DIY SEO 13: Optimizing Your Web Pages
By Kurt Steinbrueck
July 6, 2011 
1 Comment
In the first 12 steps you gathered a lot of information and decided on strategies. It was a lot of prep work, but it will all pay off…starting now. It’s all led up to this moment. It’s time to start optimizing your website.
The main idea behind optimizing the pages of your website is that you are trying to send a strong signal to the search engines of what each page is about, specifically, for what keyword(s) the search engines should list your page (preferably in the #1 position). The search engines are going to read the content of each page to determine what your page is about, so you need to make sure that when they read the page, they are able to determine a specific topic and that they keep coming across your target keyword(s). To do this you will use your target keyword(s) throughout the page.
Title and Meta Data:
Let’s start with the header of your page, not the graphic header you probably have at the top of every page of your site, but the HTML in the <head> of each page. The header of your pages probably contains a lot of code. It may have calls to javascript files, css definitions, etc, but we are going to look specifically for the Title and Meta Description. They are probably near the top of the header.
The Title is the most important thing on the page and is the most important part of the page to optimize. If your web builder does not currently allow you to setup unique title tags for each page, you need to find a way to change that or possibly even switch to a web builder that is more SEO friendly. The title tag is not generally visible to visitors. If it is visible, it will appear at the very top of the web browser, but most browser today do not display the title tag by default. The title tag is, however, usually used in the search results as the link for your listing. So, it’s good to have a compelling title tag that uses your target keyword(s) once and entices people to click through.
You do not have a lot of space in the title tag. Most SEO’s say you should keep your title tag to about 56 characters or less; however, some tests have revealed that the search engines actually do read much more than that. Besides the possibility that Google just won’t pay attention to anything after character 56, there are two additional traits that make it wise to keep your title short and sweet…and keyword rich.
- The more words you use, the less important each word gets. It’s a diluting effect. For a simplistic example, let’s say your title is worth 100 points. If you have a four word title each keyword get’s 25 points. If you have 10 words, than each word only gets 10 points. So, if you have a two word keyword phrase, would you rather it get 50 points or 20? Use as few words as possible.
- The placement of the words in the title matter. The first word gets the most weight, the second word gets the second most weight, and so on. So, don’t waste precious real estate by starting with something like “welcome to our site” or, as I see more often, your organization name or slogan. Start with your target keyword(s).
The Description Meta tag isn’t a very important factor in rankings, if it’s looked at all, but some search engines to use the description tag as the description in your search listing. Since people tend to be more likely to click on a listing if they see the same keyword they just searched for, it’s good to use your target keyword(s) in your description meta tag.
The Keyword Meta tag has been ignored by most search engines for years, but if you want to take 30 seconds to throw a few (not hundreds) keywords into the keyword tag, it won’t hurt anything.
Lastly, as I mentioned earlier the title and description tags can be displayed as your search listing. So, make sure both entice people to visit your website. Also, don’t just list a bunch of keywords (or even a few keywords). People are reading these, so they should make sense to read. Search engine people my look at these, too. So, don’t make them look like a spammy list of keywords.
Content
When creating or modifying the content for your web pages, you can optimize those pages by being intentional about using your target keyword(s) throughout the page. There are some SEO’s who recommend a specific keyword density, but I’m not one of those. I generally try to use a keyword at least 3 times on a page, but I care more about the content and my human visitors than I do about keyword density. If I can’t get the keyword(s) onto the page that much in a way that makes sense, then I won’t force it. If the keyword naturally occurs more often, then so be it.
Here are some tips for using keywords in your content:
- Try to use the keywords in paragraph headings which use the <h> tag. H1 is the most important heading tag and should only be used once. Search engines don’t really pay attention to tags h4 – h6. Feel free to use CSS to style the text in the headings how you want.
- Try to use each targeted keyword at least 3 times on the page.
- If a page is longer (more than 400 words) try to use the keyword more than 3 times. The longer the page, the more times you should use the keyword.
- Try to use your targeted keyword(s) in the first paragraph. The higher up in the text the keyword appears the more prominent it is considered to be.
- Do not just list keywords. That’s spammy. Only use keywords on the page in a way that makes sense to human visitors.
- Never sacrifice the human visitor experience to get keywords into the content.
- Don’t hide text to get keywords on a page. (Just avoid black hat in general)
Other On-Page SEO
There are a couple other places you can include your keywords which don’t have a huge impact, but since every little bit helps, you might as well.
1. Alt Tags: It’s considered good practice to use alt tags with images, mostly for the sake of accessibility. The alt tag should generally describe what the image is for those who can’t see the image, but there’s no reason that description can’t include a keyword. Using keywords in alt tags can also have the added benefit of getting you listed in image search results.
2. Title Attributes: Title attributes are not the same as the title tag. Many html tags can have title attributes like the image tag can have an alt tag. Links, h tags and others can have title=”your text here” added into the tag. Generally, the title attribute is similar to the content the tag is being used with. For example, if you have link with the link text, “See our new products”, the title attribute would have something like “See our new products”, but you can expand on the idea in the link text as well. So, if your keyword was “mp3 players”, you could have “See our new mp3 players” or “See our new products including mp3 players”.
3. URLs: If you can control the URLs of your site, use the targeted keyword(s) in the URLs of the pages. Instead of having something like domain.com/events.php, if your target keyword is “local church events”, you could have the URL domain.com/local-church-events.php. If you already have pages created that don’t use keywords, but you want to start using keywords in those pages’ URLs, be sure to setup 301 redirects from the old page URLs to the new ones or you will loose all the authority the old URL had.
Be Natural
As you work on the optimization of your web pages, keep in mind that optimization is not an all or none kind of thing. It’s more like a percentage. Try to do as much as you can, but if you can’t do everything, that’s OK. Just do what you can. Don’t force it. It doesn’t matter if you get high rankings if everyone who finds your site leaves quickly because the content is awkward due to optimization. You want everything to feel natural and be focused on the human visitors.
Additional Notes and Tips:
Today’s Tasks:
- Begin optimizing the pages of your website. If you have a lot of pages on your site, this may take a while. So, start with the most important pages (especially your homepage) and go from there.
Second photo by miralize
What do you think?
Do you have any questions about optimizing a page?
Are there any other on-page SEO techniques you use?
Are there any SEO techniques you think everyone should avoid?
DIY SEO #12: Choosing Your Target Keywords <- DIY SEO: Main -> DIY SEO 14: Tracking Your Success
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