Getting a good ranking in a search engine hasn’t been the easiest thing for many. Search engines are getting more smarter & intelligent everyday, so now it takes more than just good content to top your competitors.
On page optimization is one of the very first step of SEO which every webmaster should look into. It probably won’t even take you an hour to learn and implement some of these on-page optimization techniques. But you may ask me, why it is so important? – Well literally speaking, if you can do proper on-page optimization for your website you can not only rank well in a search engine but also can increase the overall readability of your website for your visitors.
Below I have tried to summarize some of the most important on-page optimization techniques for you. You can implement some of these if not all to give your site a better exposure to the search engines as well as to increase your overall CTR (Click-Through-Rate) ratio.
1. Title Optimization
A site’s title tag is by far the most important on-page optimization element. A title tag should be short but descriptive enough for your visitors to identify you and your business. Title tag is the first thing that is shown & indexed by the search engines. So naturally it is given a very high importance – out of thousands results that a searcher sees, your site’s title has to be appealing enough for him to want to find out more information. On the other hand, your title has to be appealing enough to the search engine in order to rank you above thousands of other similar websites like yours.
Important things to include in your title:
- Your Name/ Business Name / Site Name: This is very important for breading propose. If you feel that your customers may search you by your brand name than it’s also useful to put it somewhere in your title.
- Keywords: If you want to rank for a certain keywords it is always good to place some of them in your title tag. A Title tag represents the whole flavor & content of your website. So if you are selling pizza online you can include keywords like – order pizza, home delivery pizza etc in your title tag. Don’t staff too many keywords in your title. Write a title which is readable to humans & also good for the search engine. (e.g. Domino’s Pizza, Order Pizza Online for Delivery - Dominos.com)
- Include your 1-800 or other toll-free numbers: Some may not agree with me on this, but I think including your phone number in the title tag does help your visitors to take a direct action! It also makes your site look more professional and legit when it’s being displayed in the SERP (Search Engine Result Page). Searchers are likely to ‘click’ on the result that has a phone number attached to it because in their unconscious mind, they will have a good impression on the authenticity of the business and the level of support. If you prefer not to include your number in the title tag, you can alternatively include it in your Meta Description which will give you almost the same benefits.
2. Meta Tags Optimization
A site’s Meta tags may not be as important as it used to be before, however I feel that Meta Description is something you can’t just ignore. A site’s Meta description should contain a brief description of your website focusing on the areas and services that your business is specialized in. This small piece of text can be considered as a selling snippet, if a searcher finds it appealing he is likely to click and go inside your page to find out more information. But if your Meta Description is too generic and isn’t written too well then there is a good chance that your site will simply be ignored.
Important things to include in your Meta Description:
- Include your Selling Point– Tell your customers what they want to hear through your site’s Meta Description, and you will definitely get some advantage over others in the SERP. For instance - if you sell ‘cheap web hosting’ then including a phrase like “hosting starting from only $0.99” may result in more clicks and visitors because your description will exactly match the flavor of search performed by the user.
- Keywords – Including some of your keywords will give you some advantage in Google’s relevancy algorithm.
- 1-800 or other Toll Free Numbers – if you haven’t included this already in your title, you can rather include it in your Meta description. If the users have skype installed on their system, any number on their browser will become clickable which will result in a direct skype-out call. So basically, if your number appears in the Meta description some of your customers might just prefer to call you directly instead of going through your site.
3. Important HTML Tags
It is necessary for you to highlight certain parts of your website that you want your readers to look at. There are several tags in html which allows you to do so. For instance – the header tags [h1] [h2] [h3], Bold [strong], Italic [em] etc. The text inside your header tags (e.g. [h1]) is given very high importance by the search engine. Usually you can use them to define the page/post titles or the important sections of your website.
Header Elements:
- Header 1: Header 1 should be used to define the most important section of your page. Usually Header 1 is used for Site’s title or header text.
- Header 2 & 3: Header 2 and 3 can be used for Page/Post titles or important sections of your pages. Separating your content with headers is a good practice as it makes your site more readable and easy to navigate.
