With the booming growth of online business, entrepreneurs have started thinking about optimizing their websites in order to increase their web visibility. The equation is very simple; the more visibility to the website, the more traffic it will receive. More traffic means more leads, and leads could be converted into sales, if treated properly. This situation has shifted the focus of marketers to Search Engine Optimization (SEO).
When we talk about search engine optimization, it is perceived as getting thousands of backlinks, article publishing and directory submissions, but most of the times, importance of on-page optimization has been ignored. Without a doubt, off-page optimization has more importance and requires continues efforts and hard work, but on-page optimization needs to be done before setting up a strategy for off-page optimization.
On-page optimization is necessary in order to gain Internet visibility, especially on search results. Without setting title and Meta tags, website will have a hard time appearing in search results. Google and other search engines, look for the best relevant results to supply to their users. Therefore, just because a website looks great and has a lot of visual effects, doesn’t mean it will be ranked. A well optimized site has content which is unique and relevant. Just copying the content will never help in increasing search engine rankings. The sitemap and internal linking of pages of websites help in easy navigation, which is heavily encouraged by search engines.
The design of the website is very much important to do well in search results. The website should be simple. Google and other search engines do not read flash content yet. It’s important, not to use flash or to have an alternative. Also, with the ever-growing trend to use Smartphones that are not capable of reading flash for web surfing, website owners should be able to supply an alternative to flash. Furthermore, frames should be avoided as search engines want to crawl the site as a whole.
On-page optimization starts with a unique website Title and Meta tags (keywords, description, etc.). For setting up effective Meta tags, keyword research is very important. In fact, it’s keyword research, which drives the off-page strategy as well. The other important factors include, using “alt img” effectively (this is for your images), providing necessary heading tags (using H1 wisely, etc.) and using robot.txt. All these small factors contribute their part in the grand strategy of Search Engine Optimization and complement off-page efforts.
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