On-Page factors are related directly to the content and structure of the website. This normally consists of pages written in the HyperText Markup Language (HTML) but also applies to other document formats that are indexed by search engines. Examples of on-page optimization include actual HTML code, meta tags, keyword placement and keyword density.
What is Meta Tags:
An element of HTML Coding on a website that is used by Search Engines to index a website. Most meta-tags are included within the 'Header Code' of a website and the most important tags are the Title, Description and keyword tags. Rules used by different search engines govern how such tags are used, how many characters they should contain, and how they should be formatted.
What is Title Tag?
The Title Tag is one of the most important components as far as search engines are concerned. Because the site's Title tag as the link and main Title of the site's listing on the search engine result page.
Following are some rules about the Title tags:
1. Place your Title tags immediately below the tag.
2. Place 40 to 65 characters between the tags, including spaces.
3. Put the keyword phrase you want to focus on for this page at a very beginning of the Title.
What is Description Meta Tag:
An HTML tag that gives a general Description of the contents of the page. This Description is not displayed on the page itself, but is largely intended to help the search engines index the page correctly.
The Description Meta tag describes the web page to the search engines.
1. They read and index the text in the tag.
2. Some search engines grabs the text form of the Description tag and places it under the text form of Title tag so searcher can read your Description.
3. Sometimes search engines may not use the Description you provide. However, it uses the Description with the keyword from the body text of that page or it may use the Description of some standard web directories.
4. Some smaller search engine uses the Description tag in the results.
Following are some rules about the Description tags.
1. The Description Meta tag is very important so you should use it in your site.
2. Place your Description tag immediately below the Title tags.
3. Create a nice keyworded Description of up to 250 characters, including spaces.
4. Duplicate your important Keywords once in the Description but not more than that.
What Is Keyword Meta Tag:
This was important many years past, but this Meta tag is not so important these days. Some search engines may use it, but many don't.
Following are some rules about the Keywords tag:
1. Limit the tag up to 300 characters, including spaces.
2. You can separate each keyword with comma and a space. Don't use both but use either a comma or no space or use a space and no comma.
3. Make sure that most of the Keywords in the tag are also in the body text.
4. Don't use a lot of repetition.
5. Don't use the same Keywords tag in all your pages.
Using Other Meta tags:
There are many other Meta tags but that not all are important but some of them are useful and that are as following:
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meta name="revisit-after" content="7 days"
meta name="robots" content="index, follow"
Or
meta name="robots" content="all"
Or
meta name="robots" content="noindex, nofollow"
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Including image ALT text:
When you are using tag to insert images on the web pages. This tag can include the AltLT= attribute, which means attribute text. Search engines also read ALT texts.
Example:
img src="http://www.nextstudent.com/images/logo.gif" width="398" height="59" border="0" alt="Student Loans by NextStudent"
Anchor Text:
Anchor text is the hyperlink words on a web page - the words you click on when you click a link. Anchor text usually gives your visitors useful information about the content of the page you're linking to. It tells search engines what the page is about. Used wisely, it boosts your rankings in search engines, especially in Google.
You can use anchor text in:
1. External links - links from other sites
2. Internal links - links on your pages
3. Navigation maps
4. Links on your main page. A very important spot.
H1 Tag:
Title /heading of the page should be mentioned in H1 tag, the length of title should be limited to 60-80 characters. The standard usage of H1 tag is 3 times for the home page and once in the inner pages
Internal Links & Sitemap page Optimization
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Creating Sitemap Page:
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A sitemap is a web page that lists all the web pages on a website, typically organized in hierarchical way. Sitemap helps visitors and search engine bots to find pages on the site. It provides quick finding for search engine robot. Depending on the size of your website, it may actually link to all of your pages.
Creating Navigation Structure:
Creating navigation structure, that search engine can read:
Your navigation structure needs to be visible to the search engines. A navigation structure created with JavaScript will not work for the search engines.
