After selecting the right keywords you want to optimize your website for, you need to focus on what is called on-page optimization. On page optimization is what you do on your website pages to improve organic rankings. The good news is that through years of research and experimentation I have identified the most important on page factors for improving organic rankings.

There are a number of important on page optimization factors to consider when optimizing your web pages. I have found three factors in particular to have more of an impact than others when correlating them to search engine rankings. In particular, meta tags, URL structure, and page load speed all have a direct impact on search engine rankings for particular keywords or keyword phrases.

Meta tags give search engines a quick way to identify what a web page is all about. When tags are formatted correctly, search engine spiders have an easy way of evaluating content and properly ranking web pages. Although meta tags by themselves can’t significantly improve a web site’s ranking, they can definitely hurt if not properly formatted. You need to integrate additional on page optimization best practices but properly formatted meta tags are essential.

The most important meta tags are your title and descriptions tags. The title tag should be limited to sixty characters and include your keyword phrase at the beginning. Sixty characters is the maximum that is displayed by Google and although the search engine may recognize more characters, they will not be shown. Make sure that your description tag is compelling, less than one hundred fifty characters and include a keyword phrase two times.

The final meta tag of any importance is the keyword tag. This tag is supposed to include your most important keywords only. Unfortunately, most web sites are using this meta tag incorrectly and it could be hurting their rankings. Keywords are only valid if some of them are found somewhere on your website. Additionally, you only want to include about a dozen keywords per page. Any more than that and it could be considered keyword stuffing. Focus on your most important keywords and place them in the keywords tag.

When browsing the web, user are not only looking for valuable content related to their query, they are also looking for well performing web sites. The second factor we need to look at for on page optimization is load time. You should be aware of how quickly your web site pages load and continually work to make the faster. When sites load quickly, major search engines take notice and improve rankings. Focus on improving the user experience in addition to a properly formatted web page and success happens more quickly

The third and certainly one of the most important factors is URL structure. It is true that having your keyword in the URL helps but it is not the only or the most heavily weighed optimization factor by Google. There are plenty of examples of sites that include the keyword in the URL but don’t rank as well as their competitors. If you can purchase a URL that has your keyword in it though, consider it advantageous. If you are unable to do so, consider adding a folder to your main directory or page to your site that includes the keyword you want to optimize your site for. A good example would be www.sample.com/keyword. By doing so you are placing your keyword close to the root and giving it more value. Also consider a sub domain strategy.

Before you begin any search engine optimization effort, evaluate your web site, landing page, or blog from the perspective of meta tags, load speed, and URLs. There are additional on page factors we’ll discuss in the next SEO article, but the three mentioned herein are vitally important to your search engine optimization success.

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