A site can be optimized through a series of steps. Start with the title, header, and body content to make sure keywords show up in each of these areas. If the content is going to be an image, infographic, video, game, or some other item, include some written text on the page so the search engine will be able to index the page content and topic.
Title
The title tag is one of the most important aspects of content to both the search engines and users. Search engines consider the title to be a short and concise description of a page. The title is used by search engines as the prominent description in search engine results, so a title should be descriptive and interesting for people as well as search engines. For users, the text in a title tag doesn’t actually show up on a page, but it is often displayed by a browser at the top of the window.
To optimize content, you need to make sure your keyword is found in the HTML title tag of your page. If your keyword is “SLR Digital Cameras,” the title for the page might be something like “Finding the Best SLR Digital Cameras” or “Best deals on SLR Digital Cameras” or something which includes the keyword exactly. In the HTML of your page the title tag should look something like this:
<title>Best Deals on SLR Digital Cameras</title>
Keeping the title tag to under 70 characters is recommended, as this is the maximum size that Google can display. The title tag is also a great opportunity to differentiate your page and entice users to click through to your site.
URL
The URL, or web address for the page, can play a minor role in affecting your rankings. When creating new content, try to use the title or keyword as the basis of the page name, using dashes between words. For example, your URL might look like this for the keyword “digital SLR cameras”:
http://yourwebsite.com/best-digital-slr-cameras.html
Header tags (including H1, H2, H3, etc.)
Using header tags to organize your content can be helpful to both users and search engines. For users, it makes it possible to scan an article quickly and find what they are looking for. For search engines, it gives you an opportunity to emphasize your keyword with respect to other text on the page. The H1 tag is
the most important and should be used high on the page to indicate the title of the article or content. H2, H3, and H4 tags have some merit but aren’t required and can be used as subtitles to separate out paragraph sections. The HTML code of your H1 tag of your page would look like this:
<h1>Finding the Best Deals on SLR Digital Cameras</h1>
Body
The body text should be 2 or 3 paragraphs at a minimum or roughly 250 words, and the first sentence should include the keyword. The rest of the page should include the keyword several times, but not so much that it reads unnaturally. The number of times a keyword is used on a webpage is referred to as Keyword Density. A good keyword density target is around 1- 3% in natural prose. There are many online tools that can check
keyword density; we will discuss one of these tools in the Reports section.
In the earlier days of the Internet, search engines would award sites with higher rankings based on how many times a keyword was used on a page, which meant some website owners began “keyword stuffing” their pages, to fool search engines into believing their site was authoritative for that particular keyword.
Search engines today are technologically advanced and can easily determine whether a site is using unnatural language, keyword stuffing, hidden text, and other black-hat SEO tactics, so these should be avoided. These tricks will eventually hurt your rankings.
Meta tags
The only meta tag to really worry about is the description meta tag. This is often used by the search engines to display what a page is about on the SERP. When there is no description meta tag the search engine will display a snippet from within the page’s text, so unless you want Google to choose how to describe
your business for you, it is good practice to include a meta description. This gives you an opportunity not only to describe your site, but also to persuade a reader that the link to your site is worth clicking. The keyword meta tag is still used by many websites, but it is no longer used by search engines. For this reason we suggest not putting forth any effort into using this meta tag.
TIP FOR YOU: If you limit your title tag to 70 characters and your meta description to 150 characters, your text won't get cut off by the major search engines in the results page. This way, you can frame your online SERP message exactly the way you want it displayed.
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