Marketing Pilgrim

By Martin Muehl

The most important On Page optimization techniques include content optimization, the title-tag, several META-Tags, headlines & text decoration, alt- and title-attributes and continuous actualization.

(1) Content Optimization

This is a tough one, because you should of course concentrate on your user and easy readability, but you always have to have an eye on the search engines as well. For your users it’s clear what a certain page is about if it’s written in the headline, but for search engines it’s better to repeat the important keywords several times. So you have to strike the right balance:

- Concentrate on your users first
That’s what the website is about – you don’t sell your products or services to search engines but to people. And if they don’t get what you’re saying or find it hard to read through your website they very likely hit the back button of their browser and visit your competition.
- Then modify for search engines
If you got your text together go over it again and try to get some more keywords and phrases in where they fit and make sense. There is no certain amount or percentage that is best, just make sure to just use them a couple of times. The best ways to avoid using them too often are to use different words and phrases and to create some lists. Lists are always good to bring in some keywords.

(2) TITLE-Tag

<title>Website title</title>
It is displayed at the top of your browser and it is also used as the title of your website in the SERPs. Therefore you should take your time and think about the best title for your page.

Important aspects of the title-tag:
- Give every page of your website its own title and don’t use one title for the whole website.
- It should contain no more than around 10-12 words.
- Think of it as a short ad copy, because that’s basically it when users see them on the SERPs.

(3) META-Tags

META-Tags are not as important any more as they used to be. That’s basically because people started using them to spam search engines – especially the keyword-tag was heavily used for that. Nevertheless there are still some important META-Tags you should use:

<meta name=�description� content=�� />
The description-tag is probably the most important META-Tag. It is displayed in the SERPs and you should select it as carefully as the title-tag.

Important aspects of the description-tag:
- Give every page of your website its own description and don’t use one description for the whole website.
- The description -tag is one of the few meta-tags that still positively influences your website’s ranking, so it’s good to use your most important keywords in it.
- It should contain not more than around 25-30 words.
- Think of it as a short ad copy, because that’s basically it when users see them on the SERPs.

<meta name=�robots� content=�noodp� />
<meta name=�googlebot� content=�noodp� />
The NOODP-Tag is quite new and tells the search engines to don’t use the title- and description-tags they find if you have an entry at the DMOZ. This is especially helpful of you are not satisfied with the tags there, or you want to change them. Everyone who ever had something to do with changes at the DMOZ knows that we are not talking about days or weeks if it comes to how long that can take.

So if you use the NOODP-Tag you are basically telling the search engines that they must not use the DMOZ entry, but the tags that are currently on your website.

It’s said that Google may ignore the general NOODP-Tag, so if you’re using the “googlebot�-version you should be save.

<meta name=”robots” content=”" />
The robots-tag is used to tell the search engines (e.g. spiders or robots) what they shall do with your website. Possible entries are index, follow, noindex and nofollow – whereas index/noindex tells the search engine whether to index the page or not noindex/nofollow tells them to follow the links or not.

(4) Headlines & text decoration

Headlines shouldn’t only be used to structure your content and keep it easy to read, but also for SEO reasons. Search engines tend to give headlines between <h1></h1>…<h3></h3> tags more relevancy – <h1> being the most relevant headline.

Just like the headlines also other text decorations can help search engines identify the most important party of your website. Use <strong>and <em> to mark some text where it’s useful and also try to create some lists with<ul> or <ol>.

Everything of course with an eye on your defined keywords and phrases.

(5) TITLE- and ALT – Attributes

Title- and alt – attributes are used to describe text-links and images. It’s not only for search engine – reasons you should use them, but also for accessibility. They are shown if you move the mouse over links and images. Besides, the alt-attribute is shown if the image isn’t (yet) loaded.

(6) Keep it up-to-date

Search engines always want new content, so feed them! Not only your website will grow automatically if you always add something to it, but also search engines tend to spider your website more often if they always find something new.

[The above article is a submission for Marketing Pilgrim’s Search Engine Marketing Scholarship Contest. Each Monday in October, entries will be published and the most popular article of the week will qualify for the $5,000 grand prize. If you’d like to submit an entry, please view the contest entry-requirements and guidelines.]

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