On-Page Optimization describes the process in which content on a page of a website is edited to let search engines know what content is the most important. Books have titles, summaries, chapter names, and pages of engaging words. They do this to let you know what the book is about, what each chapter is about, etc. Websites work in a similar way. Each page has a title, a description, headings, and engaging words. Having your target keywords placed cleverly in the titles, descriptions, and headings will let the search engines know what the page is about, and thus what to rank you for.

On-page optimization is crucial to telling search engines what is on your page. Each target keyword should be featured in the name of the page, in the heading on the page, and a few times throughout the wording on the page. Your keywords should always be apparent on the page and in specific places, but should only be featured about 2% of the time (once per 50 words). If you feature your keyword too many times on the page, it doesn’t seem natural and will lead to “over optimization”. Over optimization causes your website to be penalized and do poorly in search results.

SEO is also about building quality links to your site from other credible websites. Although SEO generally takes a few months before you see the results, it is often times the most lucrative investment a business can make. Type of links matter. Google and search engines alike look at each link coming to your web pages to determine how trustworthy the content on each page is. An amount of credit is given for each link. The page with the best content and the most “quality” links will rank higher than everyone else. It is important to have various types of links as well. You should have links coming from .edus, high 2.0 blogs, and big authority sites.

Search Engine Optimization is about having quality content, and quality links. You can have thousands of backlinks, but if they are all coming from random blogs and Wikipedia, you aren’t going to rank higher than your competitor with 50 solid, quality links. This is a very basic description of SEO. In reality, there are hundreds of factors that go into Google’s algorithm which is why most people hire professionals to rank their site rather than trying to do it themselves. When done correctly, your web pages will quickly shoot up the ranks and eventually establish themselves at the top of the results.