With search engines engaging trickier formulas and faster spiders, obtaining a good ranking in the most popular search engines has become a little difficult for the webmasters. If you possess original content and you assume you will succeed in getting high ranking, you are being complacent. Thus good content does not guarantee you an edge over your competitors.

Here on page optimization steps in to your rescue; it is one of the very basic steps of optimizing your website for search engines. If you are a webmaster you ought to be well informed about on page optimization, if you aren’t you are surely at the receiving end. But not all is said and done; this thing is not very complicated technically. Thus it won’t eat much of your time if you want to learn some on page optimization techniques to boost your site’s rankings.

To get your site the exposure and popularity you think it deserves and to increase your overall CTR (Click-Through-Rate) ratio, you should employ some of the on-page optimization which I have summarized below for you to make the most of it as the saying goes “make haste while sun shines”.

Title Optimization The title tag is used in most of the available webpage when a user types and searches for specific keywords, almost all of them and is one of the main resources employed by the search engines to find webpage; it should be short but descriptive enough so that your visitors grasp some amount of knowledge on what your business is. If you are trying to drive traffic to your website, a catchy, refreshing, descriptive and effective title is a must. A visitor should find your title appealing enough to feel an urge to find more information on it. Most commonly the search engines convert the title into a link which connects it to the webpage you are referring to.The things which you must not forget to include in your title are:
Your Name, Brand Name, and Site Name: these definitely help you as well your customers.
Keywords: people often search the internet for keywords which is why pacing them in your title tag is bound to find ranking. For example if you are selling jeans you could definitely include keywords like – best jeans on the internet, online jeans shopping etc in your title tag. But be cautious not to overstock your title with keywords. A title which is both readable by your visitors and equally good for the search engine will work great.
Including your toll free customer care number like the 1800- ones will definitely get attraction as it encourages visitors to act instantly instead of surfing more on the searched stuff. Many a people will disagree but it will really help as it will give your site a professional and legitimate look. When your number is displayed in the SERP (Search Engine Result Page), surfers will prefer to click on your site as they will be impressed by the level of support provided. Even if you choose not to add the toll free number to your title it can always be placed in the Meta tags which will serve the same purpose.
Meta Tags Optimization Meta tags allow a webmaster to specify particular keywords and concepts under which the page is expected to be indexed. It should also contain a brief description of the services and specialization of your business. It is in many cases seen that page owner’s does not want activity of spiders accessing their page. Let me give an example of a game page that creates new, active pages each time new links are followed. If a web spider accesses it, the game could mistake it for a human player who has a high speed and can spin out of control. For these specific reasons the robot exclusion protocol was developed. It is implemented in the Meta tag section and its work is to request the spider not to follow it links or index its words. Meta tag should be brief and to the point otherwise it may lead to ignorance of the site by end-users. Your Meta tags should definitely contain the following:
Include your selling strategy – you need to provide what the end users need to hear which in term will provide you with an edge over others in SERP.
Keywords – Inclusion of specific keywords will give you sure shot advantage in many search engines’ relevancy algorithm.
This one does not count if you already have included your 1800- or toll free number in your title tag. This might help as some serious consumers will prefer to directly call you instead of surfing your or for the matter other sites.
Important HTML Tags Visual contents in your site are bound to raise eyebrows, here HTML jumps in, and it uses many tags to highlight certain parts of your site. In addition to that it also provides layout and formatting information. Various tags in html includes header, italic, bold etc. the header tag is more important among these as search engine prioritizes this part and searches in it. These can be used to define post titles and important sections of you site which you want your viewers not to miss. Header elements:
Header 1: the most important section of your page should be defined using header1. It is generally used for the website’s title.
Header 2 and 3: header 2 and header 3 are also used for highlighting post titles or page titles as these makes the page more readable and easier to locate things people are looking for.
Text styles:
Italics: for example this particular line is written in italic which emphasizes this line as it seems different from others.
Bold: making certain words bold will emphasize their importance but overdoing it might make the whole process fruitless.
Quote: quotes are exclusively used when we use sayings and words said by others i.e. when we quote someone.
Keyword Optimization & Synonyms The most important part of your site is its content, without proper, original and helpful content people can see through it and will bring a bad name to your site. Optimization of your site is needed to be done in such a way that it serves dual purpose of serving the search engine as well as your viewers. Over stuffing your content with keywords will surely make it unreadable and will disturb the balance between keywords and content. Important elements of keyword optimization:
Research: keyword projects requires hour of extensive research, then comes looking for a tried and true keyword tool, the internet is full of them. Once you have gathered the keywords start building contents around it. Also make sure that your content is well researched, informative and comprehensive. Performing it the right way can lead to more traffic, more sales and ultimately more customers.
Keyword density: most of the times limiting the number of keyword terms per page to three to four is optimal. Even if the keyword research you performed brought to light more than four terms which can be added to each page, including more keywords can make page content look unnatural. Keeping the keyword density moderate will show that your webpage is relevant and indeed related to the keywords being searched.
Synonyms and related keywords: since repeating keywords is such a No-No, using synonyms is a great relief and it also makes the content sound more natural and helps in optimizing.
Long Tail keywords: when performing keyword research you should target long tail keywords as they are easier to rank for and definitely helps in optimizing your site. Adding long tail keywords from your own creativity helps as it goes well along with the actual keyword and sounds natural and more readable.
Link Optimization For providing your readers with better navigation and help, you should try optimizing the internal and outbound links which also has the added merit of helping in SEO. Important elements of link optimization:
Using good anchor text while linking and including specific keywords in it gives the links a professional look and a proper value and meaning to it.
Proper use of anchor text with clean and understandable internal links are very helpful and user friendly and will surely help to a great extent. For example “extra features and bonuses” is definitely better than just “click here”.
Using permalinks (if you are using CMS) will put you way ahead of your competitors as not only the keywords are featured in the links but also it will be valued more by the search engines.
Image Optimization Search engines engage web crawlers (also known as spiders), which are very good at reading text but fails desperately when it comes to images. But images are a great way for you to connect to your viewers. As viewers can readily interpret images but spiders fail thereby affecting your site’s rankings. Thus if your site contains a large number of images, it needs optimizing and using special tags for the images will definitely help. Some important Image Optimization Elements:
ALT text: Alt text or Alternate text refers to the text shown by a image on your webpage when a mouse is hovered above it. These should be brief, meaningful and describing. When users are using a slow connection or if for any other reason the browser is not able to show the image the image is replaced by the text and is thus very helpful.
File name: using meaningful name for your images show a degree of responsibility and understanding as for example using the name “red roses.jpg” for an image of a flower is more meaningful than “DSC108.jpg”. A tip is to name the image according to the ALT text.
Image Title: when a viewer is moving the mouse over a particular image, seeing the title as tool tip is always impressive. Thus it is advisable to use the title tag in an image.
Image Linking: using the image’s keywords in the link text helps enormously when you want a link to the specific image. For example you could always use “red roses. jpg” instead of “click here” as the anchor text.