| Improve Your Web Site To Achieve Top Search Rankings |
| Invention Development Advice - Website Development | |||
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Starting any search engine optimization campaign with anything other than keyword research is a waste of time. To be truly successful with SEO you must begin with a well thought through keyword strategy and analysis. Once you've identified the most important keywords for your campaign, the next step is to optimize web pages for top rankings. I've discovered a number of techniques that work especially well for on page optimization.
Starting any search engine optimization campaign with anything other than keyword research is a waste of time. To be truly successful with SEO you must begin with a well thought through keyword strategy and analysis. Once you've identified the most important keywords for your campaign, the next step is to optimize web pages for top rankings. I've discovered a number of techniques that work especially well for on page optimization. When thinking about optimizing your web site pages, there are a number of things to consider. The most important aspects of on page optimization are meta tags, the speed at which your page loads, and the URLs you're using. Even though this brief list may seem obvious to some, they are the most powerful aspects of on page optimization. Meta tags provide large search engines a quick way to identify what a web page is all about. When tags are formatted correctly, search engine spiders have an easy way of evaluating content and properly ranking web pages. Although meta tags by themselves can't significantly improve a web site's ranking, they can definitely hurt if not properly formatted. You need to integrate additional on page optimization best practices but properly formatted meta tags are vitally important. Properly formatted meta tags should include a title tag that includes the keywords that you are trying to optimize for. It is recommended that the size of the title tag is sixty or fewer characters as this is the limit shown on Google search results. The second meta tag is the description tag which should be limited to fewer than one hundred and fifty characters and repeat your keyword phrase no more than two times. The last meta tag worthy of description is the keyword tag. This tag is misused all too often and it may actually be hurting your search engine rankings. When using a keyword tag, focus on only a dozen of your most important and highly trafficked keywords. You want the search engines to know that you are an authority site and worthy of top rankings. Do your research and only include the keywords that truly matter. You can also evaluate the sites in the top positions and model their keywords as long as they are included on your web site or blog. Once you have your meta tags within your web page code it is important to focus on the next on page optimization factor. The load time of your web pages matter a great deal to Google and other search engines. Not only does your web page need to be formatted correctly but it needs to load quickly. Fast loading web sites mean a better user experience. Search engines like Google reward you for providing the right information quickly to web site browsers. Keep load times to a minimum and continually work to improve the speed at which your site loads. The last but certainly one of the most important factors we are going to discuss is URL structure. It is true that having your keyword in the URL helps but it is not the only or the most heavily weighed optimization factor by Google. There are plenty of examples of sites that include the keyword in the URL being outranked by other web sites. If you can purchase a URL that has your keyword in it though, consider it advantageous. If you are unable to do so, consider adding a folder to your main directory or page to your site that includes the keyword you want to optimize your site for. A good example would be www.test.com/keyword. By doing so you are placing your keyword close to the root and giving it more value. Also consider a sub domain strategy. Before you start any SEO campaign, evaluate your web site, landing page, or blog from the perspective of meta tags, load speed, and URLs. There are additional on page factors we'll discuss in the next lesson, but the three mentioned herein are vitally important to your search engine optimization success. More information: Looking for help with your SEO? Check out our SEO training program. Also, if you're looking to improve search engine rankings check out our Webmaster Training Guide.
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