Latest Updates: on page SEO RSS

  • On Page SEO - Creating an Optimized Page

    Rick 4:06 pm on August 9, 2008 | 2 Permalink | Reply
    Tags: on page SEO, optimizing pages

    As I’ve said in previous posts, each page within your site should focus on a narrow sub-set of keywords, with one keyword being dominant. For example, let’s say you are creating a site about “golden retriever puppies”. The primary keyword for the home page is “golden retriever puppies”.

    One of your secondary pages might be about “buying a golden retriever puppy”. So “buying a golden retriever puppy” should be your primary keyword for that specific page. Your page should also contain other closely related keywords such as “golden retriever puppy features”, “good golden retriever puppies”, “golden retriever puppy pricing”, and so on.

    Here are some of the key elements that each of these secondary pages should contain:

    1. Your primary keyword (”buying a golden retriever puppy”) should appear in the “title” tag – the text that shows up in the blue title bar of the page.

    2. Your page should begin with a <h1> heading tag which contains your primary keyword. For example, you title might be “Buying a Golden Retriever Puppy – Some Tips”

    3. Your introductory paragraph should contain your primary keyword, and probably one or two instances of other closely related keywords.

    4. The rest of your page should focus on related keywords with those keywords emphasized in the text and in sub-headings (using the h2, h3, or h4 tags.)

    5. Most “experts” say your closing paragraph should also contain a few instances of your primary keyword.

    6. Your page should contain a navigation menu with anchor text using the primary keywords for each page pointing to all the other important pages within your site.

    7. You may also want to include a “resources” section which links out to other important resources – including other closely related resources you have created – such as articles, videos, products, squidoo pages, blogs, and other websites.

    Start thinking of your pages from the optimization point of view, and they will begin to do much better in the search engine rankings.

     
  • On Page SEO Still Very Important

    Rick 4:26 pm on May 30, 2008 | 0 Permalink | Reply
    Tags: on page SEO, , , SEO rules,

    The emphasis placed on links by Google over the last few years seems to have led many people to assume that you can “buy” ranking by acquiring inbound links without having properly focused content on the actual web pages being ranked.

    Once you’ve done SEO for a while you realize how unrealistic it is to expect Google to give a high ranking to pages that don’t contain any useful information – links or no links – and especially when the keywords in question are fairly competitive.

    I was reminded of this over the last week or so by two websites I was asked to evaluate. One was produced by a very credible business involved in relatively high end online activities. Their site was made completely in Flash and had virtually no identifying text, headlines, titles or other useful metadata. From the search engine point of view there was no way to tell what it was about. Consequently they did not even rank for their own domain name – which was also their primary keyword.

    The other was similar, except in this case the site had no serious content, and much of it was “under construction.” A site like that is basically useless and doesn’t deserve to get ranking.

    My advice in both cases: create some readable content, follow two or three of the most basic SEO rules and your problems will be solved. We’ll see if they take the advice.

    Here’s another post by Loren Baker along the same lines: Don’t Sour Your Link Juice By Forgetting Basic SEO.

     
  • SEO and Navigation Bars

    Rick 11:07 am on January 15, 2008 | 0 Permalink | Reply
    Tags: left nav bar, nav bar, navigation bar, on page SEO, , web page SEO, web page usability

    It is common practice to put the website navigation bar along the left side of each web page within a site. If you have done any web page building, and if you have reflected at all on the problems of SEO, you have probably recognized that a left nav bar may very well have a negative SEO impact. website with left navbar

    Why? Because it is often the first thing read (after the header) by the SE spiders. Most of us who have done any SEO research have concluded that the content at the top of a page (main headline, first few paragraphs, first few links) establishes the theme of the page and tells the spiders what the page is about.

    So we assume that most of our optimization efforts should be devoted to the text at the top of the page: put your desired keyword phrase in the main headline (h1), a number of times in the first couple of paragraphs or sentences, and possibly include it in an outbound link to another highly relevant page within your site.

    But if you’ve got a navbar before your primary content (in the left column), then chances are you’ve got a bunch of different keywords and outbound links (to other pages in your site) that seriously dilute the focus of your page. This means that you are counting on your page title tag and headline in the header area to do all the heavy SEO lifting.

    (More …)

     
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