There are 2 different types of search engine
optimization, on-page and off page. Here you'll learn the
differences between them, and basic tips to getting your
website optimized for the search engines.
What Is The
Difference Between On-Page And Off-Page Search Engine
Optimization
The difference is that on-page optimization involves
changing elements of your actual webpages that most visitors
to your site won't even notice. For example, having your
keywords in specific places or writing the title a certain
way. Basically it's tweaking all elements of a page which are
a factor for ranking well in the search engines.
Where as off-page optimization, is partially out of
your control. You do have some control over it, but it's
largely dependant on what others think about your website,
unless you take an active role in off-page optimization. Off
page optimization is quite a large topic, so I'll talk about
it in a separate article.
Basic On-Page Elements You Need To Tweak:
For starters, you need to give your pages a title
between the <title></title> tags in the head section of the
page. Make it a descriptive title with at least 1 keyword. 4
words maximum is usually enough. Please don't leave the title
as "untitled", and don't set it to "home" or "Page 1" or
anything like that. Doing so won't help your search engine
rankings one bit.
Next you need to write a description using the
description meta tag i.e. <meta name="Description" content="yourdescriptionhere">.
This should go in the head part of the html, after the
</title< tag preferably. This only need to be about 1 sentence
long and contain your keywords once or twice. Any more than
that and it might look a bit spammy.
Now You need to use the keyword meta tag. Just as a
side note, most search engines don't often use meta tags
anymore, but it certainly wont hurt your rankings. Here's what
the keyword meta tag looks like, <meta name="Keywords"
content="your, keywords, here">. Include each keyword /
keyphrase once. Do not repeat your keywords over and over in
the keywords tag, once each is fine.
Ok now we need to change elements of the page than
people will actually see. The stuff you just typed in will
only be readable by search engine spiders when they crawl your
pages, apart from the title of your page of course.
First you need to have a header in a <h1> tag. It
doesn't look particularly pretty, but it's effective. It lets
the search engine spider know, that the piece of test in the
<h1> tag is important. Now you need to write a header in the
<h1> that contains your keywords. It's pretty similar to just
having the page title on the actual page. Doesn't need to be
long, just a few descriptive words about what the following
page is about.
This next one is the part I'm going to have to leave
in your hands. If you haven't got any content on the page,
then you need to write it. Try to include the keywords about 3
times in the top third of the page. Only put them where it
will read correctly. For example don't put them all in one
sentence because it will sound silly. Try to make your content
an absolute minimum of about 400-500 words.
Do you have images on your webpage? Then you need to
give them "alt" tags. These are just incase a user cannot
display or chooses to not display images for whatever reason.
Instead, they will see whatever you place into your alt tag.
Only put in your keyword as part of the alt tag if it is
relevant. The alt tag should be descriptive to the image.
Make the above changes to your webpages and you
should see a nice rise in your search engine ranks when they
next index your site. It will definitely pay off in the end.
Best of luck!
Stephen Warren is the creator of
MakeAGreatSite.com There you'll learn how to make a great
site and turn it into a money making machine in no time. Your
free to publish this article on any website, providing it is
unedited and complete, this resource box is there and the link
back to my site is clickable.
