Here is a list of 10 basic on page SEO techniques anyone can do in order to improve the relevance of your web pages to the search engines.

1)  URL – Get your primary keyword as close to the beginning of the URL as possible. For Example if the keyword was ‘Gadgets’ then www.mywebsite.com/gadgets-gizmos

2)  Title Tag – No more than 70 characters can be displayed, the search engines emphasise this with “…” to show the title is to long and has been cut. Its very important that every page on your website has a unique page title and each title includes your targeted keyword(s) and provides a well written description of what the page is about.

3)  Description Meta Tag – Just like the title tag the description should be unique on every page and should describe in more detail what your page is about. It’s your opportunity to tell web searchers why they should click on your link.

4)  Keyword Meta Tag – This is now generally ignored by search engines but it will do no harm to list your web page keywords here.

5)  Keyword Density – This is the percentage of times a keyword or key phrase appears on a web page in comparison with the total number of words on the page.  There is no exact figure for this, you should aim for 2-7% keyword density but without sacrificing the way the content reads. So basically you always need to remember you are writing content to be read by humans and not machines.

6)  Header Tags – More weight is given to keywords that appear within H1 and H2 tags, so it’s a good idea to include your keywords in these heading tags.

7)  Use of Fonts – Highlighting your keywords with Bold font also shows more relevance to search engines. Don’t go over the top here, just highlighting your keyword once is sufficient.

Images Alt Text – Include your keyword(s) at least once in the Alt tag of any images on your web page, however always ensure the text is relevant to the image.

9)  Location of Keyword within Content – Try and get your main keywords at the beginning, or close to the beginning of your content.

10)  Keywords – Don’t just focus on 1 keyword per page, this can look spammy to search engines, for example if you are targeting the keyword ‘Gadgets’ you should also target other related keywords such as ‘Gadgets For Men’, ‘Cool Gadgets’, ‘Gadget Shop’ etc…

This is a basic list of what anyone can do to improve their website presence within search engines. If you follow the above steps and then carry out some link building you will be well on your way to success in the search engines.

Adding images to a website or webpage can be a good way to improve the users experience, providing the images are relevant to the content of a website they can break up a text heavy webpage into sections of informative text. Many people also overlook the fact images have the potential to drive relevant traffic to a website, this is because if images are properly optimised they will appear highly within the Google Image Search. Obviously then image optimisation does have a place in SEO strategies and should be carried out by every web owner.

Image optimisation tips:

Search engines are not able to read images directly, they rely on other signals such as the file name which is often used to determine the content of the image so irrelevant file names are not recommended. The file name is also a good opportunity to include keyword rich text on your webpage.

Another signal used by search engines is the Alt Attribute; this allows a description of the content within the image in the HTML coding. The description is where the search engines get most of the information about the image from; again it gives another opportunity to use keyword rich text on your website.

While images can, and do contribute towards a positive user experience and help to drive relevant traffic to your website its worth remembering that image links are not as important of a signal as text based links. Image optimisation should always be done for SEO but not by sacrificing other aspects of SEO.

Once you have researched and decided upon your keywords you need to consider using the right keyword density in order to achieve the best possible results from your SEO.

Getting the balance between good keyword density and well written content can be a fine line, ultimately you should focus on well written content for you website with around 2-3% keyword density.

Having your keywords placed within your websites content is very important as it tells both the website visitor and search engine what your website is about. When a search engine has a clear understanding of what your website is about it will be able to rank it accordingly.

When creating homepage content your first focus should be the web user, there is no point having a website on page 1 of Google if all the visitors are put off with poor on page content.

When you’re starting a new web project it’s very important to consider the domain name you will be using. This takes careful consideration, for example do you go for a new one or a old one, do you choose one that contains your keywords or company name, if you choose an old one then what about its history…each point has its advantages and disadvantages.

Firstly to look at domain age, for SEO purposes its better to have an old domain. Google prefers old domains to new, that said it’s very important to check the history of the domain, for example if it’s been spammed in the past then it will be very difficult to get it to rank well. There are ways to check the health of a domain, firstly check it’s indexed on Google and then look at the sites back link profile, it will then be clear to see the type of links that have been built to the site.

Next, looking at keywords in the domain name – there is no denying that having your keywords in the domain name does have a positive impact in search rankings however the effect this has will reduce in the future as many people take advantage of this fact and buy exact match domains in order to rank very easy for certain keywords. So my advice would be that if you’re looking for a long term stable web rank then ignore this factor.

When you have decided on a domain, register it and get a simple website uploaded as soon as you can. This will mean that your website is starting to gain some web history which will help your future SEO efforts.

Websites need to be constructed by designers who have grasped the way search engines crawl web pages, getting the structure of your website right, if not done in the first place, should be the first job in your SEO campaign.

Firstly you need to look at how your website pages interact and ensure all your html is accurate. For SEO purposes it’s a good idea to keep your pages under the 150k mark. Pages larger than this are sometimes not cached and crawled by the search engine spiders. It’s very important to ensure the search engine spiders can read your website otherwise your work is for nothing.

If you build your website with SEO in mind from the start it will really help your campaign, for example incorporating your keywords within your sites title tags, meta tags and within your content will help build your websites overall SEO profile.

Finally you need to ensure all the content on your website is well written, not too long, rich in keywords and relevant to your products or services – the most important thing is ensure that content makes sense.