Quick Tips and Techniques to Top SEO Ranking

By Jonathan Camp

OnPage Search Engine Optimisation relates to those elements that you can do to rank your website within the search engines, by using elements contained ‘within’ your webpages. The on and offpage optimisation techniques form part of the much larger SEO Strategy that all websites should outline in order to rank well within the search engines. Before you start optimising your web pages for keywords and your onpage strategy you should also complete a full competitor analysis to see how your competitors are placing bettter than you with the search engine results pages.

Typical OnPage Search Engine Optimisation tactics

• Homepage Optimization
• Keyword Phrase Optimization
• Fixing the text links
• Image Optimization
• Keyword Research
• Header Tags Optimization
• Title Tag Optimization
• Meta Tag Optimization
• Alt Tag Optimization
• Anchor Tag Optimization
• Meta tags placement
• HTML Sitemap Creation
• XML Sitemap Creation
• Meta Tags Placements
• Suggestions on Content Optimization
• Complete Image Optimization
• Traffic Tracking Codes
• Remove Spam links
• Google Sitemap
• Optimization of textual content of your Home Page and key inner pages with keyword placement within content
• Creation of Internal Linking Network

Quick Tips on getting Ranked on Google – Title Tag

By Jonathan Camp

This article forms part of a series of quick tips for search engine optimisation on this blog. Please also see Quick Tips for OnPage Meta Descriptions and Quick Tips for OnPage Meta Keywords which explain more details about OnPage SEO Techniques for Search Engine Ranking.

The title tag is very important for your web pages and plays an important part of the overall ranking process within Google and BING search engines. The title tag is just one factor involved with OnPage SEO techniques (see other blogs for more details on other OnPage ranking techniques and tips).

The title tag shows on the SERP (search engine results page) when you search for something within Google or any of the other search engines. The title tag is shown as the first line for each result (for Google in blue) and forms the link to the actual website when clicked. It is important to ensure that your title tags are different for each page on your website, and that the title tag accurately describes the content of your page.

It’s important with all content on your website to try to keep a page strictly relevant to a particular topic. If you put too much information on a web page it will be difficult for the search engines to determine the conversation that’s going on and it will create mixed messages – which will not be good for your overall ranking.

Remember that the title tag can only display about 8 words before elipses will show on the line, so make sure that you have your keywords at the start of the text and DO NOT waste the text with the name of your company – if someone wants to find your business they will just type in your company name and this will NOT rely on the title tag. The title tag in combination with the FIRST H1 tag on your page plus your content text are just about the most important factors to consider for OnPage SEO. Content is always king, so make sure that you discuss completely relevant information on your page relating to the title tag.

Don’t add ‘stop words‘ within the title tag either! Stop words are words like; if, but, the, not, etc. these words are not required and are a waste of your title tag (especially when you consider you only have about 8 words). You can try putting keywords in CAPITALS to make them stand out when someone is looking at the search engine results page. If any keywords match the phrase or keywords entered in the search box, then these will be boldend by the search engine – so optimise your keywords for the topic and search phrase – perhaps using the Google Keyword Tool – freely available.

Quick Tips for OnPage SEO META Description

By Jonathan Camp

 The META Description tag is always placed in the HEAD section of your webpage and is not visible on the actual webpage.

All search engines will use this description on the search engine results page (SERP) when someone types in search terms. The description is shown below the link to your webpage – hence it is important to keyword enhance this text. If the search engine cannot find adequate text within the description (keywords, etc.) it will take the first 150 characters from the content of your website – which is not always what you want!

Although the description tag is not so important as the title tag, it is very important to ensure that you have relevant keywords within the description. These keywords (if matched to the search terms) will be automatically emboldened  on the search engine results page – which highlights your website against your competition – so make sure it’s correct for the content on your page. The description tag should be completely relevant to the content / title / H1 tags on your page and as such, should be different for each page.

• Always ensure you complete a full analysis of your website pages and structure
• The Meta Description has become less important to the search engines recently.
• The Meta Description is used within the SERP (Search Engine Results Page) as the main description – but only up to 2 lines (approximately 140 characters).
• Use the Google Keyword Tool to ensure you are using the correct keywords for your web page.
• Try to make sure you create a description that is ONLY 2 lines long and the most important KEYWORDS are at the start of the description
• Leave your COMPANY NAME out or put it at the end of the description – your KEYWORDS should be at the start NOT your company name!
• To code in the HEAD section of each page: <meta name=”description” content=”your description up to about 140 – 150 characters…”>
• If there isn’t a Description Tag the search engine will take the first 140 characters from the start of your content (NOT IDEAL!)
• Try to place the Meta “Description” tag as high as possible in the HTML code (just below the title is ideal).
• You can code accentuated letters in HTML (&eacute; = é).
• Create a description tag that has your KEYWORDS (at the start) and misses out irrelevant words such as “and, in, is, etc.) – BUT make sure it reads well.
• The “Meta Description” tags should be different for each page.
• If the search phrase entered into the search engine is found in the description tag, it will be shown in bold. So it is a good idea to enter keyword phrases that you think people are searching for.
• Make sure that the meta description phrases are relevant to your page CONTENT and Title Tag
• Put some of your special keywords in CAPITALS as this will make them stand out when someone is searching through the SERP (results page). You need to make sure that your entry on the search engine results page is more prominent than your competitors.
• Optimise your page so that your URL, Title, Description Tag and first H1 heading all contain similar keywords in the same order and optimised for your pages content.

Quick Tips for OnPage SEO Meta Keywords

By Jonathan Camp

 Meta keywords are part of your onpage search engine optimisation techniques that you should build into every page as part of your website design process. Onpage SEO is an important part of ensuring that your website ranks well within the major search engines.

Please note: “Meta Keywords” tags are not so important for search engines – over time they have been exploited by the internet marketeers and flooded with spam keywords, hence the keywords meta details have be degraded by all the search engines. Keyword “stuffing” has now meant that the keyword aspect of your header is now pretty much unused, having said that you should note the following:

• “Meta Keywords” tags are taken in account by the search engines, not the directories.
• Use a “keyword analyser” tool to get related terms and generate a meta “keywords” tag – also use the Google Keyword Tool to discover some longtail keywords relating to your website content.
• HTML: <meta name=”keywords” content=”word1, word2, word3,… “> – try to go for a maximum of 10 words and put the most important keywords first.
• The Meta “Keywords” tag should be placed with all the other Meta statements as high as possible in the HTML code.
• Accentuated letters can be used in the HTML (&eacute; = é).
• Try to use different orthographies (uppercase, lowercase, singular, plural, masculine, female, etc.) for keywords.
• Don’t forget spelling mistakes, quite often people will misspell search expressions.
• “Meta Keywords” tags should ideally be different in each web page, relevant to the content and the title tag plus the first <h1> tag on the page.
• Keywords are quite often used by third party webpage analysis tools to get an understanding about the webpage / site, so if nothing else, the keywords will be useful for these tools and save you a lot of time having to enter those keywords into your analysis tool!