If you're in SEO, you probably hear this question a lot. Sadly,
there's no authentic answer, but there are sets of best practices we can draw
from and sharpen to help get closer. In this blog post, I'm going to share our
top recommendations for achieving on-page,
keyword-targeting "perfection," or, at least, close to it. Some
of these are backed by data points, correlation studies and extensive testing
while others are simply gut-feelings based on experience. As with all things
SEO, we recommend constant testing and refinement, though this knowledge can
help you kick-start the process. Hope you guys will enjoy while reading this
post.
HTML Head Tags
·
Title
Title is the most important
of On-Page keyword elements, the
page title should preferably employ the keyword term/phrase as the first
word(s). In our correlation data studies, we notice that if you place your main
keyword as a first word in title it will rank better and make your Off-Page
hard work easier. That means if you are placing your main keyword as a first
word in title, almost more than 50% of Off-Page work is done. Clearly, using
the key phrase as the very first word in the page title has the highest
correlation with high ranking, and subsequent position correlate nearly
flawlessly to lower ranking.
·
Meta
Description
Description tag plays very
vital role in to drive more traffic from search engines. In simple word I would
say an attractive, interesting and well explained (about your services) Meta
description will force user to click and open your site from SERP. Although not used for "rankings" by
any of the major search engines, the meta description is an important place to
use the target key phrase due to the "bolding" that occurs in the
visual snippet of the search results. Usage has also been shown to help boost
click-through rate, thus increasing the traffic derived from any ranking
position. Avoid keyword stuffing in Meta description tag; simply try to explain
your services in best possible words.
·
Meta
Keywords
If you write down
your site or business relevant keywords in this tag, it will defiantly guide
search engine crawler that this site is about these words. Like it is about SEO
Services or it’s about Gifts Delivery etc. So after doing this tactic your site
will be shown in SERP somewhere for those keywords. I personally recommend you
to write down maximum 10 keywords for one page. Yahoo! is unique among the
search engines in recording and utilizing the Meta keyword tag for discovery,
though not technically for rankings. However, with Microsoft's Bing set to take
over Yahoo! Search, the last remaining reason to employ the tag is now gone. That
combined with the danger of using keywords there for competitive research means
that at SEOmoz, we never recommend employing the tag.
·
Meta
Robots
Although not necessary, this tag should be
sure NOT to contain any directives that could potentially disallow access by
the engines. Robots.txt file is used to guide search engines crawler about
blocked, disallowed, and redirected pages. This practice will help to avoid URL
duplication inside a site. Do not create two pages with same or nearly same
URL’s. Major search engines doesn’t like this tactics, try to target nearly
same three keywords on one page don’t create separate pages for same sort of
keywords where you can target them on one page.
·
Rel="Canonical"
The larger and
more complex a site (and the larger/more complex the organization working on
it), the more we advise employing the canonical URL tag to
prevent any potential duplicates or unintentional, appended URL strings
from creating a problem for the engines and splitting up potential link juice.
Rel=”Canonical” complexities cause major drop in SERP and sites also lost their
importance in search engines.
·
Other
Meta Tags
Meta tags like
those offered by the DCMI or FGDC seem compelling, but currently provide
no benefit for SEO with the major engines and thus, add unnecessary complexity
and download time.
Choosing
Best URL Practice
·
URL
Length
Shorter URLs
appear to perform better in the search results, are more likely to be Copy -
Paste by other sites and easy to remember.
·
URL Structure
Keyword analysis
played important role in your site URL structure. A strong keyword analysis
leads you towards success and able you to achieve your goals. There are two
type of keywords first primary and second type is secondary keywords. Your
primary keyword will remain unchanged or same for many upcoming years and
secondary keywords change with the passage of time. After using your major
keyword in URL create child pages using your primary keywords and then create
sub child pages using your secondary keywords. This practice required deep
keyword analysis.
·
Keyword
Location in URL
Best practice is
to use your major keyword in your domain; it will save your time, effort and
money in Off-Page campaign. Thus, site.com/keyword outperforms
site.com/folder/subfolder/keyword and is the most recommended method of
optimization (though this is certainly not a massive rankings benefit).
·
Sub
domains vs. Pages
As we've talked about previously on the blog, despite the slight URL benefit that sub
domains keyword usage has over subfolders or pages, the engines' link
popularity assignment algorithms tilt the balance in favor of subfolders/pages
rather than sub domains. Try to create unique, relevant and informative pages
on your site rather than sub domains.