Text Styles:
- Bold: You can bold (e.g. [strong]) certain words which are of high importance. Sometimes it’s good to bold your keywords where appropriate. However overdoing this may get you penalized.
- Italic: You can use the [em] tag to emphasize certain words which will appear in italic.
- Quote: This is very useful when you are quoting from someone.
4. Keyword Optimization & Synonyms
Your site’s content needs to be optimized in such a way that it can suit both search engines & your readers. Stuffing your site with too many keywords can make your site unreadable. So you will need to have some sort of balance between your keywords & your content.
Important elements of Keyword Optimization:
- Research: Do a proper research before you decide on your keywords. There are plenty of free tools out there that can help you to do keyword research. Some of my personal favorites are: SEObook Keyword Suggestion tool, Google Adwords Keyword Tool & Overture Keyword Tool.
- Keyword Density: Try to have a moderate keyword density so that it can help the search engine to determine that your page is indeed related & relevant to the keyword that you are targeting.
- Synonyms & Related Keywords: I personally like to use synonyms instead of having a high keyword density. This helps to make my content sound natural but still helps in SEO.
- Long Tail Keywords: It’s often good to target some long tail keywords as they are comparatively easier to rank for. During your keyword research you should be able to gather some good long tail keywords that you can optimize your site for. But you can also come up with your own long tail keywords; for example try adding some common words like – ‘best’, ‘free’, ‘cheap’, ‘top’ etc. along with your actual keyword and you might eventually get some good long tail keywords.
5. Link Optimization
It is important to optimize your internal & external outbound links for search engines as well as to give your visitors a better navigation.
Important elements of Link Optimization:
- Try using good Anchor Text when you are linking to other people. Include the appropriate keyword in the anchor text which gives the outbound link a ‘proper meaning’ and value.
- A good & clean Internal Link Structure with proper use of anchor text will definitely help. E.g. “Credit Card Application” is a better anchor text compared to “click here”
- If you are using a CMS, then try using permalinks. This way your keywords/post title will be on the link itself and thus it will valued more by the search engines.
6. Image Optimization
If your site has lot of images, you need to optimize them too as they can’t be read by the search engines. It’s very easy for a human reader to interpret the image into its meaning. However for a Web crawler the whole interpreting process is completely different. Search Engine spiders can only read text but not images. So you need to use some special tags for your images in order to give them some meaning.
Some Important Image Optimization Elements:
- Alt text : ALT text or Alternate Text is the text to describe your image when your mouse moves over an image on your web page. The text should be meaningful but short. You can use your relevant keywords as ALT text. If your browser can’t display the image for some reason, the alt text is used in place of that particular image.
- File name : always use meaningful file name for your images, use names like “apple-iphone-cover.jpg” instead of meaningless “DSC24045.jpg”. Keep image file name same or similar to the ALT text.
- Image Title : always use the title tag in images which will show the title as tool tip when a user moves his mouse over the image. Example of an image with title tag: [img src=”http://imagelocation.jpg” alt=”Image description” title=”Title of the Image”]
- Image Linking : Whenever you want to link to your image, use the image keywords in your link text. Example: use “view an Apple iPhone”, instead of “Click here to view” as the anchor text.
I hope you have found my On-page Optimization walkthrough useful. If I have the chance, I’ll definitely come up with more SEO tutorials in future. If you have any comments or questions, you can write to me at saad[at]seocompany.ca.
Comments
61 responses so far ↓
Eric Martindale on Apr 22, 2008 at 9:32 am
Wow, great post! I’m looking forward to seeing more articles like this from you, Saad. This is top notch!
Quentin6s on Apr 22, 2008 at 12:08 pm
Great overview of the basics! I’m forwarding this link to my friends who want to learn SEO.
Saad Kamal on Apr 22, 2008 at 12:16 pm
Thanks to both :) I’d definitely want to write some more for SEJ.
Louis Liem on Apr 22, 2008 at 12:26 pm
Would like to add to the keyword section. I’ll go with an example. If you’re talking about wordpress, lessen the use of “it” to replace “wordpress”. But also, don’t mention “wordpress” like 5 times in a sentence.
I agree on having a moderate amount of keyword so they won’t look spammy to search engines.
