A simple and cost effective way to improve your websites Search Engine Optimization (SEO) is to begin with managing your on-page optimization.
What is on-page optimization you may ask? Well it is an area of SEO that applies to the content and structure of your website.
So let’s get started!
On-Page Optimization can be divided up into a number of areas;
- Keywords
- Title Tag
- Meta Descriptions
- Image and Alt Tags
- Headers
Keywords
Prior to creating any content for your website keyword research is of most importance and can make or break your website.
There are two types of keywords, primary and long tail.
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Primary Keywords
The most important while optimizing a web page and should appear in vital areas such as the title and header tags.
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Long Tail Keywords
Long tail keywords support your primary keyword and don’t usually score as many hits but are more specific and therefore has fewer pages to compete with.
Title Tag
The Title Tag (title elements) is the most critical form of on-page optimization and is used in search engine result pages to display a snippet of a given page. Google will only display the first 50-60 characters of your title so be mindful of length and keep your important keywords close to the front. Long title tags have 20% lower click through rate as they can be considered as incomplete.
Meta Descriptions
As of 2009 Google announced that meta descriptions have no effect on your ranking in search engines but instead are important in gaining user click-through rates as they provide searchers with information on the given page. The optimal length for your description is roughly 155 characters. Rework your primary keyword into the description for better results.
Image and Alt Tags
Renaming any image file name and alt attribute to include a keyword is a must do! Although you don’t want each image to have the same keyword otherwise it appears to be spam. Ideally you would want each image to use different keywords so try using at least 3-4 different keywords for your images.
Header Tags
Header Tags aren’t a huge contributing factor to SEO but they should be taken advantage of whenever possible. Try to incorporate your primary keywords into post and page titles and any long tail keywords into the sub-headers.
