to search engine rankings. In particular, meta tags, URL structure, and page load speed seem to have the greatest affect on where your website ranks for particular keywords or keyword phrases.
The concept of meta tags has been around for a very long time. At first, this was the primary vehicle by which search engines evaluated web sites. Over time their importance declined in relation to the number of factors being considered on an entire web page. However, as algorithms go more complex, the purpose of meta tags have changed. Once considered to be the most important aspect of optimization meta tags are now a way of validating site content. If your meta tags are consistent with on page content, the credibility of your page increases.
Properly formatted meta tags should include a title tag that includes the keywords that you are trying to optimize for. It is recommended that the size of the title tag is sixty or fewer characters as this is the limit shown on Google search results. The second tag, the description tag should be limited to fewer than one hundred and fifty characters and repeat your keyword phrase no more than two times.
The last meta tag worthy of description is the keyword tag. I see this tag misused all too often and it may actually be hurting your search engine rankings. When using a keyword tag, focus on only a dozen of your most important and highly trafficked keywords. You want the search engines to know that you are an authority site and worthy of top rankings. Do your research and only include the keywords that truly matter. You can also evaluate the sites in the top positions and model their keywords as long as they are included on your website.
In addition to having your meta tags in place, how quickly your site loads is very important. Slow loading websites are penalized by Google. What’s the big deal with a slow web site or web page you might ask? Google is all about giving the browser a good user experience. If you site has a lot of broken links or loads slowly, Google considers this a bad experience and will penalize you with lower rankings. Make sure that your page loads within 5 seconds on a standard connection. There are a number of tools that can help you measure load speed.
The final factor related to on page optimization we are discussing today is the web site URL. The best format is to have your keyword in root of the domain. For example, it may look something like www.keyword.com. Truthfully the days of picking up a domain like this are pretty much over but you can find some options on expired domain listings. You can also add your keyword next to the root URL by creating a separate page or folder on your main directory. The final strategy is a subdomain strategy where you would place your keyword before your domain. Most hosts offer this option.
Before you start any SEO campaign, evaluate your web site, landing page, or blog from the perspective of meta tags, load speed, and URLs. There are additional on page factors we’ll discuss in the next lesson, but the three mentioned herein are vitally important to your search engine optimization success.
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