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 researched keyword strategy. 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 since the web hit the mainstream. At first, this was the primary vehicle by which search engines evaluated web sites. Over time their importance diminished in terms of 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 the sole criterion, 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.
Meta tags should have a title tag which has your most important keywords and contains no more than 60 characters. This is the number of characters that can be shown on Google search results. Your description tag which is also displayed in search results after a user does a search engine query, should be no more than 150 characters. This tag is most effective when mentioning your keywords two times.
The final meta tag of any importance is the keyword tag. This tag is supposed to include your most important keywords only. Unfortunately, most web sites are using this tag incorrectly and it could be hurting their rankings. Keywords are only valid if some of them are found somewhere on your website. In addition you only want to include about a dozen keywords per page. Any more than that and it could be considered keyword stuffing. Focus on your most important keywords and place them in the keywords tag.
In addition to having your meta tags in place, the speed at which 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 in less than six seconds on a standard connection. There are a number of tools that can help you measure load speed.
The last but certainly one of the most important factors we are going to discuss is URL structure. It is true that having your keyword in the URL helps but it is not the only or the most heavily weighed optimization factor by Google. There are plenty of examples of sites that include the keyword in the URL but don’t rank as well as their competitors. If you can purchase a URL that has your keyword in it though, consider it advantageous. If you are unable to do so, consider adding a folder to your main directory or page to your site that includes the keyword you want to optimize your site for. A good example would be www.test.com… By doing so you are placing your keyword close to the root and giving it more value. Also consider a sub domain strategy.
When thinking about search engine optimization and embarking on your first optimization campaign, start with on page optimization. Focus your efforts on developing a web site that is easily searched and ranked with the help of the on page optimization factors we discussed. The topics we discussed including Meta tags, website load times and URL are among the most important on page optimization factors you can apply to improve your rankings.
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