Saad Kamal on Apr 22, 2008 at 12:30 pm
Louis Liem: Yes.. repeating the same keyword would actually look spammy to the SE. That is why I personally like to blend some ’synonyms’ + ‘related keywords’.
Mery on Apr 22, 2008 at 11:21 pm
A very good piece of work for the beginners. I surely agree with you on optimizing for long tail keywords. Their conversion potential is very strong - and long-lasting. Keep posting!!!
Pratheep on Apr 23, 2008 at 1:18 am
I don’t think Overture tool is still working.
Please let me know if there is any change in the URL:
http://inventory.overture.com/
-Pratheep
Ahmad Nagy on Apr 23, 2008 at 2:44 am
Thank you Saad for this good articel
About Image Optimization, Could you please recommend any web site impelement the full optimization for its images
I will be grateful if you recommend me a famous site use the keywords in image title and image description
Thanks
Saad Kamal on Apr 23, 2008 at 3:16 am
@Mery: Thanks! Yes I completely agree with you that Long -Tail Keywords has great potential. It can actually give you more niche traffic and usually they convert pretty well.
@Partheep: Overture does work, but the only problem is sometimes their service is a bit ‘too slow’. Check whether the following works for you:
http://inventory.overture.com/d/searchinventory/suggestion/
@Ahmad Nagy: Glad that you liked it. Well there are plenty of sites out there who are already using the image optimization techniques. They exactly know what Image optimization can do for them :). For instance - I’ll take eonline.com (Entertainment Niche) as an example here. Notice how they used ‘keywords’ in their picture names, title & description.
The whole idea of image optimization is to ‘help’ Google Image Search & other Image search engines to properly index your images and thus helping you to rank better for a term.
Realizzazione siti web abruzzo on Apr 23, 2008 at 6:12 am
Really cool article, but the same story repeated again.
This kind of basic knowledge should be part of every webmaster before rather than every junior seoer.
Saad Kamal on Apr 23, 2008 at 7:41 am
Thanks! Yes I certainly agree. All webmasters should actually learn & implement the basics first.
Internet Marketing Newbie on Apr 23, 2008 at 9:40 pm
Hmmm, never thought of putting the phone number in the meta description and I consider myself to be a well rounded Stomper….thanks for that one Saad :)
Prashant Kumar Pracheta on Apr 25, 2008 at 6:07 am
Hi saad…….
Nice workkkkkkkkk
my thinking also like u..
I want to know one thing
I also want to write articles for SEJ
so tell me how can its be possible.
I am waiting for ur reply.
kaushal on Jun 18, 2008 at 11:42 pm
Great on-page optimization basics. Well done and keep it up your work for more latest information. Now please let me know about Organic SEO. Is their any new arrival in organic SEO techniques. I know Social Bookmarking, Directory Submission, Press Release, Classified Ads, Article Submission, Blogs and Forum. Is their any new techniques?, if you know let me know the process.
I am thankful to you.
M.Mohamed Yasil on Sep 29, 2008 at 7:16 am
Hi saad,
I am wandering for this information only.You have posted very clearly about “On Page Optimization”.Thanks a lot for your brief information-:)
SEO Angels on Oct 10, 2008 at 11:40 am
Great post Saad,
I agree with the majority of your points, although including your telephone number in the title tag seems strange to me. When search engines crawl your website they look for phrases in your title and match them to corresponding searches. Thus, I think its a waste to put contact details in this section as no-one searches for them. It would be more important to add an extra keyphrase in my opinion.
Saad Kamal on Oct 10, 2008 at 1:49 pm
@M.Mohamed Yasil - You are welcome.
@SEO Angels - I have specified why I’hv asked everyone to consider it. Ranking isn’t everything - you may rank for a very popular keyword in Number #3 spot and still get very less Click Through…and conversion.
Putting the 1800 number on the title OR meta description just makes your site look for legit & professional and I’m certain that it will boost your CTR.
Quality websites depend Less and less on “Site Title”….once a site is trusted..it automatically starts ranking for all the keywords (regardless of what your title is). For example - SEJ ranks for a lot of terms, but they didn’t actually Stuff their title with any keywords..their title is plain and simple - “Search Engine Journal” :)
For new websites this isnt applicable (as I certainly dont even expect them to have a 1800 number on the first place). But for big sites…this may have an added advantage as it triggers a call to action.
