On-Page Optimization refers to optimization of both the website content and HTML source code of a page in order to achieve higher ranking.
Page elements that can be optimized for On-page optimization :
Text
Text is one of the most important elements of any web site. Of particular importance are the keywords within the text on a page, where those keywords appear, and how often they appear. This is why keyword marketing has become such a large industry in a relatively short time.
Keywords must match the words and phrases that potential visitors will use when searching for your site (or for the topic or product that’s listed on your site). To ensure that your keywords are effective, you’ll need to spend some time learning which keywords work best for your site.Anchor text — the linked text that is often included on web sites — is another of those keyword anomalies that you should understand.
Tags
In search engine optimization, two kinds of tags are important on your web site: meta tags and HTML tags. Technically, meta tags are HTML tags, they just appear in very specific places. The two most important meta tags are the keyword tag and the description tag.
The keyword tag occurs at the point where you list the keywords that apply to your web site. A keyword tag on a search engine optimization page might look something like this: <meta name=”keywords” content=”SEO, search engine optimization, pagerank”> The description tag gives a short description of your page. Such a tag for the search engine optimization page might look like this: <meta name=”description” content=”The ultimate guide to search engine optimization!”> The title tag is the tag that’s used in the title of your web site. This tag will appear like this:
<Title>Your Title Here</Title>
Links
To be of value, the links on your web pages must be related to the content of the page, and they must be active links to real web sites. Broken links can lower your search engine ranking. Links have always been an important factor in how web sites rank on the Web. When links became a ranking criterion, many black-hat SEOs began building link farms, which are sites that are nothing more than pages full of links designed to gain high search engine rankings.
Now link farms are fairly ineffective, but links on your web site are still important. Links show an interactivity with the community, which points to the legitimacy of your web site. Links aren’t the only, or even the highest, ranking criteria, but they are important all the same.
Domain-naming tips
Keep the name as short as possible. Too many characters in a name mean increased potential for misspellings. It also means that your site address will be much harder for users tore member unless it’s something really startling.
Avoid dashes, underscores, and other meaningless characters. If the domain name that you’re looking for is taken, don’t just add a random piece of punctuation or numerology to the name to “get close.” Close doesn't count here. Instead, try to find another word that’s relevant, and possibly included in the list of keywords you’ll be using. For example, instead of purchasing www.yourwebsite2.com , try to find something like www.yoursitesubject.com.
Opt for a .com name whenever possible. There are lots of domain extensions to choose from: info, biz, us, tv, names, jobs. However, if the .com version of your chosen domain name is available, that’s always the best choice. Users tend to think in terms of .com, and any other extension will be hard for them to remember. Com names also tend to receive higher rankings in search engines than web sites using other extensions. So if your competition has www.yoursite.com and you choose to use www.yoursite.biz, chances are the competition will rank higher in search results than you.
Page Titles
There are several considerations when coming up with your page titles. Here are some of the key factors to consider: Unless you’re Microsoft, don’t use your company name in the page title. A better choice is to use a descriptive keyword or phrase that tells users exactly what’s on the page. This helps ensure that your search engine rankings are accurate.
Try to keep page titles to less than 50 characters, including spaces. Some search engines will index only up to 50 characters; others might index as many as 150. However, maintaining shorter page titles forces you to be precise in the titles that you choose and ensures that your page title will never be cut off in the search results.
Don’t repeat keywords in your title tags. Repetition can occasionally come across as spam when a crawler is examining your site, so avoid repeating keywords in your title if possible, and never duplicate words just to gain a crawler’s attention. It could well get your site excluded from search engine listings.
Consider adding special characters at the beginning and end of your title to improve noticeability. Parentheses (()), arrows (<<>>), asterisks (****), and special symbols like ££££ can help draw a user’s attention to your page title. These special characters and symbols don’t usually add to or distract from your SEO efforts, but they do serve to call attention to your site title.
Include a call to action in your title. There’s an adage that goes something like, “You’ll never sell a thing if you don’t ask for the sale.” That’s one thing that doesn’t change with the Web. Even on the Internet, if you want your users to do something you have to ask them to.
Creating great content
Web-site content is another element of an SEO-friendly site that you should spend plenty of time contemplating and completing. Fortunately, there are some ways to create web-site content that will make search crawlers. Great content starts with the right keywords and phrases. Select no more than three keywords or phrases to include in the content on any one of your web pages.
When you use too many keywords in your content, you face two problems. The first is that the effectiveness of your keywords will be reduced by the number of different ones you’re using. Choose two or three for each page of your site and stick with those.The other problem you face is being de listed or ignored because a search engine sees your SEO efforts as keyword stuffing. It’s a serious problem, and search engine crawlers will exclude your site or pages from indexes if there are too many keywords on those pages.Once you have the two or three keywords or phrases that you plan to focus on, you need to actually use those keywords in the content of your page.
