 |
| On Page SEO Optimization Techniques for Beginners @Pixabay |
What are On Page SEO Optimization Techniques?
On page SEO Optimization is basically a technique to bring your site pages on top of the search results in major search engines. If you want more conversion more sales more revenue from your site or blog, you can’t ignore on page SEO optimization for your property. Mostly bloggers like me always depend upon these techniques to drive traffic to our site by major search engines. On page optimization is totally depends upon the owner of the site/blog. You are responsible for the optimization so keep in mind don’t over optimize your pages that may lead for a penalty. I will tell you the best way to optimize your blog pages in a proper way in this guide.
In short, on page optimization is not only for the content you create on your site although it is also belong to your choosing domain name, meta tags, keyword research, header tags and internal linking. I will discuss all these things in this post. As you all know, on page SEO optimization is totally depend upon you so at-least you should work seriously on it, since rest of the things have no existence without it.
To drive traffic from search engines to your pages without proper on page SEO is like to crossing a sea with your car or bike. Therefore, here is a guide for on page SEO optimization techniques 2015.
How to Optimize Blogs by On Page Optimization Techniques
-
Research Keywords :
Keyword research is the very first step for on page optimization. You should be very careful when researching your keywords. If you don’t know that what most people searches to find out the content that you are writing how can you drive massive traffic to your blog from search engines. Yes, without research you may drive traffic, but not same as with proper keyword research. Keyword research will also help you to improve your revenue. If you have a plan to monetize your blog with Google Adsense, you may also take a look for the CPC bidding price while researching your keywords.
The idea is simple, if your post doesn’t have a keyword that mostly searched by the users, how your content can place on the top search results, and how you can get decent traffic.
I mostly use Google planner tool for the keyword research which is also used by the professionals, and is free! You may also consider WordTracker for your keyword research.
-
Domain Name :
Domain name is like your brand name. If you want to be in blogging for a long term, I would suggest you to purchase a domain name for your blog. If you have a free domain like “yourdomain.blogspot.com”, yes you may start from here but you may have to face a little bit problems when purchasing a domain name in the future, especially if your blog has a huge traffic. Yes, I know 301 redirect may drive traffic from the old domain to new one, but what about your subscribers that you have in your feedburner account? Edit your domain name on all social networks.
When choosing a domain name, you should try to include your targeted keyword, but make sure it should not be like exact match domain (EMD). Suppose if you want to purchase a domain name for a blog related to “Make Money Online”, and if you choose your domain name like “www.makemoneyonline.com” which is EMD, and you should be penalize in Google EMD update since that keyword is very popular. If possible, try to purchase your domain for longer period. The longer the period the most trusted by search engines because many spam sites have their registration for short period of time so longer registration will indicate to search engines that you are building your site for a long relationship with your audience.
-
Blog Title & Post Title :
Blog title is refer to your homepage while post title to specific page. Blog title and post titles are the main elements on page SEO optimization. You should include the researched keywords into your post title in a proper way. There is a limit for the blog & post title, you should write your titles within 70 words including spaces otherwise your titles would be overloaded, in returns dropping CTR in the search results.
If your blog is hosted on Blogger.com, you should know that your post titles are not SEO optimized by default since the post title structure is “BLOG TITLE: POST TITLE”. Your each post containing your blog title in the left while your main keywords into the other side. Your main keywords should be in the left for better title optimization. In other side, if you have two posts with very short titles, then both post titles look same for the users as well as search engines which is not good.
The solution is: Remove homepage title from post title or you may swap the post title.
-
Meta Tags :
When we talk about meta tags with on page SEO optimization, some webmasters say search engines avoided meta tags. It was a very old technique to use your targeted keywords into your meta keywords and descriptions to drive traffic to your site. Now, it is over.
If you ask me about meta keywords, I am sure it is over. No need to add meta keywords into your blog post since it is no longer be used by search engines.
If you ask me about meta description, no it is not over. Let you don’t use meta description for a blog post, when a user search for a query and if your blog show up in the search result, then the user will see your blog post along with a post snippet (description) that includes the query. This selection is totally dependent to the search engines; basically search engines find that snippet inside your post that contains targeted keywords. Your post have many snippet that containing your keywords, search engines only take better snippet that they think.
Can you not write 160 words about your post that seems to be better in the eyes of search engines? I recommend you to use different meta description for each post. Don’t stuffed your description with your keywords, try to use your targeted keywords in a proper way. Meta description can be found in your HTML source as given below,
<meta name=’description’ content=’My unique description here’/>
If you have duplicate meta description tags that will affect your SEO. If your blog is hosted on Blogger, you may read this post to add different meta description to Blogger post.
-
Page Headings H1, H2, H3…. H6:
Page headings have major roles in on page SEO optimization. The lower the heading, the higher the weight. H1 is more powerful than H2 tag. You can view your headings in your source code by searching <h1>….. </h1>, similar for H2….. H6.
If you look over a book, in each chapter, you will view the chapter name which is similar as your blog title. Each chapter contains headings and subheadings similar as your blog post containing H1, H2…. It is good practice to use proper heading and sub-headings for your each post.
Since H1 tag is more SEO friendly than H2, it doesn’t mean you should use H1 more often as three four times in a post. If your post have little content with many H1 tags, may affect your SEO. I would suggest you to use H1 tag only once, however if you want more subheadings you can use H2 tags. You can see a live example on this post, just go to my source code, and look over my headings.
I mostly use H1, H2 and H3 tags in each post. You can consider a H1 tag is like your country, H2 tag is like a state in your country, H3 tag is like a city in your state.
