Search engine optimisation (SEO) is a combination of what you do on your site as well as what websites are linking that lend you authority. The authority garnered by having websites linking to you and people sharing your content is extremely important but if your onpage SEO is not right then you will need a lot more websites linking to you and people sharing.
Onpage SEO is what you as a website owner/administrator have direct control over so it makes sense to take a few simple steps to make sure your site is properly optimised.
Note: Each web page should only be optimised for one main keyword. Secondary, related keywords may also be included.
Onpage SEO Step 1: Set Your Meta Tags
If your site is wordpress download the “All In One SEO” or “WordPress SEO by Yoast” plugin. If you have no idea how to do this, then simply Googling “how to add a WordPress plugin” should come up with some simple guides and videos.
If you are not using WordPress it may not be quite as easy. Other content management systems usually have something in place otherwise you will need to insert your title and meta tags before </head> in your web pages code.
Optimise Your Title Tags For Your Keywords
Your title tag is placed in the code for a web page and, while the same words may be used in a web page, the title tag part of the code is not actually displayed on your web page. The title tag is what you see as the blue link in a Google result and is considered very important by most search engines.
Step 1 : Pick your main keyword.
Step 2: Place it in your title tags in a natural way.
In the image above “Title Tag” is obviously the main keyword – we can see it is in the title tag, the URL and the description. It is also being given keyword prominence where it is being used as close to the beginning as possible.
Optimise Your Meta Description
Next put your main keyword in your description naturally. For example Our website specialises in giving the best grapefruit recipes on line.
Optimising Your Keyword Tags
In the past spammy web masters used keyword tags to “game” the search engines. As a result, these days the major search engines don’t really look at keyword tags so it is not really necessary to worry about your meta keywords.
Step 2: Optimise Your Onpage Content
If you do not have full editorial rights over the website you are working on you may not be able to do all this. Try your very best though, because this is VERY important
Optimise Your H1 and H2 Tags
Make sure to get your main keyword in h1 tags and your secondary keywords in h2 tags if possible. This tells Google exactly what the focus of a particular web page is.
Get Your Keyword In The Content With A 1-3% Density
The most important thing is to make sure your keyword is in the first sentence of your content. This shows Google what your content is mainly about.
Then get your keyword in the last sentence of your content.
If you don’t have much content, just make sure to use your keyword twice.
Optimise Your Images
Every image on your site has a title and an alt tag. Make sure to get your keyword in these two spots. Vary it up if you have mutliple keywords.
Link to 2 big authorities in your niche (not competition)
If you can, make sure to find two pr 7+ sites related to your niche and link to them. This makes your site much more trustworthy in Googles eyes – afterall, no one can be the absolute expert in everything.
Step 3: Submit Your Sitemap T0 Google
Download the Google XML Sitemap plugin for WordPress and follow the directions to submit a sitemap to Google.
If you are not using a wordpress site, go to an online sitemap creation tool and simply create a sitemap, then submit it in Google webmaster tools. If you are not sure how to do this, ask your technical person to do so or you can find Google’s guide to submitting your sitemap here.
Thats it! Your page is now optimised and if you have picked the right keywords to target you should start seeing the results of the small amount of time spent on your onpage SEO in better rankings and maybe even more visitors.
More ideas can be found in this article on improving your SEO
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