The 5 Basic Steps Of Onsite SEO

These are the 5 basic steps that you should follow when you’re trying to optimize any web page. You would use these steps whether you were trying to optimize your home page, a sub page, a post page, or any other type of page. The basic rules of onsite SEO are always the same.

1. Make sure that your keyword appears in the HTML title tag of the page you’re trying to optimize. This is without question the single most important factor of onsite SEO. Yes, you can still get a page to rank for a keyword without having the keyword in the title, but it will be much more difficult.

2. Use the keyword towards the top of the page in a bold (or large) font. If you’re using WordPress or Blogger to create your site, this will be taken care of for you by using your keyword in your post title. If you’re creating a site in hard HTML, make sure you use your keyword as part of a bold title at the top of the page.

3. Use the keyword within the text of the page. Many SEO sites will tell you that you must use a certain percentage of keyword density to achieve optimum rankings. In my experience this isn’t true. However, it’s wise to use the keyword two or three times on the page. If you have an exceptionally large amount of text on the page (more than 1,000 words), you can get away with using the keyword more often.

4. Use at least 300 words of total text on the page. You can of course get a ranking with less textual content. Actually, you can get a ranking with no content at all. However, this will make it much more difficult. If we’re going for optimal pages, they need to have 300+ words of content.

5. Use the keyword in a link that points to another related page. This aspect is easily taken care of by using the keyword as a tag or label with blogging software like WordPress or Blogger. Those using a static HTML site will have to create another page within their site that they can link to. You could also link to a related page on another site, except you would then be passing some link and keyword authority to a potential competitor. Unless you could get them to pass it back, I don’t think that would be the best idea.

Many people will tell you that onsite SEO is much more complicated than this - it honestly isn’t. Follow these steps for each page you need to optimize and you’ll do at least as well as you would by following more complicated systems. You will also be safe from potential keyword stuffing penalties from Google and other search engines.