-
Page Content :
There is no doubt that content is the king and always will be, but without audience the content has no existence. The very first step for the search engine optimization is to create quality content that targets your primary or secondary keywords (long and short tail keywords). Make sure, you should include your keywords in a proper way that should not seem to any type of stuffing. You should consider writing your content for the users not for the search engines only.
Many newbies think that including keywords more often will get higher positions in the search results for that query, and they try to write the content for the search engines only. It should drive traffic to your post temporary, but it would not be permanent as search engines can easily detect that you have stuffed your article with a query.
The simple idea is, follow step 1 to find out long and short tail keywords and optimize your post in a proper way. Always write for the users not only for the search engines. People will love it, you will get shares and link backs to your posts. Carry on your work. You will get improvement in SERPs.
-
Keyword Density :
If you are writing your post for your audience not for the search engines only, you don’t need to think about your keyword density. Many users think that repeating the same keywords will improve their rankings in search engines for that query. If your keyword density for a phrase is more than 10%, you will surely caught by the search engines, and will get you ban.
Let you have written an article of 100 words, and used “SEO Optimization” three times. It means that the density is nearly 3%. Always try to write your users not for the search engines, you will get always in the safe side.
-
Internal Linking :
What are internal links? The links from a page on a domain to another page on the same domain are called internal links. The navigation links are internal links. You can create your internal links from the header, footer, sidebar and content area. The most SEO friendly internal links are considered from the content area. You can read more about internal links in moz blog.
For on page optimization, you should link your internal links on the pages that are related to each other. For example, if I have a page about ‘footwear’, and I am creating a post about ‘Television’, I would never link any ‘footwear’ related post to the current post while I would like to link on of my article about ‘Toshiba television review’.
You can use keyword rich anchor text when creating internal links. Keep in mind; you must use different anchor text for the same URL linking to other page. If you are using the same text when linking a page again and again, it would affect your SEO negatively.
-
Outbound Links :
What are outbound links? The links points to another domain from your site are called outbound links. Linking outbound links from your pages are good practices, but the links should be related to your post. It would be beneficial for both the audience and search engines.
If you think linking to outbound links may redirect your visitor to the outbound link’s page, you are wrong. Peoples are more likely to read latest and researched articles. It would also be beneficial for your on page optimization. Here is a good article that you may read outbound links for onpage optimization.
You should not use outbound link which is not related to your topic. If you do it, it would be nearly similar as a paid link. There are more factors for outbound links such as you should not use so many outbound links on a page. You should considerably use outbound links depending upon your content length. For example, I will never use 50 outbound links into the current post.
You should always link to trusted sites. If you are not sure about the link nature, just add ‘rel=nofollow’. You can easily detect any nofollow or dofollow links on any site by the browser’s addon.
-
URL Structure :
You should also consider URL Structure when Optimize your content. Try to use your keywords in the URL structure in a proper way. Don’t use the words like how, to, use and what in the URL structures, these are stop words. Don’t stuff your keywords in the URL. Have you seen my URLs of this page? It is properly optimized. The shortest URL structure might be well SEO optimized. If your blog is hosted on Blogger, and let us you have indexed some of your pages into search engines like sitemap or about us page. You should also optimize your static page URLs. If you had not optimized your permalink structure earlier, you may easily edit your URLs, and redirect the old URL to the edited URL in Blogger.
-
Updating Content :
The more update content the better indexing of your site, and improving traffic to your blog. You should always try to write new articles on your blog. You may make a plan to deliver at-least three articles per week or select the no. of post that you can deliver that represent a consistency in your blog. Consistency is very important if you want to go high in blogging.
You should also update your outdated or expired content with the latest trend. Search engines love consistency and also love if you add more quality to the existing post.
-
Related Niche Brands :
Suppose you want to learn Mathematics, you have two tutors. The first one is expert in Mathematics and the second one expert in Mathematics, Physics and Chemistry. With whom you want to learn Mathematics the first one or the second one. We all know that the probability to experts in all subjects is very less than to expert in one subject. Similar as you, I am also preferred to learn with the first one who is expert in one subject.
Search engines also follow that rules. If your blog has a niche, search engines preferred to rank high in that particular niche category. If you write about ‘shoes’ and ‘television’ you may not get higher rankings for both pages, but if your blog niche is related to ‘footwear’ and you have a post about ‘Reebok shoes’ then search engines may prefer better rankings for this particular page.
For example, my niche is related to Blogger, SEO and Social media. Therefore, writing anything related to my niche will probably increase the chances to get the higher ranking(s) in SERPs. If we write about out topic such as ‘health’ on this blog, I cannot consider to get better ranking for the post.
-
Image Optimization :
Don’t ignore images optimization while your post’s on page optimization. One image can represent thousand of words. Including images into your blog post are good practices. Long content without any image is like a cricket ground without a pitch. If you have well optimized your images, you may get decent traffic from Google image search to your blog posts.
Search engines like Google cannot read the text on your images or cannot detect the subject of your images. You can have option to consider the subject of your images by using ‘alt’ and ‘title’ tags. If you have properly used the alt and title tags, search engines can easily detect that what your images are all about, and can display on the image search results.
If you have a Blogger blog, you can fully optimize your Blogger post’s images without any HTML code.
-
Useful Gadgets :
You may consider Gadgets or Widgets when optimizing your blog post. The widgets are mostly placed in your sidebar or footer. You may display your recent or popular posts in widget under your sidebar in Blogger and WordPress. Let you have added your recent post widget into your sidebar, your recent posts would get the internal links from all of your blog pages.
Whenever you published a new post, it will auto link from the existing posts in your blog, in result, the new post would get index faster since the existing posts from where the new post get linkback already indexed in search engines.
You may also consider the related post “below to each content” in your blog. I would surely improve your bounce rate, and you will get more pageviews.
