Online/on-page optimization basic steps to follow

Online optimization is fundamentally the basic method to improve your ranking. It’s the first step that you need to accomplish before the launching of your website. However, most of websites are optimized after being online for a long time. Most of the time, it is due to SEO ignorance, or because the marketers laziness who keep arguing that on-page optimization is built over a collected data. It is a harmful mistake. You spend a precious time doing nothing. More than that, you may work double time to catch up. Isn’t it regrettable to see websites, the same age of yours, are ranking and collecting visits/conversion while you style turn around blindly trying to find your way?

I know that I am dramatizing. But, truly, it is too painful when you are obliged to tell a client, who is too proud of his website just because it is beautiful, that he has to rebuild it. His direct response is why? Then, you feel obliged, again, to explain the SEO basic steps that they should have been respected while creating websites:

Domain name

It is the first step that you need to think about. Why?

• Because the domain name, will help you to rank. It should be simple, short (if it is possible) and easy to be remembered. It should be original and it should reflect your niche.
• The domain name extension is also important. Because they have their own meaning too:
  
  1. .com originally used for commercial purposes.
  2. .net it is the alternative of .com.
  3. .org for none profit use.
  4. There is the local extension that fits every country for local business. It is based on two-letter ISO designation.

Server selection

Try to find the best server which will respond to the needs of your business. Check if it hosts blacklisted website. Servers hosting backlisted websites may have bad impact on your website. If you’re aiming to reach users of a specific country, it is preferable to host your websites on that country.

Choosing Keywords

Try to define keywords that you want to rank for. They should be related to your niche. Make a list and organize it starting by the important keywords to the less important. Then, base your SEO strategy over them.

Please, don’t forget that this is the most important step. If you make the wrong choices, you will lose time and money.

Meta tag title and description

Most of the time search engines display these two Meta tags. Because they are part of the search engines algorithm and they are your first contact with users, you have to think about your titles and descriptionsdeeply before start using them. Don’t forget that they should contain your chosen keywords on step N°2.

Content is a king

That is to say that search engines are in love with content. Do you want to rank? Produce content that user and search engines will adore. I insist on the use of the chosen keywords again. Don’t over use them to avoid being considered as a spammer. Each page should focus on one or two mean keywords that should be scattered wisely on over the post.

Body tags

Good contents demand the exact tags to shine more and attract bots. Tags that will help into your on-page optimization are:

• H1 Tag: should be used once on each page and it contain the mean keywords.
• H2, h3, h4… Tags: should be used for subtitles.
• Strong & em Tags: are used to identify the important keywords. This tag helps both user and bots to learn more over the page content.

These tags should be present on each page. They participate into the organization of your pages and facilitate the indexation of your content.

Videos and images

Bots could not see images nor read videos. However, they play a great role on the web site usability and heuristic.
The solution to that problem: add images to sitemap xml file, create xml sitemap for your videos. Please, don’t forget the attribute alt=” “.

URL rewriting

All your URLs should be seo friendly URLs. Avoid dynamic urls that confuse both users and bots.

Internal linking

This step is too important that they are some SEO experts who are specialized only on internal linking. A good internal linking will play an important role to decrease the bounce rate and to increase your PageRank and conversions.

These are the basic steps that normally every websites should be born with. I hope that you will take them into consideration while creating new websites or to apply them on your online website if it not already the case.