Guide To On-Page SEO: Keywords and Beyond

As online marketers attempt to move with the times, many are making the mistake of over-correcting. They put too much emphasis on links and directory listings, and neglect on-page SEO. Haven’t we been told countless of times that quality content is needed for rankings? But still, people neglect their content, design and even the basics of onpage optimisation. This dangerous mindset can have serious detrimental effects on website traffic.

Keyword Placement Essentials

To rank in search engines, a website must contain relevant keywords and phrases in a few specific locations within the site’s code, starting with the title tag. Logic dictates that the title should reflect the content, so crafting a title with the relevant keywords inside the title tag should be fairly simple.

Websites specific to a topic also receive preference in search engine rankings. The most effective way to indicate that specificity is to purchase a domain that includes the keyword or phrase most relevant to the content. Of course going for a brand name is nothing uncommon and is more professional, which is why more and more people are giving up exact match domain names, in which case you need to focus even more on properly implementing keywords within your pages.

Beyond relevancy and placement there is an ongoing debate in the SEO world about the value of other specific keywords and their placement. Anchor text links – keywords used as anchor text for links to relevant information can boost a website’s ranking. There is a fair amount of disagreement on whether those links are more effective for internal or external content, but if you are linking to a keyword related page it shouldn’t matter, overall, it will help your improve the page authority.

Headlines – headlines designated with the H1 tag are eye-catching to readers, and also indexed more prominently by search engines. Most successful on-page SEO includes relevant keywords within these tags.

Content locations – chosen keywords should, of course, appear within the content of the page. However, many SEO professionals contend that these words or phrases should be specifically placed within the first 100 words. Some also stress the importance of placing them near the end, so the keywords appear as bookends to the text.

On-Page SEO Beyond the Keywords

Search engines measure inbound links and repeat visitors, as well. The best way to guarantee that a site will receive this traffic is to offer quality content and attractive but easy to follow design. Sites that fulfill the promise of their keywords earn visitor loyalty, resulting in more referrals from other websites and regular repeat visits.

Another little-known fact about search engine algorithms is that each change to a page offers a potential boost to indexing. Of course, just changing a word here or there is unethical and risks losing that all-too-valuable visitor loyalty. The best course of action here is simply to regularly update pages with new, original content.

Simple navigation, easy to share content and a few breadcrumbs here and there is what any website needs to improve the standing from the get go.  You don’t start the optimisation of a website by building links first, no you first build a site that can attract links and then you promote it. Unfortunately there are still webmasters that slap on some content and go straight for link building. Needless to say, this tactic will work short term, and not with much success, as when visitors come to your website and find bad design, lousy content, what do you think they are going to do?

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