The term used to describe the number of times a keyword is used on a page is keyword density. For most search engines, the keyword density is relatively low. Google is very strict about ranking sitesthat have a keyword density of 5 to 7 percent; much lower or much higher and your ranking is seriously affected or completely lost.You also have to carry through with regular updates and keep the links included in the content active.
Broken links are another crawler pet peeve. Unfortunately, with dynamic content links will occasionally break. Be sure you’re checking this element of your content on a regular basis and set up some kind of a user feedback loop so broken links can be reported to your webmaster.
Maximizing graphics
Images or graphics on your web site are essential. They’re also basically ignored by search engines, there’s a good reason that has nothing to do with SEO. Without images, your page is just boring text. You’re not going to be happy with using plaintext instead of that cool new logo you had designed for your company, and neither are your users. They want to see pictures.
If images are a must on a web site, then there should be a way to use those images to increase your web-site traffic or at least to improve your site ranking. And there is. One technique that will help your SEO make use of graphics on your site is to tag those graphics with alt tags inside the img tags.Alt tags are the HTML tags used to display alternative text when there is a graphic present. Your alt tags should be a short, descriptive phrase about the image that includes the keywords used on that page when possible.Img tags are the tags used to code the images that will appear on your web site. Here’s an example of what an img tag, with an included alt tag, should look like:
<img src=”pic1.jpg” alt=”alternative text”/>
You want to tag your images as part of your SEO strategy for two reasons. First, crawlers cannot index images for a search engine. The crawler “sees” the image and moves on to the text on the page. Therefore, something needs to take the place of that image, so the crawler can index it. That’s what the alternative text does. If this text includes your keywords, and the image is near text that also includes the keywords, then you add credibility to your site in the logic of the crawler.
Fussy frames
Some web-site designs require the use of frames. Frames are sections of a web site, with each section a separate entity from the other portions of the page. Because the frames on a site represent separate
URLs, they often create display issues for users whose browsers don’t support frames, and for search crawlers, which encounter the frames and can’t index the site where the frame is the navigational structure.You have a couple of alternatives when frames are essential to the design of your web site. The first is to include an alternative to the framed site. This requires the use of the noframes tag. The tag directs the user’s browser to display the site without the framed navigational system.
Another problem with frames is that search engines often display an internal page on your site in response to a search query. If this internal page does not contain a link to your home page or some form of navigation menu, the user is stuck on that page and is unable to navigate through your site.That means the search crawler is also stuck in that same spot. As a result, the crawler might not index your site.
Cranky cookies
Cookies are one of those irritating facts of life on the Internet. Users want web sites tailored to them, and cookies are one way companies have found to do that. When users enter the site and customize some feature of it, a small piece of code — the cookie — is placed on the user’s hard drive. Then, when the user returns to the site in the future, that cookie can be accessed, and the user’s preferences executed.
When cookies work properly, they’re an excellent tool for web designers. When they don’t work as they should, the problems begin
The main issue with cookies is that some browsers allow users to set how cookies will be delivered to them. And some source code prompts the user to be asked before a cookie is accepted. When this happens, the search engine crawler is effectively stopped in its tracks, and it doesn’t pick back up where it stopped once the cookies are delivered. Also, any navigation that requires cookies will cause the crawler to be unable to index the pages.
Writing Keyword Advertisement Text
If you’ve used a keyword research worksheet then you can easily use this list to group your keywords according to topic. It’s important that you keep your keywords grouped together, especially because they associate with the different pages of your web site. It’s these words that you’ll be working with as you create your keyword advertisement text. According to research done by major search engine companies, using keywords in your advertisement text can increase your advertisement click-through rates by as much as 50 percent. Keywords are important to your advertisement text, and the right keywords for the advertisement are vitally important.
Create Great Landing Pages
Landing pages are those pages that potential site visitors reach when they click your PPC (or other) advertisement. These pages are usually not connected to your web site in any way. They are not linked through the site map, nor are they linked through the body of your web site. And to ensure that they’re fully disconnected from all other methods of discovery, landing pages should also not be spidered. If the goal of SEO is to draw more qualified traffic that converts more often than organic traffic, landing pages are your way to monitor whether or not that’s happening. A landing page also gives you an opportunity to create a relationship with a new site visitor who has clicked your link for one specific purpose.
Some experts think that once you’ve pulled visitors to the landing page, then the more you engage them, and the more likely they are to return to your site and eventually reach a goal conversion. That may be true.