Search Engine

Optimization
Lecture 10
On-Page Optimization

 On-page optimization alludes to optimizing the components on your site to

make strides in its permeability in look motor comes about. A few critical on-
page optimization strategies include −
 Title Labels − Guarantee each page contains an exciting and expressive
title tag containing essential keywords.
 Meta Depictions − Compose compelling meta portrayals that precisely
summarise the page substance and lure clients into clicking.
 Header Labels − Utilize header labels (H1, H2, H3, etc.) to structure your
substance and highlight imperative sections.
 URL Structure − Make user-friendly URLs that incorporate target keywords.
 Keyword Situation − Join watchwords inside your substance, counting
headings, passages, and picture alt tags.
 Image Optimization − Optimize pictures by compressing record sizes and
counting pertinent alt labels.
Website Design SEO Guidelines

 Content Guidelines
 The success of a website mainly depends on the quality of content it
offers to its visitors. In SEO, quality content refers to a content which
not only appeals to readers but also to the search engines.
Some important guidelines to create quality
content

Choose the best keywords

 Your pages must have the keywords related to your product, services
or concept as from the keywords the search engine gets to know
about the nature and type of your website. Accordingly, the search
engine ranks your website in the result pages for the related queries.
So, conduct a thorough keyword research before you start writing
content. You can take the help of various keyword research tools
like Google Keyword Planner, Google Trends, SEMRUSH, etc.
Original/unique content
 Incorporating relevant keyword is not enough; your content must be
original and unique. It should not be copied from any other site
otherwise your website will be penalized by the search engine
Cont.

 Have enough words

 Your webpages must have enough words. They should not be filled
with lots of images, symbols and negative space. Pages with less
content and more images are not considered optimized for SEO and
rarely found on the first page of the search engines.
 Optimum keyword density
 Avoid keyword stuffing; overusing keywords will not please readers or
the search engine. They will understand your intentions that you are
only concerned about rankings not about the quality of content. So,
maintain an optimum density of keywords for better results
Cont.

 Short paragraphs
 Big paragraphs do not appeal users, so even if you have provided
relevant information the users may not even read your page. The
paragraph sizes restricted to four to five lines are considered ideal for
SEO.
 Bullets and numbering
 Most of the readers generally have short attention span and are not
willing to read the entire page. They look for bullet points to get the
meaningful information in less time, so whenever possible use crisp
and concise bullets or numbering to make your page more attractive
and readable.
Cont.

 Relevant linking
 Your content should be hyperlinked to the relevant pages. If your
content is linked to a page which is offering different information then
it would annoy the readers and you could lose your credibility.
 Proof read content
 Even if you have good typing skills or experience in writing you could
make mistakes while writing. So, carefully proofread your content at
least twice before publishing. It will help you eliminate all the errors in
your content.
Content Optimization

 Content optimization is a process of making your webpages more

appealing to search engines and users.
 It is not only restricted to using best keywords in your pages but also
focuses on various other parts of your website like the quality of
content, broken links, title tags, meta tags, etc.
 Once your content is optimized the search engine can easily find and
index your website and show up it in the initial pages of search
results
Focus on the following areas for better content
optimization

 Title Tag: It refers to the title of your page or post which is incorporated in the
head of the HTML code of a page. It appears at the top of the page on the result
pages or when you promote your page on social media. The title tags which are
concise, accurate and relevant are considered best for content optimization.
 According to SEO experts, an ideal title tag should be between 50?60 characters
long, correctly describe the content on the page and must have targeted keyword
at the beginning of the title tag.
 Meta description: It is the information which Google displays on a result page
under the title tag. It is a brief summary of the information contained in your
page; users get a preview of the page before they click it. The meta description
must contain the relevant keywords as search engine highlight it as descriptive
text when a user performs a query using that keyword.
 Try to keep the length of your meta description around 150 characters including
spaces for better results. Meta description is written by you and if you don?t write
meta description the Google will compose the meta description from the content
of your page.
Cont.

