ONSITE OPTIMIZATION

Search Engine Optimization

Seo - Part 1

Search Engine Optimization can sound scary, but there are a few simple things you can do to make your website more search engine friendly.

Onsite Optimization

You may have heard this term before.  What exactly is "onsite optimization?"

It is a means of working directly on factors on your website that will make a difference to your placement in the search engines, such as keywords and meta tags.

Keywords

You will want to optimize each of your pages with its own keywords.  The way to decide what keywords to use is to ask yourself, "What is this page really about?"   As we mentioned previously, if you have a website about cocker spaniels, you don't want to bring people who have a general interest in dogs to your site; you want to bring people who are crazy about cocker spaniels and who are willing to spend some money on the products you offer.

Poor SEO Title   "Why My Day Was Ruined"

Better SEO Title  "The Effects of Acne on Self Esteem"

The second is more specific and tells what the page is about.  The first one is way too general.

Poor SEO Title:  "Lessons I Learned on a trip to the Zoo"

Better SEO Title:  "Disciplining Your Child in Public"

Again, the first one could be about anything.  The second one will attract people who have struggles with disciplining their child in public, and who are looking for answers.

Your Title is going to tell the search engines what your page is about so that they can direct the right kinds of traffic to your site.

You will want to do some research on what keywords people are actually searching for before you choose yours.  It won't do you any good if you pick keywords that no one is searching for.

There are two tools you can use to do your research.

• Wordtracker - provides a tool that shows the number of people that have searched for a particular term/phrase over the last 90 days.  It also will show you how many competitive sites there are who are using those keywords.   You can sign up for a free trial so you can see how you like their service.
   

• Overture -  this will not give you as much information as Wordtracker, but it is a good place to start.   It is free to use, and will give you ideas for keywords.  You will type in a certain keyword phrase, and it will bring up other phrases related to those keywords.

Where do you put your Keywords?

Meta Tags Optimization

You will need to do some "meta tags optimization."  Don't run away; it really is not that hard.

In your html code of your page your will see:

<title>New Page 1</title>  

Just replace the text between the two <title> words with the title of your page.

Example:

<title>Cocker Spaniel Mugs</title>

The other meta tag you will want to change is the Description tag.  It will look something like this and should be positioned right after the title tag.

<meta name="Description"CONTENT="Add your description here">

Add a short description of the page and use the same keywords in your description as you used in your title tag.

Example:

<meta name="Description"CONTENT="We have unique cocker spaniel mugs that are reasonably priced

You can also fill in your keywords in the "keyword" meta tags.  The search engines do not use these as much as they used to, but it wouldn't hurt to do it, and still may help some.

On the title that you put on your page, make it into an h1 tag.

Title on page  "Cocker Spaniel Mugs" - make into an h1 tag.

These are just the basics that you can do to make your site more search engine friendly.

If you would like to take a FREE course on Search Engine Optimization and Website Marketing, sign up at the link below.  I have gone through these courses several times and they are excellent.

www.gnc-web-creations.com

These are the basics of "onsite optimization."  Read on for more on Search Engine Optimization.  Click here to continue.