On-Page Optimization is the first step of Search Engine Optimization and one which every Website owner should be aware of.

On-Page Optimization is not particularly difficult to understand or implement, but there are a few basic guidelines that need to be followed which are summarized below.

However, the main thing to bear in mind is that although the Search Engines have ever increasingly complex, and constantly changing algorithms, what it alls boils down to is – RELEVANCY

You see the Search Engines want to be able to provide a reliable, credible and accurate service. The Search Engines would prefer a user to type a search term, click on a result and then not hit the back button on the site they end up on to return to the results and try another search listing – which would mean their search results were accurate

Therefore, if your page is optimized for relevancy, it stands a much better chance with the Search Engines

For example, if your particular page/post is based around a particular keyword or keyphrase, then you should endeavour to optimize that page around that keyword/keyphrase, and therefore make that page as RELEVANT to the particular keyword/keyphrase as possible, and thus stand the best chance with the Search Engines

There are obviously a lot of other factors that affect your rankings in the Search Engines, BUT, if you don’t have the onpage optimization in place, then the other factors won’t have 10th of their potential impact

1. Optimization for Content

This, for some, can be one of the most difficult aspects of On-Page Optimization. Your content should, obviously, be aimed at the end user and it’s readability, and NOT geared towards the Search Engine spiders, BUT, you should, where possible include your posts keywords/keyphrases where possible, although if you do it too much, then the Search Engines will deem it as keyword stuffing and your rankings would be penalised for it

The easiest way,I find, to content optimize a particular page is to:

• Write the content naturally with the end user in mind
• The, re-write your naturally readable content with the Search Engines in mind, changing some words or phrases for your keyword/keyphrases, but not overdoing it
• Finally choose 2 or 3 of your keywords/keyphrases within the content and make them either bold or italic

2. Ensure your TITLE-tag is relevant to your keyword/keyphrase

<title>Post Title</title>

This is what is displayed at the top of your browser and it is also used as the title of your page in the Search Results.

Things to bear in mind for your title-tag:

• Give every page/post on your website it’s own title RELEVANT to the keyword/keyphrase of it’s content
• Where possible, make your URLS Search Engine friendly, ie; rather than the URL diplaying for example:

http://www.mywebsite.com/category=1/postid=27

then change the URLs to show the category name and post title, which make them much more user AND Search Engine friendly such a (this example assuming the post is about breeds of cat):

http://www.mywebsite.com/cats-and-dogs/my-favourite-breed-of-cat

if you are using Wordpress then this can be done by selecting;

settings>permalinks, then selecting ‘custom’ permalink structure and then inserting /%category%/%postname%

If you are using other website compilation software such as Joomla, Magento, OSCommerce etc, then you would need to refer to your individual documentation on how to make URL’s Search Engine friendly

3. META-Tags

META-Tags don’t seem to hold as much weight with the Search Engines as they used to be. This is mainly because peo0ple started to use the META-tags to spam the Search Engines, however, there are still some important META-tags that should be used

<meta name=description>
The description-tag is probably the most important META-Tag. This is displayed in the Search Engine results and you should select it as carefully as the title-tag.

Things to bear in mind with the description-tag:

Have every page of your website with its own description and not just one one description for the whole of the website.

The description -tag is one of the few meta-tags that still positively influences your websites ranking within the Search Engine results, therefore a good habit to get into is the use of your particular keyword/keyphrase within that description -tag

Your description -tag should contain not more than around 25-30 words

This has been just a basic coverage of On-Page Optimization, there are many other aspects to consider, such as ALT -tags for your images and links, but the above advice provides a good grounding to get you started

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