About On Page SEO
On Page Search Engine Optimisation refers specifically to the SEO techniques which are implemented on a website to help determine how it ranks with the major search engines. On Page Search Engine Optimisation is only part of a full SEO strategy, but plays a vital role in helping search engines to find, read, understand and index a website as easily and quickly as possible. On Page Search Engine Optimisation is designed to work in conjunction with an Off Page SEO strategy to give the best Search Engine Optimisation results.
The content of your website can play a big role in the effectiveness of your On Page Search Engine Optimisation because search engines give a lot of value to great quality content. The SEO keywords that you choose to target for your Search Engine Optimisation campaign are vital to its success. Therefore doing some keyword research is essential if you want maximum SEO benefits and a good return on your Search Engine Optimisation investment.
Although choosing the right SEO keywords is very important in both your On Page Search Engine Optimisation and your Off Page SEO strategies, the way in which those keywords are applied on your webpages are also vital to the success of your overall SEO campaign. Well implemented On Page Search Engine Optimisation looks closely at the structure of your website. A well structured website is easy for search engine spiders to navigate around and means that all of your pages will be found and indexed.
Quality Search Engine Optimisation Content Is Key
A large part an effective Search Engine Optimisation on page strategy is the production of high quality text content for your website. This is of huge benefit for your human visitors as well as the search engines because without users finding useful and informative content, they won’t hang around or return to your site, so it isn’t just your Search Engine Optimisation campaign which reaps the rewards of good content. For the maximum SEO benefit, your content shouldn’t just be well written, but also needs to be themed and highly relevant to whichever web page it sits on. For example, having a brilliantly written piece about the benefits of buying Italian leather sofas will have little Search Engine Optimisation benefit on a page which the title tells us is about coffee tables. Search Engines find it much easier to index and understand themed pages where the subject of the content matches the meta information and other pointers, so of course what is important to engines is of course important to Search Engine Optimisation.
Search Engine Optimisation & Keyword Density
In years gone by, many SEO practitioners simply stuffed a high number of keyword occurrences into content and hoped for the best, with a density of anything up to 10%. Search engines these days, however, are wise to this Black Hat SEO technique of keyword stuffing and the various major search engines may now penalise websites with a higher density per keyword than 2-4%. Apart from the Search Engine Optimisation considerations, from a human visitor’s point of view, reading SEO content stuffed with keywords is not something which will influence you towards becoming a customer and therefore is poor application of Search Engine Optimisation.
Well written content with a reasonably low keyword density (2% and under) can be a fantastic Search Engine Optimisation tool if it helps your website to become an industry resource. Having web pages on your site specifically written to give users useful information and not just as a sales pitch should be part of your SEO strategy because it will help your customers and visitors but also help you gain ‘authority’ with search engines too.
Ranking Individual Pages
Search engines rank web pages independently rather than websites as a whole and so every page can have its own search position. This means that you can target certain pages through your Search Engine Optimisation strategy and of course your homepage is usually first on the list for your SEO campaign. If you have pages on similar themes then a good Search Engine Optimisation idea is to group them together from an SEO perspective by linking them to each other.
On Page SEO & Structure
Search engines love websites with light and clean code. It is easy for them to read and understand so as part of your Search Engine Optimization strategy, you should ensure that the code is properly adjusted for maximum SEO benefit. It is vital to any Search Engine Optimization campaign that your website can be crawled and indexed easily because you want the information available to be accessible to the search engines immediately. Valid code is important to Search Engine Optimization because poor code can slow down or even completely stop search engines when reading your page.
Titles, Tags & Descriptions
From a Search Engine Optimization point of view, page titles, tags and descriptions have been subject to abuse by Black Hat SEO practitioners in the past so in order to have any real Search Engine Optimization benefit, any changes need to be implemented properly.
One way in which to apply Search Engine Optimization well to your pages is to ensure that the title tag contains your keyword. Although on its own this would have little impact, if that title is backed up by relevant, high quality content, there is definite Search Engine Optimization benefit there.
Using Meta Tags appropriately to help your Search Engine Optimization campaign is another way of helping search engines to index the site properly, although again as a standalone SEO practice, won’t have nearly as much Search Engine Optimization benefit as it will as part of a wider SEO strategy. Inserting your few most important keywords is fine, as long as they are relevant to the rest of the page. H1 and H2 tags can also be utilised for Search Engine Optimization purposes in a similar way, with the most important keywords in the H1 tag.
You page description can have Search Engine Optimization benefit if approached properly, because a concise and informative description can contain your keywords and is what appears in search engine results so should be able to attract potential customers. These elements combined will all contribute to the overall effectiveness of your Search Engine Optimization campaign.
The Search Engine Optimization Benefits Of Internal Linking
Linking your website’s pages to each other can be a really helpful Search Engine Optimization tool because relevant linking internally helps to show search engines which pages are all on a similar theme and the number and placement of these links can also have SEO benefit. Search engines can see which semantically related content is important on your overall site and this helps them to apply their own ranking according to relevance. Internal links to completely irrelevant pages with have no Search Engine Optimisation benefit, as is also the case with dead links.