Pages are more beneficial for your SERP because they directly increase
your content which is king right now for your SERP, as compare to sub domains
has no direct effect on your site worth.
·
Word
Separators
Our recommendation
is to use hyphens in your URL’s rather than underscores. Hyphens are still the
king of keyword separators in URLs, and despite promises that underscores will
be given equal credit, the inconsistency with other methods make the hyphen a
clear choice. NOTE: This should not apply to root domain names, where
separating words with hyphens is almost never recommended (e.g.
pinkgrapefruit.com is a far better choice than pink-grapefruit.com).
·
Number
of Keyword Repetitions
It's impossible
to pinpoint the exact, optimal number of times to employ a keyword term/phrase
on the page, but this simple rule has served us well for a long time -
"2-3X on short pages, 4-6X on longer ones and never more than makes sense
in the context of the copy." The added benefit of another instance of a
term is so miniscule that it seems unwise to ever be aggressive with this
metric. I would say repetition is bad reputation so don’t try to use your
keyword again and again; there is no need to do this. You just need king
content because king content is the king and king content means no keyword
stuffing, relevancy, unique, fresh, and informative. If a content has these
mentioned qualities that is king content. Major search engines are trying to
satisfy their customers and to satisfy them you need king content that’s why
search engines prefer king content friendly sites. User friendly sites are
always search engine friendly, so try to generate keywords stuffing free king
content.
·
Keyword
Density
A complete myth
as an algorithmic component, keyword density nonetheless
pervades even very sharp SEO minds. While it's true that more usage of a
keyword term/phrase can potentially improve targeting/ranking, there's no doubt
that keyword density has never been the formula by which this relevance was
measured. I think what I personally experienced that keyword density is no more
playing any sort of role in modern SERP. You just need well described, well
explained unique, fresh, and informative content that automatically include
your keyword few times in your that specific page. For example if you are
writing content for your website page which is about baby toys then if you are
following that king content rule of relevancy you will defiantly use baby toys
few times and other variations of that keyword as well.
·
Keyword
Usage Variations
Long suspected to influence search engine
rankings (though never studied in a depth of detail that's convincing to me),
the theory that varied keyword usage throughout a page can help with content
optimization and optimization nevertheless is worth a small amount of effort.
We recommend employing at least one or two variations of a term and potentially
splitting up keyword phrases and using them in body copy as well or instead.
Major search engines are now becoming better trying to introduce different
algorithms of SERP. Behaving and understanding like humans to purify SERP
result. So don’t try to use one keyword again and again, try to use different
variation of that keyword like if your major keyword is medical billing then possible keywords variations should be medical
billing service and medical billing services.
·
H1
Headline
The H1 tag has
long been thought to have great importance in on-page optimization. Recent
correlation data from our studies, however, has shown that it has a very low
correlation with high rankings (close to zero, in fact). While this is
compelling evidence, correlation is not causation and for semantic and SEO
reasons, we still advise proper use of the H1 tag as the headline of the page
and, preferably, employment of the targeted keyword term/phrase.
·
H2/H3/H4/Hx
Even lower in importance than the H1, our
recommendation is to apply only if required. These tags appear to
carry little to no SEO value.
·
Alt
Attribute
Surprisingly, the alt attribute, long thought
to carry little SEO weight, was shown to have quite a robust correlation with
high rankings in our studies. Thus, we strongly advise the use of a graphic
image/photo/illustration on important keyword-targeted pages with the
term/phrase employed in the alt attribute of the img tag.
·
Image File Name
Since image traffic can be a substantive
source of visits and image filenames appear to be valuable for this as well as
natural web search, we suggest using the keyword term/phrase as the name of the
image file employed on the page.
·
Bold/Strong
Using a keyword in bold/strong appears to
carry a very, very tiny amount of SEO weight, and thus it's suggested as a best
practice to use the targeted term/phrase at least once in bold, though a very
minor one.
·
Italic/Emphasized
Surprisingly, italic/emphasized text appears
to have a similar to slightly higher correlation with high rankings than
bold/strong and thus, we suggest its use on the targeted keyword term/phrase in
the text.
·
Internal
Link Anchors
No testing has yet found that internal anchors
are picked up/counted by the engines.
·
HTML
Comments
As above, it appears the engines ignore text
in comments.
Internal
Links & Location in Site Architecture
·
Click-Depth
Our general recommendation is that the more
competitive and challenging a keyword term/phrase is to rank for, the higher it
should be in a site's internal architecture (and thus, the fewer clicks from
the home page it should take to reach that URL).
