SEO Tips: On-Page Optimization
On-page optimization is often overlooked by many webmasters,
who tend to spend most of their time trying to get links to
their site. On-page optimization is something you can do quickly
to give yourself an extra boost in the SERPS. These tips will
help you to optimize your web pages to make the most out of
your inbound links.
One strong recommendation I have is to read the SEOBOOK by
Aaron Wall. While not geared toward vBulletin or Forum software,
it is a very easy to read and easy to understand book about
Search Engine Optimization and will give you a good knowlege
about the basics of SEO.
One Page - One Target
Each page should be optimized for only one search term. If
you are targeting two search terms, make pages for each term.
If your search term has a synonym, make separate pages for
each synonym. For example, if you are targeting "Web Hosting"
and "Shared Hosting", make separate pages to target
each term.
One Target - Two Pages
The preceding tip only tells half of the story. You don't actually
want to be #1 in the SERPS for each of your search terms --
you want to be #1 and #2.
Google and some other search engines will display two listings
from a web site together if both are relevant to the users search.
Therefore, for each of your important keywords, you want to
build two web pages which are both optimized for that search.
The URL
Search engines tend to rank pages well when the URL contains
the search term.
If your page is about Home Stereo, call your page web-hosting.html,
not page-1.html. If you like to name your pages as index.html,
then make a directory for each page and use the keywords in
the directory name so the ural looks like this: www.yoursite.com/web-hosting/index.htm
Use Hyphens, not Underscores
Google and most other search engines treat hyphens as spaces,
but do not treat underscores as spaces.
If your URL is web-hosting.html, your page will rank well if
someone searches for "web hosting".
If your URL is web_hosting.html, your page will rank well if
someone searches for "web_hosting".
Which do you think is searched for more often, "web hosting"
or "web_hosting"?
Optimize the Page Title
The page title should contain the keywords for which you are
optimizing, and little or nothing else.
Many sites prepend the site name to every page title, like
this:
<title>vBulletin FAQ -- Web Hosting</title>
A more optimized title would simply look like this:
<title>Web Hosting</title>
Leave the company name for the title of the main page of your
web site and focus every other page on the content of that particular
page.
Optimize the Description Tag
Not many search engines utilize the description tag anymore,
but it's best to set it properly just in case. I like to make
the description something readable and useable for end users
because sometimes search engines will use this tag for in your
listing. SO this is a marketing opportunity you should take
advantage of.
<meta name="description" content="All about
web hosting at vBulletin FAQ Web Hosting.">
Optimize the Keywords Tag
Even fewer search engines utilize the keywords tag, but it's
best to set it properly just in case. You ca use several terms
as keywords, but dont pack it full.
<meta name="keywords" content="Web Hosting,
Internet servers, shared hosting">
Use Headings
Use the <h1>, <h2>, and <h3> heading tags
to define your important content sections, and put your keywords
at least once in each heading style.
Use CSS to set the fonts and sizes of the h-tags to something
pleasing to your visitors.
Add a Linked Image with ALT Text
Use an image of your page with a filename which contains your
chosen keywords, such as web-hosting.jpg.
The ALT text for this image should include the keywords for
which you are optimizing.
Google only counts the ALT text on linked images. So we want
to link the image to the page upon which it is displayed or
onto a related page if you have one.
<a href="web-hosting.html"><img src="web-hosting.jpg"
width=75 height=90 alt="web hosting"></a>
Validate the HTML
Use the W3C HTML validator to validate the HTML of your page.
Very few HTML errors will cause a web page not to rank well
in the SERPS, but you don't want your page to be that page.
In addition, validating the HTML will help to ensure that your
page will look reasonably well in the wide variety of web browsers
used on the Internet.
Keep Your Body Text Readable
Use your keywords in the body text, but keep your body text
readable.
Don't Web hosting stuff Web hosting your Web hosting keywords
Web hosting into your Web hosting text until it is unreadable
by Web hosting humans.
Make Reasonably Sized Pages
The search engines seem to prefer pages which have at least
500 words of text. Give your visitors something to read. I prefer
to be in the 1000 word range, and divided into sections using
H3 tags for each section header.
Basic SEO Summary
If you follow these simple tips, you will get better rankings
in the search engines.
On-page search engine optimization is the first step towards
good search engine rankings. See Link Development
for the second step.
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