Improving your search engine rankings always begins with thorough keyword research. By identifying the right keywords to support your optimization efforts you stay ahead of the competition and make the vision of number one rankings a reality. After you’ve selected the right keywords the next step is to focus your efforts towards on page optimization. This is where you apply some techniques to your web pages to guarantee top search engine placement.
There are variety of optimization factors to consider when optimizing your web pages. I have found three factors in particular to have more of an impact than others when correlating them to search engine rankings. In particular, meta tags, URL structure, and page load speed all have a direct impact on search engine rankings for particular keywords or keyword phrases.
Meta tags give 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 tag, the description tag 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. I see this tag 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 website.
In addition to having your meta tags in place, the speed at which your site loads is very important. Slow loading websites are penalized by Google. What’s the big deal with a slow web site or web page you might ask? Major search engines are all about giving the browser a good user experience. If you site has a lot of broken links or loads slowly, Google considers this a bad experience and will penalize you with lower rankings. Make sure that your page loads in less than six seconds on a standard connection. There are a number of tools that can help you measure load speed.
The final on page optimization factor we are discussing today is the web site URL. The best format is to have your keyword in root of the domain. For example, it may look something like www.keyword.com. Truthfully the days of picking up a domain like this are pretty much over but you can find some options on expired domain listings. You can also add your keyword next to the root URL by creating a separate page or folder on your main directory. The other strategy you can consider is a subdomain strategy where you would place your keyword before your domain. Most hosts offer this option.
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.
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.
