On Site
So what is on site SEO?
“On site” optimisation is the tweaking of the raw code of your webpages to balance and enhance the keywords and keyword phrases you are targeting.
How does Google rank these efforts?
There are several factors to consider when undertaking “on site” SEO, the best way to analyze this technique would be to break the page down into the parts we understand that the search engines are taking notice of. In Google`s own information they state that their “Googlebot” crawler will return a number of details about your page that determine whereabouts in the Google index your resulting page will be listed, reportedly over 200 checks. So how do we get a page ready for “Googlebot” during On Site SEO?
On Site SEO Checklist
1. How do you want your website to be found?
What i mean by this is, if you were to type a phrase or keyword using a search engine, what would you type? If you don`t know, this is your first priority. Now compile a list of more Keywords and phrases, 4 or 5 will do for now. Next you need to see how much competition is out there. Use a free Keyword analysis service for the most basic competition analysis. Google offers their own Google Adwords Keyword Tool that will help you determine how much competition is out there for the same keywords and phrases.
2. Know your competition!
A balanced website will have unique services to offer, that little extra value for money.
Using the keywords and phrases you compiled in the first step, make another list of those websites that are listed in the top 5 or even top 10 of the search engines results page, then consider if what you are offering is unique to the marketplace. If it isn`t then how can you make your website unique? It`s pointless and fruitless offering up the same content as another website, you have to be unique in what you offer, you have to have a niche market that will bring the visitors to your website.
This also falls into the realm of duplicate content, if you are directly copying or even trying to reword another websites content to suit your own needs, then you are basically ripping off and spewing the same content out, STOP! If you are as savvy as you think you are then you need to write the content yourself, make it unique to your marketplace, write from experience. and then protect yourself from being ripped off using Copyscape. If you are not too hot at writing good copy, write what you know and pass it to a reputable firm to rewrite.
3. Web Design (Shudder)
Not everyone who maintains a website has the ability, the inclination or even the desire to understand the complexities of XHTML, PHP, Javascript, AJAX or even any other of the 8512 programming languages, in steps the web designer. If you are one of the few who have the knowledge to distinguish between the <title></title> and the </html> then bully for you, but for those who do not have that advantage, there are a few basic steps for On Page optimisation to consider.
You need to have access to the code of your pages, okay you have, otherwise you would have left the page by now, a short and concise list of ranking factors to consider for your content.
- Keyword Use in Title Tag
- Anchor Text of Inbound Link
- Global Link Popularity of Site
- Age of Site
- Link Popularity within the Site
- Topical Relevance of Inbound Links
- Link Popularity of Site in Topic
- Keyword Use in Body Text
- Global Link Popularity of Linking Site
- Topical Relationship of Linking
Full credit for that list goes to SEOmoz.org and the contributors to the resulting article, those of which will receive full review and credit for their work over the coming months. Over time i will convert that list into written articles to explain more in depth what they are all about.
Back to the grindstone.
So what if you do not have access to your websites code?
A bit of a strange question to ask i know, but there are those website owners who take a hands off approach to their online efforts, but actively take interest in how well they are ranking, these are my favourite kind of people, a short brief with a target in mind. Back to the question, you need to hire an SEO, if budget is no question give me a ring, seriously though, you need to have a budget in mind the harder the keyword is to achieve the higher the budget needs to be set.
There is no short term fix to SEO, it is a lengthy process to achieve, some keyword results are apparent in a matter of a month, congratulations you have zero/very little competition and you have a unique market share, some keywords are harder to achieve and can take years, congratulations you are a Travel Agent or Comparison Website.
6 years ago i managed to rank for web designer tools in a matter of a month and this was a sub page of a charity website! ahem, 6 years down the line and i would struggle amongst the other 41 million websites (and rising) while we`re on that subject get over to tlbox, they make my life so much easier from the design angle.
4. Site Analysis, tweak, bash head, do it again!
The whole purpose of SEO in the first place is to measure your efforts, have you achieved for your client what you set out to achieve? Have you achieved for your own website what you set out to achieve? This is only measurable using an analytical tool for which Google Analytics offers no comparison.
So now you have analyzed and dissected your on site SEO efforts and you now rank number one for all those keywords and phrases you compiled a list for at the beginning and you are on your way to untold wealth and prosperity!….. No? well it`s time to take a look at where it all went so disastrously wrong, it won`t have gone that bad, unless you were really naughty! did you dabble in the black side? huh! whats the black side?
- I used a cloaking page stuffed full of keywords and now my website has gone missing from the search engines!
- I used some white text on a white background with my keywords in it, cos it did not fit with my design!
- Well i kinda used <!– comments tags and hid a few keywords here and there oops!
- I used the same keywords over and over and did i say over? again throughout every one of my alt tags, bugger!
- I went and stuffed my meta description and meta keywords tags in the head section of my code with a little too many repetitions of the keyword i was targeting, somewhere in the region of 300 times i think, i can`t quite remember, thats the level of stupid i am at right now!
- Oh yeah, i done the same thing for my <title> tag, of course i just found out that it was one of the highest ranking factors (stupid level rating=5 star plonker)
- I`ve used the targeted keyword in EVERY header (H1,H2) tag this will surely rank me at #1 in no time at all, @%**$
- I have also managed to use my monkey like abilities to cram as much of the keyword into as many irrelevant places throughout my page, my visitors are clever and they will see past this brlliant usage of the word, whereas those pesky robots will be fooled into thinking i am the best! oh double *&8%*
Any more stupid as stupid can be techniques? Yes there are many more.
The ingredients used for better on site SEO used in this article were;
