There are 2 pieces to Search Engine Optimization. The first is to optimize the page you want to rank for and the second is getting links to that page. The first is sometimes called “On Page SEO” and the second “Off Page SEO”.
In this article I’m going to talk about some of the basic On Page SEO strategies you can use to make sure the search engines see your page for the keyword(s) you want them to see it for.
Title
Well, I hope it goes without saying that you want to put your keyword phrase in the title, after all your page should be about the topic of the keyword phrase so make sure you include it in your catchy title in side the title tag.
URL
It’s great if you can include the keyword phrase in your url. If you are using wordpress then you’ll want to set the permalinks to %postname% and this will include the title of your article in the url. So, if you put the keyword in the title of your article, and set permalinks as described, you will have the keyword phrase in your url automatically.
H1 Tag
When it comes to on page SEO, you should try to include your keyword phrase in a Headline or H1 tag. Also, if it makes sense in your article, you might want to use it in an H2 and even an H3 tag but don’t go overboard and stuff it into those tags just for the sake of doing it. If it doesn’t make sense from a readers point of view to have these tags then don’t use them.
Bold
Bolding your keyword phrase can give you a little bit of extra SEO credit. Again, don’t go overboard, just do it once. I usually bold it in the first paragraph.
Italics
Like bold, using your keyword phrase in italics can give you a few points too.
Keyword Density
Keyword density has been (and still is) a much talked about element for on page SEO. Some people go to extremes spending tons of time making sure they have an exact density of a certain percentage. I don’t really think it’s worth the time for that and a better approach is to simply try to use the keyword in every other paragraph. Use it in the first paragraph and the last and then every second paragraph in between. One thing I do know is that it’s a bad idea to stuff the article with your keyword so that it sounds choppy. Write for readers and you will be able to weave the keyword in and still make it sound good.
Alt Tag In Image
It’s thought that having the keyword phrase in an alt tag associated with an image on your page can be very helpful with it comes to SEO. So, it’s probably a good idea to find an image (you can get free ones at http://www.sxc.hu) for every article and use an alt tag with your keyword phrase in the tags for that image.
Image File Name
If you are going to go to the trouble of adding an image to your article, you might as well make the filename yourkeywordphrase.jpg . This can help with SEO and you might get the image to rank high in the SERPS thus bringing in visitors.
These are the main basics of on page SEO, there are other things on the page but I think this is the “important” stuff.
Also, IMHO what you put on the page accounts for only about 10% of why Google ranks you. So don’t sweat this on page stuff too much spend most of your time focusing on getting high quality backlinks with the appropriate anchor text and you’ll have a good chance of ranking.
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