Thursday, February 08, 2007

Top 5 On-Page Search Engine Optimization Strategies

I reckon one of the most rewarding things you can do is to build a webpage and see it rank well on the internet, in particular search engines like Google, Yahoo or MSN. Most internet newbies are absolutely ecstatic when they finally see one of their webpages rank well. To rank well there are a whole range of issues that you need to look at which include both on-page optimization and off-page optimization strategies.

The key strategies we will look at today in this article are on-page search engine optimization strategies. In reality, most on-page search engine optimization strategies will only make small changes in placement, but each small change will add up to larger changes.

There are five key elements you need to look at for on-page search engine optimization.

Item #1 – Use Your Keywords In Your Title Meta Data

One of the most important things you can do when it comes to on-page optimization is to use your target keywords in the title. For example if your page is about home loans in Florida, then you need to put into your title the keywords “Florida Home Loans” or “Florida Investment Property Loans”.

Item #2 – Use Your Keywords In The Meta Data

Whilst many search engines like Google, Yahoo and MSN may not use the Description Meta tag and Keyword Meta tag, other smaller search engines do still use this information and because of this you need to ensure that you still use these meta tags. You also need to ensure that you use the keywords in the Keywords meta tag and as well ensure that you use the keywords in the description meta tag.

Further to this make sure that you when you are choosing the keywords for a webpage you only use one or two keywords in the page. From experience we have found that trying to use more than two keywords in a page just does not work and never results in good search engine positions.

I had a couple of building clients come and talk to me this week about helping them build more effective websites and we found their previous website builders had used general keywords that they were never going to rank well. In fact it turned out this one website developer had five other building companies in his stable and he was customizing his highest paying client to be ranked well and the rest were ranked poorly.

Ninety-Nine percent of the issue with the website was that their webpages were developed using generalized words which would never bring in quality traffic. The keywords where as the highest paying clients website were using specific terms, but on his site that were using terms like homes, home, builder etc. This meant that our clients could never in a million years rank well. Apart from that, even if they did rank well most of their traffic would be irrelevant anyway as they only build homes in Australia and in particular North Queensland.

Item #3 – Use Keywords In Your WebPages

All of the major search engines look at the material on each of your webpages and then assess its quality and ranks it according to that quality. If your webpages are not targeted to a certain issue then your webpage will not rank well. Your key objective in creating a webpage is to target your webpage to your customers and then optimize that page to the keywords your customers would use to find that page.

To make your webpages relevant, you need to include the keywords your customers are using into their webpages. In doing that the search engines will help you to get that message out, when we professionally develop a webpage we use keywords our clients customers are searching on but we ensure that we only have a keyword density of between 2 and 6 percent. Any more than that, your customers are going to consider you are using high pressure tactics and more so, the search engines call it keyword spamming and that can cost you big time.

Actually, it can have you and your website banned.

Item #4 – Use Keywords In The Title On The Webpage

We talked about Keywords in the Title Meta data but I also recommend that you use your keywords in the title of your webpage plus at the end of your webpage. When using HTML the easiest way to make your titles standout simply set your Title in a H1 format. If you are not familiar with H1 this is one of the standard formats in HTML.

Item #5 – Use Keywords In Your Page Name

One of the most misunderstood things people when creating their webpage do not do is to use their webpage keywords in the filenames of their webpages. The most recommended place for your keywords is in your domain names however in reality, you will find that you want 100 or so keywords for your website and the easiest way to use the keywords is to use them in the filename of your webpages. This way the search engines will still give you credit for using the keywords in this area.

To summarise there are five top on-page search engine optimization strategies you should be considering:

Item #1 – Use Your Keywords In Your Title Meta Data
Item #2 – Use Your Keywords In The Meta Data
Item #3 – Use Keywords In Your WebPages
Item #4 – Use Keywords In The Title On The Webpage
Item #5 – Use Keywords In Your Page Name

About the Author:
Chris Le Roy
If you are looking for more information on Marketing an Online Business or if you are looking for quality material to help you with copywriting - Free Example of Sales Letters or you just want more info visit Your Online Marketing Business Opportunity
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