SEO is divided into two major phases on site and off site optimization. Even if there are special situations, in most cases for long term and stable ranking one will not work without the other. Onsite search engine optimization should always be the first phase of your SEO campaign since you are in total control. On site optimization is your presentation card to the search engines and it will tell the spiders exactly what your website is about and who you are. The first and most important thing is to have your content reachable to the spiders and it is not passwords protected. Your content should be in text and not in some sort of image and include the following recommendations:

Title Tags:

Some years ago title tags where the most important factor in your rankings, even if this is not the case anymore it is extremely important to have a short, concise, keyword rich title tag related to your content on the top of your html. Every page in your website should have a unique keyword rich title. Title tags should be the first thing a search engine reads in your website and it is located in the head of your coding. A site without a proper title tag is like a book without a title.

Meta Description:

This is the second thing that a search engine spider should read. Some search engines still use the meta description to provide a brief explanation of your website in their search results. The meta description should invite the search engine users to click on you and should always include your targeted keywords.

Headings:

In your content we always recommend to use H1, H2, and H3 tags to clarify to the search engines once again what your page main topic is and the respective subtitles for the subject.

Content:

Content is king! It is the most important thing in on site search engine optimization. Every day thousands of new websites are indexed by search engines and fresh unique content is extremely important to proove that you are a reliable source to your targeted audience.

Keyword Density

Always make sure to include your main targeted keywords in your titles, headings, descriptions, content and links. Do not overdo it or most probably you will be considered as a spammer by the spiders. A good keyword density should be between 6% to 10%.

File Naming:

One easy step to optimizing your website is to always include keywords in all your files including images and page name. Every keyword in your html code counts and it is definitely better to name your web pages and images with related keywords, for example it is better yousite.com/keywordraltedtocontent.html than yoursite.com/page1.html.

Images Alt Tags:

Every time you add an image to your web page you have the possibility of adding an alternative text in the case it doesn’t load. Use this option to include site related keywords in this field to increase your keyword density.

Site Maps:

Html and XML site maps are convenient to show the search engine spiders and your visitors the website structure. Both html and xml can be submitted to the major search engines for a better indexing of your website. Make sure to always keep them up to date and add or delete any content not available.

Robots Text:

The first thing a search engine spider does when it reaches your website is to read the robot.txt file to know what it should crawl. Always include this file even if you want to have your entire site crawled.

404 Error Page:

This page should include links to the main subjects in your website. It is extremely important to have one in the case a page is not available when crawled or a user misspelled a url.