Starting any SEO campaign with anything other than keyword research is a waste of time. To be truly successful with SEO you must begin with a well researched keyword strategy. 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.

There are a number of important on page optimization factors to consider when optimizing your web pages. I have found three 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 seem to have the greatest affect on where your website ranks for particular keywords or keyword phrases.

Meta tags are important because they provide some basic information to search engine spiders. Meta tags need to be formatted correctly to enhance search engine rankings. My research as shows that meta tags by themselves cannot radically improve rankings. It is my belief that meta tags may be used to verify other aspects of your website and are important for getting users to click through from search engine results.

The best 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 final meta tag of any importance is the keyword tag. This web site tag is supposed to include your most important keywords. Unfortunately, most web sites are using this meta tag incorrectly and it could be hurting their rankings. Keywords are only valid if some of them are found somewhere on your website. In addition you only want to include about a dozen keywords per page. Any more than that and it could be considered keyword stuffing. Focus on your most important keywords and place them in the keywords tag.

In addition to having your meta tags in place, how quickly 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 within 5 seconds on a standard connection. There are a number of tools that can help you measure load speed.

The third and certainly one of the most important factors 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.sample.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.

Don’t start any optimization program until you’ve taken a serious look at your on page optimization factors. With a well organized web site that includes properly formatted meta tags, loads quickly, and has a URL which is properly formatted, you’ll be way ahead of the competition.

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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