It is important to get on page SEO right if you want to achieve high search engine rankings with the minimum of work. Although on page SEO will not in itself guarantee a high ranking it will leverage the backlinks you are able to generate. Simply, this is because a link to a page with good on page SEO is worth more than the same link to a page with poor on page SEO.
Here are a few tips to help ensure your on page SEO is benefiting your site:
Keywords: If you are serious about getting a high ranking and hence free traffic you will take time to properly research your keywords before you do anything else. Having completed your research you should choose a primary keyword for the site and a series of others which you can build pages around. You can have more than one keyword per page but until you have some experience you will get best results by sticking to one.
Domain Name: Register a domain name which includes the primary keyword, as near the beginning as possible e.g. yourdomainnow.com. If necessary it can include hyphens (no more than two) as this will not affect your on page SEO although it can make it difficult for people to type in. It is best to get a.com,.org or.net.
URLs: For each page the URL should contain the keyword at the beginning.
Standard Pages: Your site should have the following pages:
About Us
Contact Us
Privacy Policy
DMCA Policy
Anti-Spam Policy
Terms of Use.
There should be a link to these from every page on the site (in the header or footer).
Content: As well as making sure you have good content for your visitors you also need to ensure your on page SEO is good and will tell the search engines that your page is highly relevant to your keyword. Good practices include:
Keyword in Title
Keyword in Headings
Keyword used in first sentence and throughout content but keyword density should not be too high as to appear unnatural.
Keyword used in graphic Alt text.
Internal Linking
External Linking to reputable authority sites.
It is good practice to run through a checklist after you create a page to make sure your on page SEO is good. This is a bit of a chore but it is worthwhile.
If you are using WordPress you can get a WordPress SEO plugin to do this for you.