I often get asked by group members on one of my online profile pages for tips. Here are some basic tips to help those interested in aquiring more knowledge about search engine optimization.
- URL (your domain name)
Try to include an important keyword in it that is relevant to your business
If you are trying to be visible at the local level and you do business in one city or county, you could also include the keywords pertaining to that.
For example, XY is your business name, but you could include your most important keyword ”art”, soyour domain name would be XYArt.com
If you want to reach local audiences only, then you could try XYPortland.com or PortlandXYArt.com to include both the location (Portland) and the keyword “art”
- Page titles- include keywords pertaining to only the content on that page. Ex: Figurative Art could be the page title for your figurative art.
- Headings- very important, include keywords H1 tags, H2, H3, etc.
- Content – one of the most important things. Make sure your content is original and fresh. Include keywords and synonims, but do not overdo it. Your goal should always be to provide quality information and to inform your audience.
Make sure your spelling is correct.
- If you have images, optimize your images- you can use the Alt tags to name your images and include some keywords. For example, one of the possible tags for your figurative art images could be XYFigurativeArtwork
- Meta keywords and description – to help searchers find what you offer.
Extra Tips: do not use duplicate keywords, titles or pages.
In general, be careful with duplicate issues- that always causes problems.
Be wary of the two versions of the same web site (www version and the non www version). These are canonical issues, and they need to be addressed.
Sitemaps- depending on the web site, if you have a lot of pages, you may also want to add a sitemap – a page which contains text links to all the other pages and products and services on the web site. Once the web site is done, you can also add an xml sitemap- this is always a good idea. Make sure you refresh the xml sitemap when you add new content.
Error pages – whenever a certain page cannot be found, there is an error message that tells the visitor that that page could not be found. This could interrupt the flow of navigation and turn people off. You need to make navigation as seamlessly as possible for your prospects and clients. So, to solve this problem, you could create a custom error (404.html) page, which helps searchers who could not find what they are looking for get back to your site or the information they are looking for. On this page, you can have the sitemap link and the original navigation links to help them find your products and services.
These are some of the main things to follow when doing on-page optimization.
Filed under: Search Engine Optimization (SEO) | Tagged: Keywords, on page optimization, Search engine optimization, seo tips, Site map, Web page, Website | Leave a Comment »
