Onsite Search Engine Optimization – Homepage
February 16th, 2007 by CourtAs promised, here is the lesson on onsite search engine optimization. This is a really broad topic, so this isn’t going to be a comprehensive lesson on the subject. Instead, we will cover the most important aspects.
For this lesson, we are going to focus on your homepage. Your homepage is your most important page!
Purpose
The purpose of onsite search engine optimization is to show up in search engines when people search for keywords. We all want to be #1! For this lesson, let’s say that we want our site to come up #1 for the search term ‘cell phones’.
Must Haves
HTML Title Tag – You really need to have your keyword in your title tag. If at all possible, you want your title to say only ‘cell phones’, again assuming that ‘cell phones’ is the keyword phrase your trying to optimize for.
Heading 1
It is really important to have your keyword in there! The heading 1 of each page identifies what the page is about to the reader. The search engines know this and want to see the keyword there.
Keyword throughout the text. This can be overdone! You want the keyword to appear througout the text about 3 times and you want it to appear near the top of the page. Some of you will be stubborn, adding the keyword 6 or 7 times. This won’t work and will probably make it so you don’t get ranked at all!
Believe it or not, those are the only places that you must have your keyword.
Places To Put Your Keyword If It’s Possible
Domain Name
I would highly recommend using your keyword in your domain name. My cell phones blog is called cellphonesglobal.com. I rank alot higher with that site from having cell phones in the domain name. For some this won’t be possible. The domain for this site doesn’t have a keyword in it!
Meta Keywords
It is good to put your keyword in the meta keywords, but I have found that you can still get ranked well without doing this.
Meta Description
Having your keyword near the beginning of your meta description will definitely help! If your type of site or blog will allow this I would highly recommend it.
Alt Tag
Use you keyword in 1 alt tag on the page. In other words, I would put a picture of some cell phones, using cell phones as the alt tag for the picture.
Links
You really need to do this one! There are two ways that you should do this.
First, you should use cell phones as the anchor text at least once. For example, you should make a link that looks like this, cell phones.
Second, you should like to a page that has your keyword in it’s URL. The above example does this, as it links to http://www.cellphonesglobal.com/.
In order to make this work, you should do both!
Other Things You Should Really Do
You should make sure that your homepage has at least 500 words of text on it. If it doesn’t, it probably won’t look like a very important page to a search engine!
You should also link to plenty of pages that talk about similar topics. These pages can be pages of your site, or pages from other sites.
Conclusion
The most important aspect of onsite search engine optimization is making sure that you don’t overdo it. If you repeat your keyword too many times, you’re dead in the water.
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April 5th, 2007 at 11:26 am
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May 11th, 2007 at 9:46 pm
Shouldn’t you change the word “home” to “Make Money Online” or something of that sort?
Even though it will extend your top level navigation, the SERPs will respond better to a more descriptive anchor text. I’m going to do the same on my blog in a few minutes.
February 10th, 2010 at 7:03 pm
Sounds like an excellent idea. That is exactly why I have “make money online” in my domain name.
May 11th, 2007 at 10:13 pm
In my opinion that would be making a change for search engines that would make it harder for my readers. Not everyone would know that make money online means home.
I want my site to be as easy to use as possible, and I’m doing just fine in the SERPs. It won’t make hardly any difference at all.
September 5th, 2007 at 12:02 pm
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December 24th, 2008 at 10:00 am
Some really excellent tips….
Even though some points are basic, it is good to see all of them at a single place…
March 21st, 2009 at 6:40 pm
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March 22nd, 2009 at 7:46 am
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February 10th, 2010 at 7:01 pm
Lots of great SEO info here. Looking forward to coming back and learning more. Keep up the good work.
August 12th, 2010 at 7:36 am
Quite basic stuff, but probably great help for beginners.
September 5th, 2010 at 12:53 am
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October 9th, 2010 at 4:16 pm
Nice blog. I love the work you put into your posts.
October 11th, 2010 at 7:09 pm
Hi Court! Thank you so much for this wealth of info. Very new to this whole thing, but I’m going by your tips pretty much 100%!
Question: You wrote that it is really important to have your keyword in the H1. My template displays this headline right over my header graphic in a very ugly way, so I commented it out. <!–
Will that still work since it shows up when I ‘View Source’?
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November 29th, 2010 at 9:46 pm
I’ve been able to get more tips from your posts over anything else that I’ve found. Keep up the great work Court!
August 4th, 2011 at 9:57 pm
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September 20th, 2011 at 2:05 pm
great info and easy to follow
October 4th, 2011 at 12:24 am
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October 26th, 2011 at 1:17 pm
Thanks for the article and great blog. To learn more about SEO visit Search Engine Optimization
November 18th, 2011 at 6:12 am
Thanks a lot dear. really its a great idea.
November 21st, 2011 at 10:39 pm
This is a really broad topic, so this isn’t going to be a comprehensive lesson on the subject. Instead, we will cover the most important aspects.
November 22nd, 2011 at 1:36 am
its really new tips!!!
Thanks a lot dear. really its a great idea.!!!
January 10th, 2012 at 3:45 am
Its really Helpfull!