On-page Search Engine Optimization

You not only need to optimize your blog or website, you need to optimize each page on your site too. Start with the Title of your page. Make sure you have your main keywords in there that summarizes what the article is about. For instance this page is about on-page search engine optimization, so I've said so in my title. Don't make your titles too long - the search engines will cut the ends off, which is particularly unfortunate if you've put your keyword towards the end. The maximum length your titles should be is 60 characters (including the spaces).


The next thing to do is select the URL name for your blog or article. If you are blogging, you get to choose the URL for the blog, but the URLs for the individual blog posts are automatically created based on your page title - so it's doubly important that your page title is relevant and has your keywords in it.
When I have a choice about what my URL is, I usually go for a small variation in the keyword. So the URL of this blog says "Alyssa makes money online" (the only URL I could get on blogspot that was available). But the title of the blog is "How to Make Money Online", the title I really wanted. More people will search for "how to make money online" than will search for "Alyssa makes money online", but the two are sufficiently related, and the search engine will pick up on the connection. In the search results, they always bold any words in the title, URL or description that match what the user has typed in, including parts of words. So if someone types in "make money online" into the engine, it should show my URL as follows:

http://alyssamakesmoneyonline.blogspot.com/

Research indicates that the more matches you have bolded in the results, the more likely the searcher will think your page is exactly what they are looking for and thus the more likely they will click.

If you are setting up a website, hubpage or entire blog they usually allow you to put in a description. Always use this - it will get quoted in the search results in the little snippet of text, if they find that it sumarizes your site properly. If the bot doesn't find a description or thinks your description doesn't summarize your site properly, they will pick their own snippet, and sometimes edit it. So always write your own description if you can. When writing your description think about what the searcher is looking for and what would persuade them to click on your page (instead of someone else's page). The description functions like a mini-advert for your site. Some people like to put keywords in their description separting them by dashes or a bar like this:

Make money online|Internet Marketing|SEO

You can get more keywords in that way - experiment and see what works for you. I've chosen a sentence for this blog description instead (see the description below the blog title).

Then write your article as naturally and informatively as you can. Remember you are writing for people, and you want readers to find your material so useful that they spread the word for you and quote you on their sites, giving you backlinks.

Some people still think of "keyword stuffing" - this is where they trying to use a few words over and over. Don't do this. The best way to avoid this is to write long articles/blog posts - at least 700 words long, preferably 1000 words. That way even if you have used your keyword a few times, it won't overdominate your page or seem un-natural or trigger off any flags in terms of density.

Instead of going for one keyword, go for variations on that keyword, and try to use each variation once. That's it.

People get very hung up about keywords. In truth about 20% of the search phrases put in the search engine have never been used before - and if you write naturally (i.e. in the way real people actually speak and thus type into engines), chances are high that your text will contain a phrase that someone somewhere is typing into the engine.

The only real rule is that your post must be on topic (i.e. related to your post title) and further, the blog posts must be related to the title of the blog itself - so if your blog is about wedding favours, don't go suddenly writing posts about grooming dogs.

If you are worried about keyword density, run your page through this free keyword density checker. Each word should come up no more than 5% of the time. If words are occuring more frequently, either go back and edit using synonyms, or add content to the article, as this will dilute the density (that's why long posts work so well!).

Finally make sure your article is unique. I can't emphasise this enough. There is a lot of material online but much of it is regurgitated or "spun". So even if it's not a direct duplicate, it's similar enough for the search engines to discard it, thinking "this doesn't really add to the user experience". So when you are writing, put your best work forward, add unique insights that you have gleaned from experience. Or do real research (using books and libraries) and add that research to your article to give it weight.

If everyone online is simply regurgitating what everyone else is saying online, but you are coming up with stuff that is fresh and unique to the online world (even if your research came out of a reference book), then you have the edge. Of course some people will try to steal your content - so turn your feed off. Most of the thieves are lazy and use feed aggregators to populate their sites. They can't be bothered to go to a site and individually copy and paste (apart from the real amateurs). So turning your feed off should be sufficient protection against plagiarism.

The next post in this series will cover internal dynamic linking.