On-Page SEO Techniques – How to Win at On-Page SEO

I updated my website at http://twilightposterz.com/

Well, not quite updated rather than posted some content to it. So its starting to look like a website now. Go have a look and do please give me feedback if you feel inclined. Again, I am no web programmer, I think that’s obvious, right?

I should discuss a bit about how I do on-page SEO, or at least did for this particular website.

The main thing for me was to get some fresh content. I don’t find writing about products in general to be particularly easy or fun. So what I decided to do was to bring in some posts from eBay.com re Twilight posters of course, and then spruce up the content a bit.

I will go back again and do more sprucing to ensure that this stuff is unique, particularly the home page (static page) of the site, as this is where my main keyword is and this is the page I am trying to rank for.

Try ranking a page where your content is not unique and you could be in for a hard struggle!

Its well worth the initial effort of gaining some uniqueness for your web content where you wish to try and rank for a particular keyword. otherwise, its very probable that the amount of backlinks you need will be a lot more than if your content is relatively unique.

How unique does it have to be? Not too sure is my answer to that. I’ve tried various techniques – change the first paragraph and last paragraph, change some sentences around, change some paragraphs around. Its a tough call but you can only really tell by trying it out for yourself.

However, if you are really keen on ranking a web page then I would suggest you go for a minimum of 50% unique. That should be just fine for Google and for the others too. That’s my experience anyhow.

After all, its totally impossible to write a fully unique article if you think about it. You would have to invent a new language!

You’ve heard about silo structures for sites etc. right? Well, this sort of thing bores me to tears and I switch off so fast as soon as I begin to read about it. So don’t ask me for a run-down of what it is and what it is not, thank you!

The Twilight Poster site only has 5 pages of content (I think ) so the way I go about optimizing that bit more is to pop in links throughout the pages with my chosen keywords as hyper-text. Most of the links will go back to my home-page with a variety of hyper-text, and not just my main keyword. Some others will go to other relevant pages.

Nothing at all tricky here whatsoever, and lo-and-behold, very, very often I find that when I’m ranking top 5 or 10 for my keyword of choice, I’ve got another page of my site hanging on in the top rankings at the same time. I guess I must be doing something right here, right?

If I don’t get 2 pages in the top 10 then I will sometimes go back to the site in question and put in a few more hyper-text links from one page to another. Maybe just 3 or 4.

Certainly not an over-haul! Generally this will do the trick and I’ll see my newly-optimized page rising up nicely.

What else?

Of course you need to get your keywords in your title (or H1 tags if you prefer). I often captitalize these too. You know why? Cos if I’m ranking say at number 3 for a keyword and I have those precise keywords that have just been searched for all capitalized and also BOLDED by Google due to their relevancy in the search, then my site’s page is going to really stand out!

I’ve tried this myself a number of times. Often in a Google search I will forgo the top-ranked site if I see another site a few places below that have my precise search keywords bolded out by Google and CAPITALIZED by the web site owner.

I don’t always use this technique, it depends on the subject matter – the niche. If I sense it has to be treated with some delicacy then I may not place the page title in capital letters.

And ya, you should ensure you hyper-text your chosen keyword that you are trying to rank for. I kinda mentioned that before – just up there. So if I’m trying to rank for “pigeon food” then I would have to get those keywords in a link on my page. Fairly obvious stuff I know, but not to everyone. At one time not that long ago I would have been baffled by this!

Another thing which is not exactly on-page SEO… I try to make it that there are not many clickable things on the page other than where I want the page visitor to click. So this would be things like AdSense of course, maybe a search box if my site is large, my own hyper-text links, which really don’t go anyplace – just to my own site, or to an affiliate link which could be through an image or a plain text link.

Otherwise, I want my recent posts showing and perahps categories for a larger site. Occasionally pages, and its required that you insert a privacy policy link if you use AdSense as we all know.

Other than this, that would be it really. I don’t want folks clicking away from my site unless I’m producing really hot stuff and I know that they will come back anyhow. In this case its no bad thing to pop in some links to other websites that are offering your site visitor relevant info or whatever. It heightens the user experience, it really does.

If your own site is of good to excellent calibre, you should have no concern about popping in a few links to other good sites that will be helpful to the visitor. After all, this is what the internet is about – sharing good quality info with one another, agreed?

Image alt text is also a decent way of on-page optimizing. Its so easy now with WordPress that I shall not go into it.

If you’ve got problems with your own site regarding on-page optimization then do give me a shout. I’m no big time expert on it, but I can quickly pick up a few things that seem not quite right and I am very happy to provide pointers where I am able to do so!

I think that’s it for on-page SEO, although I’ve probably forgotten something. I just write all my posts off the top of my head so I do sometimes forget things. Old age, huh?

More to come later on – Social Bookmarking etc. Its a long day!

Best wishes!
J