Search Engine Optimization is generally comprised of two distinctly different activities… optimizing the website itself , referred to as “on page” optimization, and increasing the authority of the website in the eyes of the search engines, referred to as “off page” optimization.

While both strategies must be employed for best effect, most SEO Consultants begin with the on page optimization work before beginning their off page optimization efforts.

In this article, I’ll cover some of the things that can be performed to your website in order to increase its ability to achieve better rankings. First, however, you must understand that each and every page of your website needs to be SEO’d. This will not pose too much difficulty if your website is rather small but if you have dozens (or hundreds) of pages, the work to be done will be substantial.

Here are eleven website factors that may affect your SEO:

Meta Title:
Your “meta title” information is added to the page source (i.e. your website coding). This may be done manually by your web designer or added through a WYSIWYG editor if your site uses some form of Content Management System (aka CMS). On some dynamic platforms, the meta title is created automatically as soon as the page is published.

Generally speaking, your meta title should be kept relatively short (no more than 60-80 characters) and should include the two-to-three keyword phrases you are specifically trying to optimize the page for.

Meta Page Description:
Some may argue how much this affects SEO but there are other benefits to writing a good meta page description as well. Google will only display the first 156 characters (including spaces) of your page description so it’s best to use that as your maximum length.

Your page description text should read well, include your primary keyword phrase at minimum and be somewhat exciting. The page description will generally be shown to searchers just beneath the clickable title. If your description tells of a benefit or evokes curiosity in the reader, you will enhance your ability to get visitors.

Meta Keywords:
Most will tell you that meta keywords are worthless when it comes to SEO and I would tend to agree. However, if you are going to add meta keyword information I would recommend that you keep the amount to no more than about five terms in total.

It’s bad practice to add dozens of meta keywords to each page and you may actually get penalized for doing so.

On Page Content:
Your on page content should be unique to your website if at all possible and should also include the keyword phrases you are targeting. You don’t need to worry about the specific “keyword density” anymore as that is mostly a thing of the past but it does help to include the terms you are specifically targeting at least once.

Your Web Page URL:
If your website architecture allows you to control the name of each page, it’s best to see that it includes your primary keyword phrase.

If you were targeting the term, “search engine optimization,” for example, you might cause the url to be:domain.com/search-engine-optimization or even domain.com/search-engine-optimization.html

Both examples work quite well so use whatever version is easiest for you to achieve.

Your Web Design:
You may be surprised to see “web design” included in this list but it can  affect your SEO in a variety of ways:

• Your design should be attractive and professional so as to keep your  visitors on your site as long as possible .
• Your coding should be as “clean” as possible and should validate with  the “W3C validation tool” whenever possible.
• Your images and coding should be optimized so as to maximize the speed of your site. This is good for both SEO and human visitors… no one likes to needlessly wait.

On Page Link Text:
As you can control your on page link text, you can increase your optimization  for a term by using the term in the text link that points to your other page.

The gain is generally considered minimal so this should only be done sparingly and only when the keyword phrase is relatively short.

Links Pointing To Other Sites:
This topic may surprise you but most SEO Consultants agree… the search  engines’ believe that no one website is the “be all, end all” authority on a  topic and therefore expect a website to link to others on the same topic.

Of course, there is a downside to this practice… you may find that the visitor
leaves and never comes back. An intelligent strategy is to link to  informational only sites, like Wikipedia, that do not provide competitive  products or services.

Visit Duration:
Many search engines now track how long your visitors remain on your site. The longer the average is, the more apt the search engines are to believe your site is relevant to the keyword phrase that brought them to your web page in the first place.

Visit Depth:
In addition to visit duration, they can also track how many pages of your site  the visitor looked at before leaving and which specific page they exited from.

You can see this data for yourself when viewing your web stats and can use the data to help you improve your visitor’s experience.

Page Load Speed:
I touched on this when I spoke about web design but your page load speed is  also affected by the speed of your web hosting. It may not be a major factor,  but the search engines are paying attention to how long your pages take to  load.

It makes sense, really. The search engines do their best to deliver the best  possible visitor experience and if your pages take forever to load, it’s easy  to conclude that many are probably irritated as a direct result.

If you address the majority of the topics contained in this article, you’ll be  on your way to well-optimized pages. With a strong SEO framework, you’ll find that your off page optimization efforts yield better, and quicker results.

What Next?
We are your local Web Design and Online Marketing company based in Barnstaple, Devon. We help small and medium sized businesses all over the UK and the world make the most of their online presence.

If you have been thinking about ways to bring in more customers to your business, a mobile friendly website is a great tool to help you engage better.

You can call us on 01271 324 841 – or complete our Contact Form.

We’ll do our level best to answer your questions without resorting to complicated jargon and industry-speak and then you can decide for yourself whether this service is something you would be interested in.

Right Click SEO Ltd, Bridge Chambers Business Centre, 1 Bridge Chambers, Barnstaple, Devon EX31 1HB