SEO Angels on Oct 10, 2008 at 10:24 pm
@Saad Kamal
Hello Saad, I only do work for smaller businesses, so this seemed an insane option to me; hence my reply.
Your article did not clarify that you would use different strategies dependant upon how trusted/authoritative your site was. Only that your site would appear trusted if you included a toll free number and you may receive more conversions as a result.
I completely agree now that you have fully explained and I also realise that articles are limited by space and that you cannot include everything!
Thankyou for taking time to write back, I enjoyed reading your article and will be back to read your next installment…
SEO Angels
Saad Kamal on Oct 11, 2008 at 1:49 am
@SEO Angels - you are welcome :)
Ali Nawaz on Oct 23, 2008 at 12:00 am
Dear Saad,
Such a refined, concentrated and impressive On Page Optimization information, I really like it.
God Bless you!
Saad on Oct 23, 2008 at 3:36 am
Thanks Newaz :)
vinod on Dec 4, 2008 at 4:59 am
Your ideas are excellent Guru. I will follow sure. to get good rank
Afzal on Dec 6, 2008 at 4:10 am
Hi, Saad
Your Article regarding on page seo is very good and knowledgeble I like that.
Windows Guy on Dec 19, 2008 at 8:38 am
Excellent article.Bookmarked.
Jim on Dec 28, 2008 at 9:55 am
Great article and very clear. Keep em coming.
Mohamed yasil on Dec 29, 2008 at 4:45 am
I have got more & more information about different optimization from this post…Great jog… Keep on posting article about deep seo in this blog.. Thanks…
affordable seo services in india on Jan 12, 2009 at 4:03 am
nice and great informatiion shearing with us ..
thanks .
SEO on Jan 28, 2009 at 5:23 am
Hi there, This surely is a good article for beginners and check list for other SEO’s. Great going.
kunal2008 ON GAF & Elance on Feb 20, 2009 at 12:43 am
Excellent information about on page optimization. I appreciate to Mr. Saad Kamal.
Thanks a lot!
kunal
Beauty Girl on Feb 24, 2009 at 12:29 am
I was doing a search for OnPage optimization because I needed to do an outline for someone. WOW…this was so helpful to me. Thank you for this service and I look forward to learning more from you!
Budi Waluyo on Feb 28, 2009 at 12:42 pm
It’s highly valuable lesson especially for a beginner of SEO like me. Thank you and I’m expecting for another precious articles
Sejal Mehta on Mar 6, 2009 at 7:36 am
Dear Mr. Saad Kamal,
I am novice and just entered in the field of SEO,out of interest. Ur article helped me a lot in understanding the basics of SEO.
Thanx a ton.
Hope 2 get a nice article soon 4m ur end.
Regards
Sejal Mehta
Scientist C
Ministry of IT.
Sell my car on Mar 9, 2009 at 5:43 am
Thats great to read this article, You have mentioned that Meta tags may not be as important as it used to be before but then in a Meta Description how much keywords you will stuff.. and if it will be more then its limits then that again not good for on page SEO.
Saurabh on Mar 9, 2009 at 3:28 pm
It’s gud article for onpage optimization.but i do’nt prfer phone number is important part of optimization.
Webstar2007 on Mar 16, 2009 at 2:45 pm
Saad..,you really created such nice post which I used in my site to get optimised internally…thanx a ton dude…keep writing….
Sumesh on Mar 19, 2009 at 2:27 am
This is a good piece of work!
highfiver on Mar 21, 2009 at 1:58 pm
It takes time no matter how much SEO we do to get pages good ranking. I think it hardly matters whether you have meta tags or headers optimized. If the content is relevant to search optimized keywords then page will automatically rank high.
Britto on Mar 24, 2009 at 6:58 am
This post has been useful for me
Online Lead Generation on Apr 21, 2009 at 4:35 pm
Good breakdown. SEO is very key, especially choosing the keywords.
ravi on Apr 27, 2009 at 5:49 am
hello,
This is very nice and properly getting article
but i how can i do on page and off page optimizatinon please give me a suggestion
i have need to learn seo because i have to got a good job please help me.
