Importance of On-Page Optimization and how to do it right!
This will serve as an enlightenment for those who have doubts with on page optimization. You were able to define …
I am bored till death saying that SEO is no more a choice for businesses that are looking for some extensive growth so I thought I should start this post with a SEXY definition of SEO stated by Bruce Clay.
Search engine optimization does not specialize in tasks that will make pigs soar high up in the sky. Its real task is to dig deeper into the genetics of a website and reengineer the essential elements until it transforms into an eagle. – Bruce Clay
Now we exactly know what search engine optimization is but what could be an ideal process to perform SEO that allow websites to rank higher in the search engine result pages for their desired key phrases and outrank their competitors?
This question came in to my mind when I was auditing one website and after spending 2 hours, I figured out that there is no major SEO mistake in it, although it was a huge eCommerce website.
Major SEO Divisions:
If we divide SEO in to major components it can be split into on-page optimization and off-page optimization. Furthermore, each of these components can be divided in to two more parts. Below is the SEO pyramid that will help you to understand the SEO process more clearly.
This pyramid contains 4 divisions, two divisions in bottoms comes under the umbrella of on-page optimization where as the above two cover the complete off-page optimization. Thus, if you neglect any aspects from the two basic competent of SEO, you might not be able to achieve the desired results from link building and social media optimization.
Over the years the term “SEO” has been well recognized by business and many has been keenly using SEO tactics to boost their online presence and to establish their brand in the digital world, but sadly it has been commonly observed that many of them usually pay little to no attention towards onpage optimization considering it less important. Thus, even after spending their plenty of time in finding link prospect and producing links for their website they failed to achieve the desired results.
In order to get valuable results that allow your business to grow from organic online mediums you have to get these areas of on page optimization done correctly before you actually step for link building and social platforms.
On-Page Optimization:
These are the following facet of any website that one should consider fixing in order to make your website Search Engine friendly.
- Website Accessibility
Accessibility simply means that a common user can easily perceive, understand, navigate, and interact with your website. It is not only important from users prespective but from search engine point of view as Google and other search engine give special marks for having an accessible and search engine friendly website.
Website accessibility at one end covers all the technical aspects of SEO that includes redirections, canonicalization, dead pages, page response codes, warnings and more. At the same time Website Accessibility also emphasize on content related areas like titles, descriptions, Meta’s, URLs, internal anchor text and more.
There are multiple tools available that can help you with accessibility, including Google Webmaster Central, SEOmoz Pro, Search Enabler.
- XML Sitemaps
XML sitemaps help Google bots and crawlers of others search engine to have a quick view of the website so that they can easily interpret your website and index it in the search engine result pages accordingly. If you are not good with creating xml sitemaps, you can check this xml sitemap generator.
Once a sitemap is added to your website, you should then update Google website tool and include xml sitemap link over there in order to increase chances of getting your website crawled and index sooner.
- Robots.txt
This is a file that usually stays within other websites files on the hosting server. This file can simply help you restrict Google bot from crawling a certain areas of your website. Robots.txt file usually looks something like this:
- Keyword Research
Keyword Research is a complete process in which you collect a long list of keyphrases and after sorting out you determine a final list of phrases to target that are valuable and money making for your business.
The idea is to find words that contain higher search volume and lower (comparatively lower) competition. In order to find an ideal list of keywords you can take aid of tools like Google Adward tool, Google insights, keyword difficulty tool and may be Google search. Wher Google Adwards can help you find high volume key phrases, SEOmoz can help determine level of difficulty. As per to verify the conversion value of these keywords you can either use your Google Analytics or your Gut feeling.
- Creating Content
Great writing and great SEO go hand in hand because your highly searched keywords are the same keywords that people want to know more about.
Now that you have decided upon the keywords that you want to target, your next step should be to create quality content according to these key phrases.
Remember, a great content copy is not about how many times you have used your keywords in the copy or where you have used the keywords it’s about how much engaging it is for your targeted audience. Try to create better content keeping your audience in mind and this will automatically help improving your overall website’s SEO.
Accessible, search engine friendly website and great content are core foundations of SEO process, if you have got these fixed them with powerful link building and social sharing the website can get better visibility in search engines, which is defiantly going to increase readership, more traffic and eventually more conversions for the business.
But, in-case you do not have your on-page optimization fixed, even with strongest link building and ethical social sharing you might not be able to improve your website visibility which may have a direct impact on business sales.
Well Basic but effective post, Thumbs up for this one..
Thankyou so much sir for liking
and yes indeed its basic but at times we ignore them while dealing with the further technicalities. So I believe it is always good to keep them fresh and reminded, no ?
Yeah that’s true, people forgot basic stuff when they are doing something big. But without these things they can’t achieve their goals.
Wonderful write up, hope this would help the dummies for SEO to have some learning, would love to see such article on SEO Journal too ..
Hey Riz, thanks alot mate for kind words … and sure there are many more to come
Good Read! all of above mentioned are important factor for on site optimisation perhaps, you can also enlgiht image optimisation, canonical, duplicataion in pagination and page load time
Definitely good. If anyone is using WordPress, WordPress SEO plugin from Yoast does everything that you have specified in this article .. except, ofcourse, creating great content
Hello , I would like to thank you about your efforts to give us effective useful information about On-Page Optimization (SEO) , In fact, on-page Optimization is not in the business of ruining websites they make websites better. They are making your website found by search engines. Lots of webmasters and web designers think that decreasing picture’s quality and size is bad thing while it’s necessary for pages to load faster.
Thanks a lot and best regards
http://www.smarttouch.me/en
This will serve as an enlightenment for those who have doubts with on page optimization. You were able to define the real meaning of SEO and elaborate how it does work with business. I hope people after reading this will truly understand what SEO is about. Thanks for this great post.