·
Number/Percentage
of Internal Links
More linked-to pages tend to higher rankings
and thus, for competitive terms, it may help to link to these pages from a
greater number/percentage of pages on a site.
·
Links
in Content vs. Permanent Navigation
It appears that Google and the other engines
are doing more to recognize location on the page as an element of link
consideration. Thus, employing links to pages in the Wikipedia-style (in the
body content of a piece) rather than in permanent navigation may potentially
provide some benefit. Don't forget, however, that Google only counts the first link to a page that they see in the HTML
·
Link
Location in Sidebars & Footers
Recent patent applications, search papers and
experience from inside SEOmoz and many practitioners externally suggests that
Google may be strongly discounting links placed in the footer, and, to a lesser
degree, in the sidebar(s) of pages. Thus, if you're employing a link in
permanent navigation, it may pay to use the top navigation (above the content)
for SEO purposes. Major search engines prefer those links which are located
into minimum 100+ words paragraph. These kind of links never hurt you
ranking.
Page Architecture
·
Keyword
Location
We advise that
important keywords should, preferably, be featured in the first few words
(50-100, but hopefully even sooner) of a page's text content. The engines do
appear to have some preference for pages that employ keywords sooner, rather
than later, in the text.
·
Content
Structure
Some
practitioners swear by the use of particular content formats (introduction,
body, examples, conclusion OR the journalistic style of narrative, data,
conclusion, parable) for SEO, but we haven't seen any formal data suggesting
these are valuable for higher rankings and thus feel that whatever works best
for the content and the visitors is likely ideal.
Why
Don't We Always Obey These Rules?
That answer is
relatively easy. The truth is that in the process of producing great web
content, we sometimes forget, sometimes ignore and sometimes intentionally
disobey the best practices laid out above. On-page optimization, while
certainly important, is only one piece of a larger rankings puzzle:
(FYI
- The new ranking factors survey data is set to release very, very soon) It
most certainly pays to get the on-page, keyword-targeting pieces right, but
on-page SEO, in my opinion, follows the 80/20 rule very closely. If you get the
top 20% of the most important pieces (titles, URLs, internal links) from the
list above right, you'll get 80% (maybe more) of the value possible in the
on-page equation.
Best
Practices for Ranking #1
Curiously, though
perhaps not entirely surprisingly to experience SEOs, the truth is that on-page
optimization doesn't necessarily rank first in the quest for top rankings. In
fact, a list that walks through the process of actually getting that first
position would look something more like:
1. Accessibility -
content engines can't see or access cannot even be indexed; thus crawl-ability
is foremost on this list.
2. Content -
you need to have compelling, high quality material that not only attracts
interest, but compels visitors to share the information. Virility of content is
possibly the most important/valuable factor in the ranking equation because it
will produce the highest link conversion rate (the ratio of those who visit to
those who link after viewing).
3. Basic On-Page Elements -
getting the keyword targeting right in the most important elements (titles,
URLs, internal links) provides a big boost in the potential ability of a page
to perform well.
4. User Experience -
the usability, user interface and overall experience provided by a website
strongly influences the links and citations it earns as well as the conversion
rate and browse rate of the traffic that visits.
5. Marketing -
I like to say that "great content is no substitute for great
marketing." A terrific marketing machine or powerful campaign has the
power to attract far more links than content may "deserve," and
though this might seem unfair, it's a principle on which all of capitalism has
functioned for the last few hundred years. Spreading the word is often just as
important (or more so) than being right, being honest or being valuable (just
look at the political spectrum).
6. Advanced/Thorough On-Page Optimization -
applying all of the above with careful attention to detail certainly isn't
useless, but it is, for better or worse, at the bottom of this list for a
reason; in our experience, it doesn't add as much value as the other
techniques described.
As always, I'm looking
forward to hearing your thoughts and experiences about the specific
recommendations above and the general concept of the "perfectly"
optimized page.
Summary
of Post
On-page Optimization
is equally important as off-page is. So try to make sure that your On-Page is
complete before going onto Off-Page.
King content is the king of SERP. Try to update your site with king
content on regular basis because this practice increase your site pages which
cause increase in worth and at the end help your SERP. There are almost more
than two hundred factors of SEO it’s difficult to explain all of those in one
post. I have explained few of On-Page factors if you guys follow these properly
you guys will defiantly find good result for your sites. Best of luck for all
of your projects sincerely need your feedback and suggestion.