10 Tips to Optimise your Web Page

The SEO Checklist for your Website

To rank well in search engines, submitting your site to directories is not enough. Sure it will increase your Google PageRank, but to appear in SERPs (Search Engine Results Pages) you need to optimise your pages.

So, here is a list of 10 things you can do to optimise your web pages:

1. Research Keywords - Whilst this involves no coding, it is the place to start. Without this first step it is extremely difficult to optimise your pages. You need to understand which words you need to highlight and cover in your content in order to be listed in SERPs.
2. Original Content - Copying someone else's content is easily done, but apart from breaking copyright law it also harms your PageRank/search result listings. Try to write your own articles to stand out from the crowd and also give web users a reason to visit you, rather than a page with the same content as numerous other websites.
3. Sufficient Text - Try to aim for a minimum of 200-500 words in order to give your page some weighting. Anything less is likely to be pushed to the back of the que in SERPs.
4. Unique Page Title - Along with unique content, this is one of the highest priority factors in Google's search algorithm. Give each page a unique title and try to include atleast one of your selected keywords.
5. Unique META Description - Popular search engines such as Google tend not to give much weighting to META data. However, it is highly recommended that you still include it as it's not officially declared that META data is completely ignored and is still used in lesser known engines. Describe the page, but try to keep under 200 words.
6. Unique META Keywords - Try to stick to relevant keywords for each page. Again, try to limit the amount of words you enter.
7. Placement of Keywords - Make sure you enter your most important keywords in the first and last paragraph of your page text. Ideal placement would be header text and summary/conclusion. Ensure that the keywords are entered in a way that a user can read logically.
8. Keyword Repetition - You should try to frequently include your chosen keywords (or variations of each word). Again, keep the text so as it flows in a logical manner and avoid "keyword stuffing" at all costs!
9. Emphasizing Keywords - Use bold text, bullet points and headings to emphasise your keywords. This helps search engines focus on which are most important.
10. Image Tags - As search engines cannot read images, add "Alt" and "Title" attributes to each of your images. Include keywords in the description but try to keep it short.

And there we have it, 10 things to take into account when trying to optimise your web pages.

Please note that whilst you need to emphasise your keywords in text, titles, images and headers; avoid spamming techniques by all means as they will have your site peanalised by the search engines.

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