Onpage Optimisation – The Key To Search Engine Rankings

If you’re like most people, you have spent a lot of time on your business, and you have probably spent a lot of time – and money – on your website. Choosing the colors, the layout, the formatting – these are all very important. But if you want people to find you easily, you need to rank high in search engines like Google. Here are a few things to keep in mind when you’re getting your page ready to go live.

Webopedia defines onpage optimisation as, “factors that have an effect on your Web site or Web page listing in natural search results. These factors are controlled by you or by coding on your page. Examples of on-page optimization include actual HTML code, meta tags, keyword placement and keyword density.”

Even if you’re armed with that information and knowing what parts of your page can be optimized, do you know how they should be optimized? Let’s go over just a couple of things.

1. Be sure that you optimize all of your pages, not just your main page. Take the time to make sure that your “About” page, your “Contact” page – all of these will be indexed by search engine crawlers, so it’s important that all of your pages are consistent as far as your keywords go.
2. Meta description – Keep this to about 160 characters. Not sure what it is? When you search for a page on Google, it’s the bit below the link name that describes what the page is about. If you didn’t create your page yourself, check with your web designer and make sure that your meta info (description, tags, etc) are correct.
3. How much content should be on each page? You’ll want to shoot for a 300 word minimum – this will give you enough length that it’s easy to work in your keywords and phrases and still have them sound natural and not forced. As for the density of said keywords, the best option is 3 occurrences per 500 words. Again, make sure they sound natural – variations on your main keywords and phrases will work.

These are just a few of the things to keep in mind when you’re going for onpage optimisation. Again, this is the number one key to your page ranking, so this is something you want to make sure and get right.

For more information about onpage optimisation and other ways to raise your search engine ranking, check out our latest DVD.