Beginners guide to onsite optimisation

Search engine optimisation is commonly broken down in to two main groups – onsite and offsite optimisation and to achieve good ranking positions, you cannot have one without the other. This post is concerned with some of the principles used in onsite optimisation and will hopefully provide you with enough information to attempt it yourself.

Page titles are one of the more important onsite factors in search engine algorithms. They are seen by search engines as a guide to a page's subject so should be keyphrase rich and be specific to the page content. Ideally, every topic within your website should have its own page, enabling you to optimise a page for a small set of keyphrases. This is where good information architecture (site layout) will help.

Search engines aim to deliver users with web pages that are directly related to their search term, so the more specific your web pages are to a search term, the more likely you will achieve good rankings.

Body content should also be defined and related to the subject matter. Good copy writing is a skill that will only come with practise so get going! Make sure that your content reads well, and contains numerous mentions of the keyphrases you are targeting, although be careful, don’t make your content unreadable! This will only reduce the quality of your website and search engines will pick up on this and likely penalise your website. Always write for end users and not for search engines, follow this rule and you will be fine.

URLs are an important factor in onsite SEO and should include keyphrases relating to page content. They should be as short as possible, particularly if your site contains many different levels and sub-sections. Characters and therefore keyphrases near the front of URLs are given more importance, so this should be considered when designing the architecture of a site.

Image ALT texts are used as a text equivalent of an image. They are used by the visually impaired to aid navigation and can also be read by search engines. I do not advocate the use of ALT tag keyphrase stuffing, which would greatly hamper usability for the visually impaired, but where possible, ALT text should contain keyphrases.

Headings tags can be used to include keyphrase variations such as pluralisation. They indicate the subject of page sections so are viewed by search engines as important.

All of these above factors are important to onsite optimisation. If time is pressed, I suggest beginning with the page titles and URLs as these are given greatest significance in search engine algorithms but all factors should be considered and optimised if top rankings are to be achieved for the most competitive keyphrases.