Specific Secrets to On Page Optimization: The Key to Search Engine Traffic
While implementing a linking strategy is the top priority of
most internet marketers, the fact of the matter is that you need
to do everything you can to increase your edge over the
competition, and one of those ways is to effectively use on page
optimization.
First of all, let's do a little research on the competition and
see what they are doing.
If you have a list of keywords that you are targeting to promote
your website, grab them and head over to Google. If you don't
have a list of keywords or keyphrases, you should sit down and
do a little research and see what keywords you should target.
Now, select the keywords that you want to target - the more
specific and niche oriented the better.
Just make sure that people actually search for those keywords.
If you aren't sure how often those keywords searched for, go to
the Overture Search Term Suggestion Tool or Wordtracker to find
out just how often, and in the case of Wordtracker, just how
competitive your keywords are.
Type in your keyword and see what comes up. Then go to the first
two or three sites that are listed under that keyword.
Look at how the pages of these sites are optimized and make a
few notes.
You want to check:
-how they have used their heading tags -how often they have
repeated the keyword on the page -if they put keywords in the
alt tags of their images (put your mouse overtop of the pictures
on their pages and see if anything comes up) -if they have the
keyword in the title of the page -if they named the page after
the keyword (e.g. - keyword.html) -if they used the keyword in
any of their meta tags. Go to "View" on your web browser (in
Internet Explorer) and down to "View Source" to see what they
have put in their meta tags -if the keyword is a part of their
url
Once you have taken note of the above for the top two or three
sites, go back to Google again and type in
"link:[http://www.competitor's-website-address-here.com]",
putting the url of the page you just checked into the
"[http://www.competitor's-website-address-here.com]" section
above.
This will bring up a list of the other websites that are
currently linking to them.
Now that you have analyzed the top two or three websites listed
for that one keyword, you want to imitate what they have done
and go a little further.
Get out your list of how each site was optimized, and look to
see what each of your competitor's haven't done.
Go through the list provided above and see how you can improve
on their current on page optimization strategy.
For example, if they have forgotten to use the keyword in the
title of their page, you can do all of the on page optimization
that they have done, but go one step further and put your
keyword in the page's title.
Or, if they only have a few sites with low Page Rank linking to
them, you could make it your goal to get a few more sites
linking to you than them, or to get sites that have a higher
Page Rank linking to your site.
You want to see what they have done and then optimize a little
bit more. This will ensure that you have a successful strategy,
as you will be adding to their already proven on page seo
strategy.
You want to do this for each keyword that you are going to
target. It's a monumental task, but it will dramatically
increase your search engine listings.
Now, you could spend hours on this whole process if you want to
(and save yourself a little money in the process), or you could
get a tool like the new version of SEO Elite (http://www.newseoelite.com)
and automate the majority of this process.
This program has saved me hundreds of hours by automatically
analyzing well optimized sites and giving me the results in an
easy to read format.
To be honest, I'd rather not spend countless hours researching
how my competitors are optimizing their pages if I don't have
to. Spending a few dollars for a program that does this (and
other things) for me was well worth it as far as I am concerned.
Once you have analyzed the competition and have a search engine
optimization plan of action, you need to build your pages.
If you are creating a site that will have one page specifically
optimized for each keyword that you want to target - which is
really what you should be doing - you may want to check out http://www.nichedir
ectorygenerator.com.
This program will dramatically speed up your whole site building
process.
All you need to do is design a template for your website, give
the program a list of the keywords that you want the pages to be
optimized for and it generates a webpage specifically optimized
for each keyword.
The trick here is in how you design your website template.
You must always start from scratch, laying out everything on
your page according to what your competitors have done for their
on page search engine optimization strategy. Don't copy their
layout, but keep in mind approximately where they placed their
keywords in relation to the design of their site. Get out the
list you made earlier and do what they did.
Once you specify exactly where you want each keyword to be on
the page, niche directory generator will provide you with
custom, keyword (or keyphrase) optimized pages.
Just a note - niche directory generator allows you to have
articles displayed randomly on your pages throughout the site
using JavaScript.
Now, search engine spiders don't read JavaScript, so they won't
know what your article says, so they will index your pages based
on what's in your template. As your template is optimized with
your keywords, the search engine spiders will see that your page
is keyword rich (having a fairly high amount of keywords vs. the
total amount of text on the page) and will rank your pages
accordingly - so you may see a higher search engine ranking as a
result.
However, the drawback to this is that the people who come to
your site see randomly posted articles on your pages - so they
may not get the content that they want.
Also, if search engine spiders feel that your site has too many
keywords for the page and not enough content (as it can't see
what's in the JavaScript), it may exclude your site from its
listings or give your site a little lower ranking.
The choice is yours.
Personally, I'd use niche directory generator to design an
optimized template and then add my own personalized content for
each page, rather than using JavaScript to randomly place
articles on my site.
I think it's a better long term strategy, even if it costs me a
few spots in the search engine rankings for now.
About the author:
Tim is an SEO Expert, and author of "White Hat SEO Revealed",
which outlines step by step the very methods he has used to help
many internet marketers increase their website's search engine
ranking.
The best part about it, is that you can download his ebook for
free for a limited time at www.phase1.ws