– Ultimate SEO Blueprint –
USB #2
Welcome to the 2nd issue of the Ultimate SEO Blueprint free training where I am sharing the fundamental knowledge of search engine optimization coming from the years of skills and experience not a book or theory.
In this article post I am going to describe the fundamental basics of what we call On-page SEO, which is one of the first things you must do in order to rank in the search engines.
What Is On-Page SEO and Why Is It Important?
On-page SEO means any optimization that you do on your website such as:
- type of domain TLD
- keywords in domain name
- URL structure
- name of the website – main title, subtitle, description
- categories and tags
- page and post titles
- article headings H1, H2, H3
- article content relevancy
- article length
- rich media such as images, videos, and audios
These are the basic things to go through when doing on-page SEO/on your website.
But there are more factors that can influence on-page SEO and rankings, like overall performance of the website such as page load speed, user experience, or quality and performance of the web hosting service provider.
Web Hosting and On-Page SEO
So it’s always a good idea to go with quality more expensive web hosting service rather than cheap and unreliable o
ne with a lot of downtimes hurting your website’s performance and on-page SEO.
Here is the short list of quality web hosting companies that I’m personally using for years, therefore I am recommending them too.
More info about these web hosting providers at Best Web Hosting Services For Beginners And Small Businesses
The TLD Domain
The domain and domain name is the first thing that influences on-page SEO. Choosing the right name/keywords for your domain plays the huge role in search engine rankings, but also what type of TLD (top level domain) you choose.
Maybe you noticed that 99% of the time only a few TLD’s are always occupying the first page of search engines and those are .com, .org, .net, and sometimes .co, and when talking about the local business SEO, we must also include the cTLDs (country top level domain) like .us, .de, .co.uk, etc.
You almost never see on the first page other TLDs like .info, .xyz, .biz, .WHATEVER.
Including the main keyword in the domain name helps a ton. Meaning that if your business is about dog training, try to include the keyword dog or training or both in the domain name but do not go too long. Very long domain names tend to not rank well either.
Website’s Main Title, Subtitle, and Description
This is very straight forward.
When you installed the CMS on your domain and built your website, one of the first things to do is to fill in the website’s main title, subtitle, and description. Most of the content management systems like WordPress or Groove.cm will allow you to do that within its dashboard.
Same on-page SEO methodology applies here. Include the main keyword in the website’s title, subtitle, and description so it naturally fits in.
Categories and Tags
Create the categories if it’s a good fit and makes it sense to categorize the content that you intend to have on your website.
Include the related keywords in categories
Tags are like extra labels to identify your content what is it about. I personally do not pay that much attention to tags but depending on the kind of business you may need them. The only place where I pay attention to tags is the main setting of the website. Depending on the CMS software it may or may not be available.
Page and Post Titles
Title of the page or post is very important because lot of times, depending on CMS you’re using, titles are part of your URL structure such as www.yourwebsite.com/YOUR-TITLE
Your main and/or your secondary keywords that you want to rank for should be included in the title. The more the better, but don’t compromise the quality of the title.
Page and Post Content – Article, Headings, Length, and Relevancy
Now, the article content also has the effects on SEO and rankings, but probably the least out of all above. Nevertheless, it still could affect on-Page SEO either positive or negative way.
As for the article text content, there are a few outlines to follow in order to boost on-page SEO and not to kill it. One of the most important thing to remember is to not over-optimize your content with main keyword that you want to rank for. In the old days that’s what worked to bring the site up in search engines, but today it seem to work in the right opposite way. A lot of times even if you mention the keyword in the long 2000 word article just once or twice, it’s absolutely enough to get positive feedback from search engines.
This easy rule accounts only for the article body content, you definitely want to have the main keyword or its variations in the titles, headings, and subheadings and image alt tags.
Therefore, it’s Quality over Quantity, which you’ll hear from me many times when talking about Search Engine Optimization.
Rich Media Content
As rich media we refer to images and videos as well as text formats such as plain text or PDF doc. It’s been shown over and over again that the websites with rich content tend to rank better than those without.
Having a YouTube or Vimeo channel for the website is definitely good idea, but it also helps with on-page SEO when you properly connect the website with the channel and vice versa, and upload some good video content and embed it in your website.
But this kind of goes to Video SEO and other elements which is another big and extensive topic.