1. Add a site map page and link to it from your main navigation. It provides another way for search engines to find out all pages.
2. Whenever possible, provide keywords in text links as part of the navigation structure.
3. Even if your navigation structure is visible to search engines, you may want to have these bottom-of-page links as well. They are convenient for site visitors and provide another chance for the search engines to find your other pages. Another reason of that is basic text navigation.
Creating a good and proper directory structure is also very important. Keep your pages as close to the root domain as possible, rather than have a complicated multilevel directory structure. Create a directory for each navigation tab and keep all the files in that directory.
Example:
http://www.nextstudent.com/consolidation_loans/consolidation_loans.asp
Naming Files:
Giving the proper keyword or product related names to all the images, pages etc… and the page names should be in lowercase.
Example:
http://www.nextstudent.com/plus_loans/plus_loans.asp
Avoiding Flash Animation:
You should avoid using Flash Animations in the site because search engines cannot read the Flash Animations.
However, if it is necessary to use Flash Animations in the site then there are a few things you can do to help with indexing:
1. Make sure you use your TITLE tags and DESCRIPTION and KEYWORDS Meta tag.
2. Put text between NOSCRIPT and /NOSCRIPT tags. You could use text; you can separate each keyword with comma and a space. Do not use both but use both a comma and no space or use a space and no comma.
3. Make sure that most of the keywords in the tag are also in the body text.
4. Don't use a lot of repetition.
5. Don't use the same KEYWORD tag in all your pages.
Avoiding Embedded Text In Images:
You should avoid using the embedded text in images means you should use text base information in place of images which displays the information of content in it. And also use of large images should be avoided in the home page.
Adding Body Text:
You need text in the page but it should not be more than 100 to 250 words. If you are putting article in the page and the article is of 1000 words, then it is ok. However, the 100-250 word range is good. That amount of content allows you to really define, what the page is about and will help the search engine understand what the page is about.
1. Home page must contain the short information about all the facilities and products.
2. Other pages should contain the information regarding that page with the important keywords related to that page.
3. Keywords should used and repeated in content of all pages.
Creating Headers:
HTML has several tags that define headers: H1, H2, H3 and so on. These headers are useful in search engine optimization, because when you put keywords into a heading, you are saying to search engine, "These keywords are so important that they appear in heading text" and search engine pays more attention to them. Weighing them more heavily than keywords in body text.
Formatting Text:
You can also tell the search engines that a particular word might be significant several other ways. If the text is displayed in some different way in the page means the search engine may assume that it is been set off for some reason.
Following are few things you can set your keywords apart from the other words on the page:
1. Make the text bold.
2. Make the text italic.
3. Uppercase the first letter in Each Word, and lowercase the other letters in the word.
Creating Links:
Links in your pages serve several purposes:
1. They help searchbots find other pages in your site.
2. Keywords in links tell search engines about the pages that the links are pointing at.
3. Keywords in links also tell the search engines about the page containing the links.
4. All the links must be text based hyperlinks.
URL Rewriting:
URL rewriting takes the variables out of a dynamic site URL and remaps them into a shorter version. For example:
1. OldURL:
http://www.example.com/index.php?this=1234&that=5678
2. Shorter, rewritten URL
http://www.example.com/1234/5678
When a user request a URL such as http://www.example.com/1234/5678, that URL is rewritten by the server behind the scenes so that the scripts receives the variables this =1234 and that =5678. The scripts that drive the site must be written so that they create the shorter URL for links.
The server translates the requested URLs internally without showing the translated version to the visitors.
404 Not Found:
The 404 code tell the user agent that there is no content for the URL. This response will be sent by default whenever a nonexistent URL is requested. There is also a 410 gone response that can be sent if a URL has been removed permanently, and has not been relocated.
301 Moved Permanently:
The 301 code indicates that a URL has been permanently relocated. The user agent will usually fetch the resource from the new URL immediately-in most Web browsers, you won't even realize it's happening. Spiders might store the new URL and fetch it later. This status code can be set as part of the Web server's configuration, or it can be returned as a response by a server-side script (using PHP, ASP ext.)