 Meta keywords: You can leave them blank as since 2009 they are
not in use. If you use them your competitors can get a clue about
your targeted keywords. You can use them if your internal site search
needs them.
 Fresh content: Fresh and unique content appeals both the users and
the search engines, so keep updating your site regularly to optimize
your content. Add new pages, articles or update your existing content
to reflect changes and updates.
Design and Layout of a Website

 The design and layout of a website may be appealing but if it is not

SEO-friendly, it cannot achieve higher rankings in search engine
result pages. The search engines cannot interpret the content just like
us and the visitors; a webpage may not look the same to a search
engine as it looks to you.
 So, keep the following guidelines in mind before you start thinking
about the design and layout of a website.
Keyword Placement

 You should use the targeted keywords and phrases at the right places
throughout the site, i.e. body text, headlines, headers, meta
description, links, etc.
 Proper keyword placement is important for every page but it is more
important on the home page as it is a gateway and introduction to
the rest of the pages of your site.
 Also, use proper words for links; instead of using "see more", "read
more" or "click here" use the words that describe the link itself.
Navigation

 The navigation must be user-friendly so that users can easily find the
desired information in less time, i.e. moving from one step to another step
should be simple and quick.
 Some of the useful practices to optimize your site are;
 The primary navigation should be at or near the top of your page.
 Add navigation options in the footer of web page.
 Add breadcrumb on every page to make users aware of their navigation path.
 Add a search box near the top of your page to enable users search by keywords.
 Offer limited navigation options on a page and limited steps in the navigation.
 Don't modify the website template in every category as it could make the
navigation difficult for the users.
URL's and Filenames

 URL should be SEO optimized so that search engine can easily

indentify it. There are a number of ways to optimize a URL such as;
 Incorporate keyword in the URL so that it could clearly tell what is on the
page
 Minimize its length to make it easier for the users to copy and paste
 Don't use URLs that contain random letters or numbers
And to optimize the filenames you can add relevant keyword in the filenames
of uploaded items, e.g. media, html, documents, etc. Also, you should use
hyphen (-) instead of underscores, spaces or plus sign to separate words in
the URL.
Images

 Website images are an important aspect of SEO and should be

optimized for faster loading and search engine visibility. Some of the
practices to optimize images are;
 The size of images should be small, i.e. 30 ?100 kb size and 72 dpi
resolution are considered optimal for website images.
 Images should be placed in context to the information on the pages, i.e.
there should be relevant content around an image.
 Use proper alt tags for the images as the search engine can only see
words, not the images. So, instead of using alt tags like "image" or
"screenshot" use a phrase that contains a keyword or describes the image.
Simplicity

 Visitors come to your site to complete some task or to find specific

information, so avoid unnecessary design elements that could make it
harder for the visitors to accomplish a task or find the information.
Some instructions to enhance simplicity in a website are;
 Don't add too many colors, i.e. according to SEO experts use maximum of
five colors in your website.
 Choose easily readable typefaces and use maximum of three different
typefaces and maximum of three different sizes for each typeface.
 Add graphics only if they help users perform a specific action.
 Add suggestion plugins to help users find pages with specific information.
 Avoid horizontal scroll and pop ups as they could annoy the users.
On-page SEO
 1. Keyword in the Title tag: Title tag tells the search engine and users about your content. It
provides an accurate description of the content, which makes it an important relevancy
signal for a search engine. So, one can incorporate relevant keywords in the title tag that
represents your content and thus can assist search engines and users in understanding what
they are going to read and accordingly to improve its ranking.

2. Keyword in meta description tag: It is a summary or snippet of your page, which is

displayed on search engine result pages below the URL. You may include your keywords in
this and make it make more relevant, appealing, and informative to search engines and users
and thus can get more click on your link.

