Basic On Site SEO Elements Improve Your SERP Rank
Wondering where to begin to improve your website’s search engine optimization? Here are 
some basic on page SEO elements to consider adding or changing on your website. Of course, you must consider the most important rule of all first, “Content Is King”. Meaning that you must provide valuable, relevant, and informative information to your website visitors. If you are confident that your website is providing value to the visitors, it’s time to move on to some of the website structure techniques.
Header Tags
Using the html codes of H1 through H6 (header tags) is not just for making pretty, larger or bolder text. This basic website coding is what the search engine spiders or robots read when they are scanning your website. If your site misses these elements, the spiders may read a few lines of your content, but, if they can’t figure out quickly what you have written about, they will leave and not index your site properly for the search engines.
Recently, I’ve analyzed a number of websites where header tags were non-existent. These are great looking sites but they don’t generate much traffic because of this missing element, (amongst a host of other optimization issues). When I come across websites that don’t have this basic element, it’s easy to determine that the site was created by someone who has excellent design and webmaster skills but are missing a basic understanding of creating a website that will perform for their client.
Title Tags
Title tags are different from page titles. They are written into the coding in the backend of your website and are not displayed on your website. Where they do show up is in the SERPs, (search engine results pages), hyperlinked to your web page. Write clear, compelling title tags for all of the pages on your site in order to entice people to click through to your website when searching for terms related to your product or service.
Meta Descriptions
Again, meta descriptions are bits of code that belong in the backend of your website, never to be displayed on your site – they are displayed in the SERP’s. This is where you take your title tag and explain a little more of what your visitors will get by clicking your link. Remember to write comprehensively and include your keyword phrases.
Alt Tags
Alt tags serve two purposes. They started out as coding on image files in the backend of websites and were mostly used by screen readers for people who had trouble seeing. The screen reader tool would announce the alt tag of the image so the person listening knew that an image was displayed and what it was of.
Today, the search engine spiders also use alt tags to determine what the image is since the spiders cannot really “see” the content on your pages. Spiders never look at your website as we would in a browser – they look at the back end coding. So, the more information you provide to these spiders the better they can determine the relevancy of your website in the SERP’s.
Link Anchor Text
Link anchor text is the words that are underlined with a hyperlink to another website or another page on your website. A lot of people are still using simple directive words such as “Click Here” or “Visit Our Website”. While these anchor text phrases are ok once in a while, you are better off using a keyword phrase to link on. Don’t over-optimize by always using keyword phrases as anchor text – sometimes it just wont make sense when a visitor is reading your content. So, mix it up – use the “Click Here” and other generic phrases when necessary, but, watch for opportunities to link those keyword phrases.
By improving your website with these simple SEO techniques, you should begin to see more traffic. Don’t forget to have Google Analytics set up and installed in order to be able to see your improvement!
For a limited time only, get a free report of how your website is ranking and for what keyword phrases. Click here for your free report. (See how I did that? The link to the report request is generic anchor text, but, that’s ok – I have other keyword rich anchor text links.)
These are mostly used for on-page optimizing. Normally we get a client web site this is the main thing we do before the link build.
Yes, these are some of the first steps taken for SEO – on-page optimization. Step two would be link building. And, as always, Monitor results, Plan next steps, and Improve!