Onsite Search Engine Optimization Basics And Keyword Targeting | Smm Sem Seo Strategy Guide – Part 2
Onsite SEO basics are simple to implement and can increase your search engine rankings, but surprisingly most websites have even the basics completely wrong.
Before you start you need an automated backend or some type of content management system to build your site on top of; if you have a static brochure website (see this article), fix that before continuing. It’s unlikely you’ll be able to rank for anything competitive for any length of time in the future if you don’t readjust your strategy.
Manually updating pages is a waste of intelligent man power; the first step for onsite is to fix that problem so you’ll be ready to compete.
Onsite search engine optimization basics broken down by page element.
- Unique title tags – this tag is what displays in the top of your browser bar and in the search engine results pages; it’s in between the <title></title> tags in the top section of your website. Put your target keywords in the most intelligible way possible (you need to encourage clicks as well) in your titles. Do not spam these; a 5-7 word phrase incorporating your target keywords is all that’s necessary.
- Unique header tags. Your site actually needs to have an <h1> title with keywords </h1> tag on every page and it needs to be unique to each page. If you’re using WordPress, one of the nasty habits of the default installs is to give you the same h1 on every single page and change the h2s to reflect the actual post names. There are plug-ins and themes which correct this. Make sure the keywords in the title and h1 tag match for each page; they don’t have to be identical, but they should target the same keywords. If possible, add other header sections to h2 or h3 tags.
- Additionally it would be beneficial if each page contained a 4 word exact keyword phrase in the title tag and also on the page in the h1 tag. Use any keyword research tool to find exact phrases. A free one that also gives information on Google’s searches is located here: https://adwords.google.com/select/KeywordToolExternal
- Meta description tag – this tag is what actually appears in the search engine results pages (Google gives snippets from the page depending on what you searched for, e.g. <meta name=”description” content=”” />)
- On every page put a link to your main index page that contains the EXACT keyword phrase you’re targeting (typically a footer link works well). It’s important to use the anchor text you want to associate a page with in the internal links on the site.
- Run your site through an html validator. Don’t worry, it probably won’t pass, and that’s not what we’re looking for anyways. We’re just looking to correct any major errors and, if possible, get it to valiadate or come as close as we can without spending too much time (remember from the step 1 SEM article – its all about ROI).
Additional considerations:
The keyword tag (<meta name=”keywords” content=”” />): you may want to add keywords to this, but DON’T overstuff. The only exception is if you’re using a content management system like WordPress that auto fills this part out.
If possible (at least on the main page) put descriptions in the alt=”" tags on the images.
I’ll be adding more onsite info to this series in future entries. These include: Onsite SEO basics that will be covered in subsequent entries: duplicate content issues, robots.txt files, how to deal with flash and large images, link directories and negative onsite factors, site depth and page importance, etc).
Onsite basics are very simple, but at the advanced levels, you have to think about the big picture and how EVERYTHING on your site will work together with your offsite campaign to create a growing website which will build links and target keywords “automatically.”
You can control how people link to you, how willing they are to link to you, and what text they use when they link to you; you can even control how your site grows or spreads virally on social media sites just by changing simple factors on your website. All of this is intertwined into your onsite search engine optimization which can really be focused on your entire website and its online marketing strategy. As this series progresses, we’ll dive deeper into onsite and how it effects link building and social media marketing.
I should note clients of Social Media Systems receive custom onsite SEO advice on both the basic and advance levels including information on site architecture and how to integrate onsite optimization with your online marketing plan to improve placement and build more, higher quality links automatically.
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