3. Keyword in the H1 tag: It is also a relevance factor that introduces your page or acts as a
description of your page. So, you may also include your main keywords in the H1 tag to
improve its ranking.

4. The length of the page: Today, the users don't get satisfied with basic information; instead,
they want to be educated by reading all the possible information about a topic. The search
engine, therefore, prefers lengthy pages to rank first as the longer pages can cover more
aspects of your topic.

5. Canonical Tag: You should use the canonical tag when you have two URLs with similar
content. This tag prevents the issue of duplicate content as it tells Google that one URL is
equivalent to another, so the two pages with the same content are not different pages and
 6. Image Optimization: Along with the text, images should also be
optimized by using alt text, caption and description, and more.
Furthermore, don't name your image as '[Link]' instead use
descriptive filenames, for example, '[Link].'
 7. Content Updates: Search engines prefers freshly updated
content. So, keep adding more information to the site and update the
old pages if required.
 8. Outbound Links: You can use outbound links to send users to
another website if you want to provide more information. So, it can be
a trust factor for Google. However, using too many outbound links
many affect the rankings, so use them in moderation.
 9. Internal Links: You can interlink your pages so that traffic from a
one may be diverted to other pages which are less clicked by the
users.
 10. Keyword in URL: The URL should contain the keywords as it is
also a way to send a relevancy signal to search engines.
 11. Sitemap: You can create a Sitemap for your site. It helps search
engines to index all pages on your website, which is a part of SEO.
 12. Google Search Console Integration: You can verify your site at
Google Webmaster Tool. It provides you valuable data to optimize
your size.
 13. Content of Page: The content of the page should be of good
quality, relevant, and latest. Furthermore, it should supply the largest
demand, which means it should be related to highly searched topics,
keywords, etc.
 14. Linkable Content: This type of content is crafted with the
objective of attracting links generally from other websites in your
niche.
 15. Content Formatting: The content should be readable and
organized, which you can achieve through different ways, such as:
 Highlight the important parts of a page using bold, underline and italics
options
 Use a suitable font size at least 14 px
 Split the content into small paragraphs of 4-5 lines
 Maintain the required spacing between the paragraphs to make the post easy
to read
 Use CSS to create sections that break the content into manageable parts and
make it appealing
 16. Images and Multimedia Elements: The images make your
content more appealing and presentable, so add images to your
content if possible. However, do not add images unnecessarily or too
many as it may leave a bad impression. The images should not be very
large as it may increase the loading time of your page, which is not
good for SEO.
 17. URL Optimization: You can optimize a URL in two different ways: URL
optimization and URL structure.
 The URL of a page, which is also known as a slug, is a permanent link. An
optimized URL should be less than 255 characters, and hyphens '-'should be
used to separate the different parts of the URL. Furthermore, it should be short,
descriptive, and include your target keywords.
 Some examples of SEO optimized URLs:
[Link]/seo-tutorial-for-beginners
[Link]
 18) URL Structure Optimization: The URL structure should reflect the actual
structure of a website. You can optimize it by making categories that help users
and search engines find the content with ease. A website without categories is
like a warehouse with unorganized items, and with categories, it looks like a
warehouse where items divided into different categories. Although you can
have sub-categories, it is advised not to go over two levels: For example:
Homepage>Social Media> Twitter> Article (optimized)
Homepage>Social Media> Twitter> How to>Article (not optimized)
 19) Internal links: Interlinking the web pages of a website is very
important for SEO. It allows you to create your own web or network. A
search engine spider follows the links found on a page, both internal
and external links. If a page lacks links, the spider will read your page
and go. It also helps keep users on your site for a long time.
 20) External Links: External links can be used for SEO as they allow
you to link your site to other high-quality related websites, which makes
your site more trustworthy, which is good for SEO.
 21) Page Loading Speed: Search engines always keep putting efforts
to make the web faster. It prefers to include the fastest websites in its
index, which is good for a site in terms of SEO. It also helps with
customer retention and conversions.