Tips for Optimizing a Web Page

Published by Mark Hammond on 21 October 2008

If you know the right way to do it, then you can get a whole lot of web traffic to your website. A good search engine optimization activity will not only attract traffic to your website but even to pages selected by you and all this happens for free! All that you need to do is make certain efforts.

Firstly most people are oblivious to the fact that search engines do not index your website but your web pages hence to make your websites search engine favorites you need to optimize your web pages. To hook the search engines, the first pre-requisite is to know how they work, because unless you know the tactics of your enemy, you can’t really conquer it. Google is the most common and biggest search engine today hence if you are able to entrap this search engine then half your battle on the web is won.

Most of the people who use web as a marketing tool certainly understand the basic stuff but just in case you are new to search engine optimization then there is a need to begin from the scratch as most people often tend to omit these basic tips while optimizing their websites.

HTML tags -The first bait to hook search engine spiders are the HTML tags. HTML tags are necessary to convince search engines of your website theme and what your entire website consists of. There are primarily 2 kinds of HTML tags that you need to take care of.

The first one is the Title Tag which appears in the head portion of your HTML and is not visible to your visitors. Even though they are invisible, these tags make the most important tag for your page as these tags are in great demand by the spiders. Title tags are given a lot of weightage by search engines and make sure that all the keywords that reflect your website’s theme and idea are included in this tag. If there is any other text as well, like your services or anything that will guide the user to your website or inform the search engine about it then add that also in the title tag.
The second kind of tag is the Heading Tag. A headline tag primarily has three kinds of tags within it. There are H1, H2 and H3 tags. Any tags lower than these tags are not used usually. The H1 tag in the headline tag needs to have all the major keywords as they were used in the title tag. The H2 tag generally contains the sub headings or the secondary keywords of your web page. Search engines give a lot of importance to headline tags and the more weightage is given to the lower numbers hence if you place everything in the H1 tag only then the entire purpose of your exercise will be defeated and it will reduce the importance of your web page.

Meta Tags- There are three kinds of Meta tags for a web page. The title tag, Description tag and the keyword tag. Title tag is the title for your web page that is used by search engines as it is and it can be seen in the top most blue bar on your web page. Description tags are the most important amongst meta tags as search engines use it for describing your website in their listings. A description tag needs to talk succinctly about your website, presenting the most important aspect of your website and then luring the reader to click on your website amongst 10 other searches. The third kind of Meta tag is the keyword tag that helps search engines to index the website content of your various web pages.

These were the basic tips and tags that one needs to use in order to captivate the search engines but the job of website optimization doesn’t stop at understanding the search engine mechanism. Search engine optimization is incomplete without optimizing website content and here are a few tips to optimize your web content intelligently.

Use formatting options judiciously - unless you wish to stress on certain key words or key phrases, avoid using bold, italics or underline enhancements.

The first third of your page is the jackpot- the first third of your web page is the first text that any search engine indexes, hence it is wise to use your maximum key words in the first third page itself to optimize your web content. Do not use too many key words as beyond a certain density of keywords search engines regard it as spam and it might turn the table for you and the credibility of your website will be at stake.

Follow the inverse pyramid approach - The inverse pyramid approach means first using the primary keywords profusely and then going on to secondary key words and decreasing the text as well. Since primary keywords are generally the keywords that visitors look for in search engines so it will increase your website visibility even more if these keywords are right at the beginning o your content.

Text links can work wonders - Using text links of other pages on your website can work wonders for you as search engine spiders love text and they can index only text, not images. Hence you should stick to text if you want to be a front runner in listings.

Off page linking needs attention - Off page linking is an important exercise in order to achieve good listings. A website can also attain no1.listing on Google even if it has no content at all. This can be done by dropping links of your website and web pages on other websites and hence increasing the web visibility of your website. You need to make sure that you do not drop links on any website, but this link building exercise should be done on websites that are related to your niche and that are authority websites.

Keep adding - keep evolving your web content and adding more web pages and content as you stand a higher chance of better listing with a 70 page website than a 35 page website. Your web content should always look refreshing and creative as even with higher listings nobody would really stick around on your website until it is worth spending time on. Nobody likes stale stuff and even Google loathes stagnation.

These are just a few basic optimization tips but there are many more, some basic and some advanced because optimizing websites is no child’s play it is a complicated and creative process that requires tact.

Tips for Optimizing a Web Page

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