How to Perfectly Optimize On-Page? Google SERP Factors

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.