Robots.txt:
Spiders and Robots Exclusion: Web Robots are programs that automatically traverse the Web's hypertext structure by retrieving a document, and recursively retrieving all documents that are referenced. This page explains how you can control what these robots do when visiting your site.
What is Robots.txt?
The Robots Exclusion Protocol is a method that allows Web site administrators to indicate to visiting robots which parts of their site should not be visited by the robot. When a Robot visits a web site, it first checks for the file robots.txt in the root directory.
e.g. http://Stars.com/robots.txt
If it can find this file, it will analyze its contents to see if it may retrieve further documents (files). You can customize the robots.txt file to apply only to specific robots, and to disallow access to specific directories or files.
Here is a sample robots.txt file that prevents all robots from visiting the entire site:
1. Tells Scanning Robots Where They Are and Are Not Welcome
2. User-agent : can also specify by name; "*" is for everyone
3. Disallow : if this matches first part of requested path,
4. forget it
User-agent : * # applies to all robots
Disallow : / # disallow indexing of all pages
The record starts with one or more User-agent lines, specifying which robots the record applies to, followed by "Disallow" and "Allow" instructions to that robot. To evaluate if access to a URL is allowed, a robot must attempt to match the paths in Allow and Disallow lines against the URL, in the order they occur in the record. The first match found is used. If no match is found, the default assumption is that the URL is allowed.
For example:
User-agent: webcrawler
User-agent: infoseek
Allow: /tmp/ok.html
Disallow: /tmp
WebCrawler and InfoSeek are not allowed access to the /tmp/ directory, except to access ok. html. All other robots are allowed unrestricted access.
Sometimes robots get stuck in CGI programs, trying to evoke all possible outputs. This keeps robots out of the cgi-bin directory, and disallows execution of a specific CGI program in the
/Ads/ directory:-
User-agent: *
Disallow: /cgi-bin/
Disallow: /Ads/banner.cgi
Robots.txt is a simple text file that's uploaded to the root directory of a website. Spirders request this file first, and process it before they crawl the site. The simplest robots.txt file possible is this:
User-agent: *
Disallow:
That's it, the first line identifies the user agent; an asterisk means that the following lines apply to all agents. The blank after Disallow: means that no part of the site is off limits.
This robots.txt file doesn't do anything: all user agents are able to see everything on the site. It's worth putting a robots.txt file on every website, even it it doesn't restrict the content that spiders may access. Doing so will prevent the server from returning (and logging) a 404 Not Found error every time a spider requests robots.txt Although a missing robots.txt file foes no real harm from an SEO perspective, the 404 errors can be annoying to webmasters who are examining log files in an attempt to identify real problems.
What is Google Sitemap.xml?
The Sitemap Protocol allows you to inform search engines about URLs on your websites that are available for crawling. In its simplest form, a Sitemap that uses the Sitemap Protocol is an XML file that lists URLs for a site. The protocol was written to be highly scalable so it can accommodate sites of any size. It also enables webmasters to include additional information about each URL (when it was last updated; how often it changes; how important it is in relation to other URLs in the site) so that search engines can more intelligently crawl the site.
Sitemaps are particularly beneficial when users can't reach all areas of a website through a browseable interface. (Generally, this is when users are unable to reach certain pages or regions of a site by following links). For example, any site where certain pages are only accessible via a search form would benefit from creating a Sitemap and submitting it to search engines.
This document describes the formats for Sitemap files and also explains where you should post your Sitemap files so that search engines can retrieve them.
Please note that the Sitemap Protocol supplements, but does not replace, the crawl-based mechanisms that search engines already use to discover URLs. By submitting a Sitemap (or Sitemaps) to a search engine, you will help that engine's crawlers to do a better job of crawling your site.
