SEO 101 – #3 – On Page Optimization
In this video which is the 3rd video in the series, you’ll learn where to place those keywords on your webpages that you found in Video #2 on On-Page SEO.
Transcript of Video
Each web page on your site needs a title and it’s a crucial element to have especially where the search engines are concerned.
This is because when a search engine comes to pay a visit to your site, it will look at the title of your page first and make note of what it contains. The title of the page sets the theme for the remainder of the content on that page.
The only thing you have to do is give your web page the title using the keyword phrase you’ve just chosen. So if I had chosen “legal services training” as one of the keywords I was going to optimize a web page for, I’d just place that phrase within the title.
It’s important to note that if at all possible, keep your business name out of the title. When you use your business name in your title it not only dilutes the importance of the keywords you’re trying to rank well for, it also takes up valuable space. When your web page is displayed within the search engines, the search engines only display a fixed number of characters for the title tag; on average only 60 characters and this includes spaces.
Here’s an example of a search I did on the phrase “legal services training”. All of the links in blue are identical to the title of the web page that’s listed. Now notice the listing in the 1st position which is cut off by an ellipses symbol. This tells us that this site has used a title on their page that is longer than the 60 characters Google will display. So if this website wants us to know something important about this page, we’re not able to see it.
The next place we should be putting our keywords is within a heading on our web page that contains the keywords we’re optimizing the web page for. Here is an example of a good use of a heading for the phrase “legal services training”
Headings are usually contained within header tags. While there are actually 6 levels of header tags, the most important one is the <H1> tag. When you’re optimizing your web pages your main keyword phrase should be contained within the <H1> tag. If you’re unsure about how to do this or you didn’t develop your website on your own, contact the company who developed your site.
In this case, it’s fine to add a few additional terms to the keyword so long as the main keyword phrase remains together within the heading.
Your content
The next place we’ll want to use this keyword phrase is within the content or in other words, the body of the web page itself. But in this case, we simply work the keywords in wherever they’ll fit naturally. On this page is a brief synopsis of an event that talks about “legal services training” from another website. The actual phrase itself of “legal services training” is only used twice, however, related words and phrases are contained within the rest of the content.
All of these are words and phrases that make sense to the search engines in relation to the phrase “legal services training”. The bottom line with content is to use your main keyword phrase where necessary but to not over think it too much. As you naturally write, you’ll end up using terms related to your overall main keyword or phrase as is the case in this example.
Anchor Text
Your anchor text. Anchor text is the “clickable” portion of a link. If we take a look at this website, I want you to notice all of the links on this page. All of the text that is clickable and that is in blue on this page is what’s called the “anchor text”.
What’s important about anchor text is that when you eventually create other web pages on your site, you’ll want to use anchor text that contains the keywords for the page you are linking to.
Let’s take an example of how this would work.
Let’s say that a fictional website called “Leo’s Law Firm” has three pages. One web page talks about “legal services training”, another page talks about “self help lawyers” and yet another page talks about “family law”.
Within the “legal services training” page, Leo refers to “self help lawyers”. Since he has a page on his site already that talks about “self help lawyers” AND that is the main keyword phrase for that page, he would then create a link out of the phrase “self help lawyers” and point to the self help lawyers.
Next, we’ll take a look at another important on-page element which is the description of your web page.
Your Web Page’s Description
If we take a look at the Google search results again you’ll remember that the clickable portion of the list is the actual title of the web page. The text listed below this link is what’s contained within the description of the web page and this is also a good place to put the keyword phrase you’re optimizing your page for. However, keywords in your description will NOT help you considerably as far as rankings are concerned but rather perform another important task; that of enticing website visitors to come to your site over your competition.
You can think of your description as a mini sales-page to get people to come visit you instead of your competitors.
And again, like the title tag, the description is limited to a certain number of characters; typically 250 again, including spaces. And just like the title tag, whenever the keyword is contained within it, it is bolded within the search engine results page which makes it stand out just a bit more.
Lastly, we’re going to cover images on your web pages and how they relate to SEO.
Images
Images always add to the visual appeal of any web page but like all on-page SEO elements they need to be used a certain way.
Since search engines cannot read the images themselves, we need to be sure that any image on our web page has descriptive text added to it so that the search engines know what the image is about.
This descriptive text is called the images “alt” tag. And it’s nothing more than a brief description of what the image contains.
Additionally, you can also place a caption just below the image that also gives a brief description of the image. Having both on your web page will not create a huge boost in rankings, but it will help aid the search engines in better understanding what your web page is all about.
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