A Primer On On-Page Search Engine Optimization

Now that you have a website for your small business, you will soon discover that most of your website traffic comes from the search engines. Google is the one search engine that should be sending the most traffic. You can take part in link exchanges and make submissions to directories, but Google is the place where you can get the most site visitors. This means that your primary focus should be on ranking high in search engines. In this article, we will look at some tips and techniques to help you get a good search engine ranking.

Targeting Keywords and Phrases

Put some thought into the keywords that visitors are likely to use when they are looking for information about your business. Once you come up with some keywords, turn them into keyword phrases that will be more specific. For instance, if your business is that of a website designer in Toronto, then a keyword phrase might be “Toronto web design”. If your business is more specialized, you can target your keyword phrases to be even more specific. Avoid keyword phrases that are too general. If you use a term that is too general, you will be competing with every business that is closely related to yours. Be as specific as you can so that you are targeting the visitors looking for your type of business with those specific phrases.

On-Page Optimization

When you get your keywords and keyword phrases together, put them on your website so the search engines will associate your business with those words. Use one or two keywords per page. The keywords will need to be included in your title tag, meta keywords tag, and meta description. The meta keywords tag does not get much notice by Google, so you do not have to spend as much time with this area as the others.

Here are some ways that you can put the keywords in your website in the best manner:

• Put an H1 tag on the top of the page that has your keyword phrase. Then put an H2 tag after it that has your other keywords or keyword phrases. Use the tags in the correct order and make sure that you use both.

• In the body of your page, use your keywords and keyword phrases. Don’t overdo it, though. You don’t want to be accused of keyword stuffing, which comes with penalties.

• Make use of bold, underlines, and italics to emphasize your keywords in the body of your page.

• Use lists on your page and use the keywords in your list. Make sure the list looks natural.

• Use alternate text tags. This use of alternate text will describe the images that are on your website, which allows blind users to know what the images are on your site. You can use some keywords in that text. Some search engines index this text.

Your Content Needs to be Relevant

When you are optimizing your website, remember that the content on the site is the most important part of the site. Give the visitor a reason to stay at your site. Include information visitors want. The search engines will determine that your site is relevant if it contains articles and information about your products or services.

You can find good content from many of the article directories on the Internet. The only thing that you will be required to do when you use this content is provide a link to the author’s website. If you can, you should write some articles for your website. Search engines will know if you are using articles that come from another website, so you should have some original content on your site.

There isn’t anything wrong with using the content that someone else provides, but original work is given more value. Update your site regularly. Make sure that you add new content to your site at least once a month. Fresh content helps sites rank very high in the search engines.

A Final Note

There is no science behind search engine optimization. Even experts in search engine optimization don’t know how the search engines rank a site. But the information in this article is a good set of starter techniques for getting your website a higher ranking. Continue to tweak your site in order to make it the best that it can be. On-page search engine optimization is not the only factor that will determine your ranking in the search engines; There are some off-page things that will play into your ranking also.