Using this protocol does not guarantee that your WebPages will be included in search indexes. (Note that using this protocol will not influence the way your pages are ranked by Google.)
The Sitemap Must:
1. Begin with an opening tag and end with a closing tag.
2. Include a entry for each URL as a parent XML tag.
3. Include a child entry for each parent tag.
XML Sitemap Format:
1. Indexed pages in your site.
Site:www.xyz.com
2.Pages that link to your site.
Link:www.xyz.com
3. The current cache of your site.
Catch:www.xyz.com
4. Information we have about your site.
Info:www.xyz.com
5. Pages that is similar to your site.
Related:www.xyz.com
AVOID THINGS THAT SEARCH ENGINES HATES
Dealing With Frames:
A framed site is one in which the browser window is broken in to two or more parts, each of which holds a Web Page. Frames cause a number of problems as following:
1. Some search engines have trouble getting through the frame-definition or frameset page to the actual web pages.
2. If the search engine gets through, it indexes individual pages, not frame sets. Each page is indexed separately.
3. You cannot point to a particular page in your site.
This may be a problem in the following situations:
1. Linking campaigns. Other sites can link to only the front of your site; they can't link to specific pages during link campaign.
2. Pay-per-click campaigns. If you are running a pay-per-click (PPC) campaign, you cannot link directly to a page related to a particular product.
3. Placing your products in the shopping directories. In this case, you need to link to a particular product page.
Search Engine Spamming Techniques that should be avoided
Use of Invisible Text:
Using invisible text is an extremely common search spamming practice in which a spammer uses a similar color for fonts as well as the background. Invisible text is used to stuff pages with keywords that are visible to search engines, but invisible to the viewers. All major search engines today can identify this kind of spamming easily and can penalize the site.
Stuffing Keywords:
Keyword stuffing can be done in many ways. One most common way of doing this is by using invisible text. Other methods involve using keywords in very small fonts at the bottom of pages, using keywords in hidden tags (like no frames tag, alt tags, hidden value tags, option tags etc.) or stuffing the main content with repetitive keywords. Keyword stuffing is a trick that most search engines today are able to sniff out.
Link Spamming:
Link Spamming is the process of spamming search engines by getting thousands of inbound links from link farms, forums, blogs, free to all pages, unrelated websites or even by registering hundreds of domains and getting links from all of them generating a link empire. To put it in simple words link spamming is the process of getting inbound links through unethical practices solely for the purpose of ranking higher in search engines.
Most search engines give high level of importance to in-bound links and consider them as an indication that the site is credible. Participating in free for all and linking farms can get any site thousands of in-bound links, which can make them look important in the eyes of the search engines when they actually aren't. Most search engines today have come up with strict measures to deal with such kind of spamming and can even ban an involved website completely from their search listings.
Cloaking:
Simply put, cloaking is any process that involves presenting search engines with one set of information and the visitors with another. The copy presented to the search engines is highly optimized and hence the search but may rank it higher.
Creating Doorway Pages:
Doorway pages are pages that are highly optimized for search engines. They are similar to junk pages and contain nothing but keywords and irrelevant content. When a visitor enters such a page, his is either automatically redirected or asked to click on a JavaScript link.
It is not necessary that all doorway pages should always look this way. There are ways in which good and related information can be provided making the doorway pages an informative page instead of a page that contains nothing but junk. Only when one tries to take shortcuts does he relent to creating junk pages instead of offering informational content.
Page Redirects:
Often people create spam filled Web pages intended for the eyes of search engines only. When someone visits those pages, they are redirected to the real page by META refresh tags, CGI, Java, JavaScript, or server side techniques. There are legitimate reasons for cloaking and similar techniques, but don't use them unless you know exactly what you are doing.
Duplicate Content:
Its Possible that content duplication is the single biggest SEO problem faced by websites today. Whether the duplication is international or not, presenting the same content to search engines under multiple URLs can cause a site to be ranked poorly or penalized. In some cases, it prevents indexing entirely.
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