onsite seo - a quick guide
Post on 18-Oct-2014
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DESCRIPTION
On-site optimization is the starting point for any SEO campaign and it is the fastest way to improve natural search listings.TRANSCRIPT
A deeper look at on-site SEO
How to make sure your website is indexed and optimized for search engines
By Mary Hirst
Search Engine Optimization (SEO) is the practice of improving natural listings on search engines so that
people can locate your website more easily.
There are two strands of SEO
On-page: The content, keywords, images etc that you place on your website
Off-site: The back links and social media that drive people to you
On-page optimization is the base starting point for all campaigns
Keywords are significant because search engines index them in databases and look them up again when internet
users type search terms.
Competitor analysis is one of the best ways to start identifying keywords, and keyword suggestions tools can
also be helpful.
Keywords
What your competitors are doing?
What keywords do my competitors use and to what effect?
How did they optimize these keywords?
What meta data and title tags are my competitors using?
What URL extensions did they choose?
Keyword suggestion tools can also help you identify popular key words and terms. Google insights can be used to research trends.
Choose only 4 or 5 keywords to work with. Select them by popularity search volume and relevance.
Long-tail keywords
When you start researching keywords you will notice that short phrases like “Croatia holiday” drive more traffic than long-tail keywords like
“Croatia holiday rentals in Bol”.
That said the competition for the short phrases is sometimes immense and with the best SEO in the world you may not get a high ranking. Therefore it is good practice to select some high relevance long-tail
keywords. Because they are less competitive you may be able to dominate these areas.
Content is king
Search algorithms are constantly changing but one thing remains the same. Google always places high
priority to the content on your web page. Page URLs, Titles, Heading 1 &2, and image alt tags are for
keyword placement.placement
Content selections
Strategically place the keywords in these areas of your website.
Homepage URL or secondary URLsThis is easy if you are using a content management system,
simply turn on the user friendly URLs feature and type the keywords you need.
Meta tagsThe meta data descriptions placed within the head of the web page provide information about the content of your website. The meta description will also appear in the search listings.
Content selections
The meta data description should be between 70 – 180 characters, there is no advantage in making them any longer.
There is some debate about the importance to meta keywords, but most people still insert four or five words into the meta keywords section.
There may be some pages in your website that you don’t wish the search engine to index, you can use the meta tag robot ‘no index’ command to achieve this.
Text/HTMl ratio
Out of all your code and text, aim for 25 – 70% text ideally.
You can check this score on Woorank.com
Save time on evaluation: Woorank.com
Content optimization
When you write quality content for the user, they will reward you with Facebook likes, social media bookmarks and shares and they will trust your website. This in turn
will also help your SEO efforts.
Content optimization
In the future, search engines will look at html 5 elements and semantics like <article>, <nav>, <header> <section> <figure> to evaluate what type of content you have.
Micro formats
Micro data also helps search engines identify content types and improve the display on the search engine results page. In the future they may have a bearing on SEO, learn more at www.schema.org
The importance of Social media
Put social buttons on your homepage
of 3 posts a day ideally .
Evaluation and analysis
SEO is a practice and a discipline requiring constant evaluation and tracking. Websites like: www.markosweb.com and SEO Moz pro’s on page score card, can give you a full analysis of how you are doing and they also provide useful suggestions for future improvements.
If you are new to SEO, improving your on-site strategy is the first and fastest step in the process of boosting your websites ranking.
The main skills of SEO
Be focussedBe methodical
Constantly evaluateStay up-to-date
On-site optimisation will greatly improve your web ranking and boost your natural listings.
the end.