On Page SEO Basics

On page SEO or on page search engine optimization deals exclusively with the content of your website. On page SEO refers to optimizing the text and content within your website in order to make it as search engine friendly as possible. That includes making sure that your targeted keywords are present in your content in an adequate extent as well as distributing them properly.

Choosing The Right Keywords

Choosing the right keywords you will base your optimization on is an extremely important first step. Very general keywords or broad phrases are usually a tough decision. They are highly competitive and getting to the top page will be a difficult task. Sometimes it is better to choose a more niche targeted keywords. You will be competing with fewer sites targeting the same keywords thus your chances to rank good will increase. I recommend using the Wordtracker and the Google Keyword Tool to determine the most suitable keywords and phrases for your business. Remember that most of the people are searching for approximately 2-4 long snatches so be careful with the length of your keyword phrases.

Natural On Page SEO

Always avoid unnatural emphasis of your search keywords or phrases by repeating them too often all over the page. This might result in a Search Engine Penalty and your sites will be ranking lower. You should use the keywords only in a natural and meaningful manner.

On Page Elements

On page elements refer to the html tags within the page. They include title tag, heading tags (e.g. h1, h2, h3) and other physical and semantic elements.

Semantic Elements

For SEO purposes semantic elements are more important than physical elements. Physical elements control the appearance and flow of the text. On the other hand, semantic elements are used in order to mark up the structure of the content. In other words, they are used in order to define the meaning of the text instead of its appearance. Some semantic elements are more important for SEO than others. Search engines give more weight to words marked up using these elements. Bellow are the most important semantic elements ordered by their weight.

Meta Tags Description And Keywords

Meta tags go in between the opening and closing head tags.

Sometimes search engines use description meta tag to determine a description of website that appears in search results. Example:

<meta name="description" content="SEO Web Tips is a regularly updated blog providing search engine optimization tips, tricks and tutorials." />

Keywords meta tag provide an additional text for crawler-based search engines to index along with the rest of the page. Example:

<meta name="keywords" content="search engine optimization tips,SEO tips tricks tutorials,SEO articles,wordpress SEO tips tweaks" />

Nowadays description and keywords meta tags are rarely taken into consideration by major search engines but I recommend you to use both. You never know, search algorithms are changing every day - what isn’t important today might become crucial tomorrow.