Surendra on Apr 28, 2009 at 12:27 am
All points are correct and these points are vital point for on-page optimization. It’s very nice and easily get for me.
Capiznon on Apr 29, 2009 at 3:14 pm
I am looking forward to see articles like this.
thank you this very informative information
and i hope that we can get more tips here.
keep it up.
thanks a bunch
Samantha Fernandez on Apr 30, 2009 at 9:58 am
Hi SaaD,
Can you please tell some on page as well as off page optimization tips to gain rankings on highly competitive keywords. Like I have been targeting the keyword ‘managed hosting’ for the past 6 months, but could not gain better ranking for it.
I would be highly thankful to you if you can take my request in your kind consideration.
Thanks
Samantha.
Nickolas on May 4, 2009 at 1:24 pm
So, in regards to ’spammy’ keyword stuffing, take a look one of these free dating sites and check out their rankings in google.ca. Keyword stuffing is GREAT just as long as you can make it sound as natural as possible.
the kws in question for g.ca would be free dating sites…
Tom Duong on May 5, 2009 at 10:25 pm
Thanks for this informative post. Recently, I’ve been adding more images and stock photos on my blog to utilize image optimization by adding keywords in the Alternate texts field.
Tom
Vijayalakshmi on May 7, 2009 at 8:27 am
Really your article was excellent.. Surely it help the people who is trying to learn the basics of on page optimization. Thank you for your valuable post…
Vijayalakshmi on May 7, 2009 at 8:28 am
Really your article was excellent.. Surely it helps the people who is trying to learn the basics of on page optimization. Thank you for your valuable post…
anupm barua on May 18, 2009 at 10:22 am
Thanks a lot kamal.This article is really helpful.As i m a new one in this SEO , I hope i will get latest updates of SEO from you.Thanks again!!
shazzi mayo on May 20, 2009 at 7:13 am
its really a good article . Thanks a lot kamal its really help full.
Islam on May 22, 2009 at 11:21 pm
Wow excellent article.
Abdel on May 26, 2009 at 2:51 am
Thanks a lot for this tutorial. The question I have is : Is there a permalink-like method you can use with a non-CMS website. I haven’t done any research yet cuz I just thought about it?
I know that you can store evey one of your pages (after naming it index.htm) in a separate folder and giving the latter the name of the page title. but this method is time consuming.
Thanks a gain
jyoti on May 26, 2009 at 8:45 pm
hi this article was really helpful to me….good work..!!
Sheetal Raj on May 27, 2009 at 7:48 am
Hi,
Thanks Alot your artical is helps the people who is trying to learn the basics of on page optimization.
packerpack on Jun 2, 2009 at 7:24 am
Have a look at the complete SEO series once you are done here. Here is the link, Yet Another SEO : On-Page Search Engine Optimization
sudha kaushal on Jun 3, 2009 at 6:24 am
Amazing its really wonderful for beginners. Brilliant post
Phyza on Jun 3, 2009 at 9:43 am
Thanks a lot. I am newbie in on page optimization so i usually look out for such tips and special methods to do on page optimization. I get everything but i am little bit confused in meta tags so i will try to search for it more :)
Homeimprovement Blog
My Health Blog
michaelj72 on Jun 13, 2009 at 1:34 am
thanks for these great pointers, I have been working more on the photo optimization, the site has a good number of them, and this reinforces its importance to me.
and the importance of the outgoing and inner anchor texts, they mean so much to the engines and are so critical for good seo
SEObeginner on Jun 16, 2009 at 2:35 pm
Great article, the information was delivered in an easy to understand but extremely informative manner, and thank you for the tips.
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Scott on Jun 25, 2009 at 6:40 am
Saad, I know you said that highlighting your keywords too many times can get you penalized, but if you do it once or twice on every article which is a different page, is that ok? Are you just suggesting that on your homepage you shouldn’t overdo? Thanks
Vijay on Jul 1, 2009 at 3:44 pm
Dear Saad,
You have given a nice article to improve the skills about SEO..
Thank you for giving such a nice article..
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