After selecting the right keywords you want to optimize your website for, you need to focus on what is called on-page optimization. On page optimization is what you do on your website pages to improve organic rankings. The good news is that through years of research and experimentation I have identified the most important on page factors for improving organic rankings.

When contemplating how to optimize your web site pages, there are a number of things to consider. The most important aspects of on page optimization are meta tags, the speed at which your page loads, and the URLs you’re using. Even though this short list of factors may seem obvious to some, they are the most powerful aspects of on page optimization.

Meta tags provide large search engines a quick way to identify what a web page is all about. When tags are formatted correctly, search engine spiders have an easy way of evaluating content and properly ranking web pages. Although meta tags alone can’t significantly improve a web site’s ranking, they can definitely hurt if not properly formatted. You need to integrate additional on page optimization best practices but properly formatted meta tags are vitally important.

Meta tags should include 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 displayed 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. 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. Additionally, 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 within 5 seconds on a standard connection. There are a number of tools that can help you measure load speed.

The final factor related to on page optimization we are discussing today is the web site URL. The best format is to have your keyword in root of the domain. For example, it may look something like www.keyword.com. Truthfully the days of picking up a domain like this are pretty much over but you can find some options on expired domain listings. You can also add your keyword next to the root URL by creating a separate page or folder on your main directory. The final strategy is a subdomain strategy where you would place your keyword before your domain. Most hosts offer this option.

Before you begin any search engine optimization effort, evaluate your web site, landing page, or blog from the perspective of meta tags, load speed, and URLs. There are additional on page factors we’ll discuss in the next lesson, but the three mentioned herein are vitally important to your search engine optimization success.

Looking for help with your SEO? Learn more about our SEO training program. Also, if you’re looking to improve search engine rankings Learn more about our Webmaster Training Guide.

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