There seems to be a lot of emphasis placed on link building and I know linking is important, but what about on-page SEO? Aren’t there certain elements that are standard operating strategy? If so, what are they?
Answer: As a matter of fact, on-page SEO is critically important. And, although we cover that topic in-depth, nearly everything you need to know about the critical components of on-page SEO can be neatly summed up in the following 5-point checklist.
1. Titles
- Each page should have a unique HTML “title” tag that contains the keywords for which the page should rank for. Place your keywords close to the front of the title tag and limit your titles to fewer than 60 characters.
2. Meta Description Tag
- Each page should have a unique and compelling description of 150 characters or less placed within the meta description tag. Don’t worry much about placing keywords here.
- Instead, use this tag to provide a compelling reason for people to click your listing when displayed in the search results.
3. Headers
- Each page should have an“h1″header that contains the keywords the page should rank for. It’s also good to provide variation on the keywords you used in the title tag, such as the singular or plural version of the keyword.
4. Keywords
- Sprinkle your keywords 3-4 times throughout the rest of your page’s content. Place them within the bold tags or within bullet lists wherever it makes sense to do so.
5. Anchor text
- Link to your other pages by placing your best keywords within your links (anchor text).
Bonus tip: Be consistent in how you format your URLs when linking. For example, you should link to http://site.com/ instead of http://site.com/index.html. By formatting your URLs consistently, you’ll avoid confusing the search engine spiders that otherwise tend to see each differently formatted URL as a unique page which, in turn, dilutes your PageRank.
That’s the quick of it. Of course there are also such on-page SEO topics, as crawl ability and Page Rank sculpting, which have also merited in-depth reports within this publication. However, mastering the 5 critical steps mentioned above will put you miles ahead of most of your competitors.
