On Page SEO

The On Page SEO is the foundation to your campaign,. You have to get it right to achieve success in using different search engines. Once you get it wrong, you'll definitely never hit the top.

There are different ways on how you can outrank your competitors in a most successful way. Search Engine Optimization is constantly evolving forever.

Here are some important attributes in an effective SEO that you can add to your bucket list.

Title Tags 

You have to ensure that you are using an original set of keywords and variations in the title tag of every page so that  it will look natural and will encourage users to visit your site.

Meta Descriptions

Using Meta Description will help you to have an introduction about your brand, that's why you have to make it in a right way to avoid brand/services confusion. It should be written in 156 characters and has a kick about your website. Just like with the title tags, don't spam or over optimize using it.

Heading Tags

Use H tags in a strategic way and don't over optimized it. Place your main keyword in an H1 tag after that you must split  the rest of your content up ascending tags, H2 comes next then H3. You can use H1 tag once. The rest can be used multiple times.

You don't have to repeat your main keyword in each tag, You can use different innovation  to enhance the value of the content and to break it up into readable and easy to digest sections. The tags essentially signal the descending importance of page headings so you must be careful as to which H1 tags should be used in each instance.

Content

When writing a content, you must consider the reader's field of interest first before search engines. In the Google Panda algorithm, You can't get away with thin content. You should focus on creating original and informative content and you  should mention core key-phrases. Make sure that you do it in a natural and organic way.

Using keywords is a technique which has been long dead, that's why we should not consider mentioning our main terms in every other sentence. Google's algorithm works on latent semantic indexing, so simply writing naturally about the topic of the page should mean you are creating a relevant content. As long as your content is unique and not copied from somewhere else, you shouldn't run into any problems.

Focus on about the message you want to communicate and keep that at the forefront of all the content you create.  Are your goals to directly sell and drive leads, to inform or to build brand awareness? Your goals should dictate your method of writing and the way you construct your content.  Don't forget to use H tags to break up your content into easy to digest sections and always ask someone else to proof read it for you before going live.

 

Canonicalisation of Duplicate Content

Many CMS' (Magento as an example) allow pages to be accessible via a number of different URL's, however from a search marketing perspective, It's a bad news! You are not trying to control search results via having a page live on duplicate URL's so you shouldn't have a problem in adding a canonical tag to reference one main page for Google to index and assign PageRank to.

Google offers a great example of how to implement canonicalisation and it makes sense to spend ten minutes getting your head around it there rather than re-publishing. Getting the Canonicalisation right, however, is something which should be considered primary importance.

 

URL Structure

If your sites are using query strings for page URLs, this is something you need to look at as a priority.  It's better to use a search engine friendly URL structure such as http://www.domain.com/page-name/ as opposed to http://www.domain.com/index.php?id=1. It makes more sense to both users and search engines and it should be regarded as a priority.

You must use hypens instead of underscores and try not to have main pages sitting too many directories deep in our website. Don't forget to implement 301 redirects from the old URL to the new if you do make changes, Otherwise you'll see crawl errors pop up in Google Webmaster Tools and users being faced with Error 404 pages.

 

Crawl Error Resolution

You should always check the Google Webmaster Tools for crawl errors and find a way to resolve anything that shows. It's not good from either a user or search engine point of view to have crawl errors and it's usually a fairly easy job to fix with the 301 redirects (assuming the pages are permanently removed. If it's only a temporary removal, use a 302).

When it comes to deciding which page to redirect to, use your common sense. Don't redirect to a page just for the sake of it- try to redirect to the closest alternative. If none, consider permanently redirecting to a 404 page.

Check your Robot.txt File

When it comes to first optimizing your site, check your robots.txt file which is located at http://www.domain.com/robots.txt to make sure no key pages are being blocked from being crawled by the search engines. If you see Disallow: / followed by any directory or page name,  ask yourself whether it should be accessible to search engines. The best practice is to block admin panels and low quality pages which need to be in place, but you don't want search engines indexing, If you have anything you regard as a core page in there, take it out!

 

Multi- Device Friendly

Given a site being multi-device friendly isn't always a prerequisite of attaining top search positions, but it should always be looked at. If only from a conversion optimization perspective.

 

Page Speed

Spend time to analyze your website's page speed using the Page Speed Insights tool from Google to outline how fast they can load your site as well asreceive a whole host of suggestions as to how you can improve things. As the general rule, try and get it as far above 90 as possible to ensure that you're not on a search position lower than you should be because your website is sluggish.

What are your thoughts on on-page SEO? Do you have anything to add? Is there anything you’d place preference on over that listed above? Feel free to comment or give suggestions. Thank you :)