The document provides a comprehensive guide on optimizing a website for search engines through effective on-site SEO strategies, emphasizing the importance of keyword selection, content quality, and proper metadata. Key recommendations include conducting competitor analysis for keyword research, focusing on both popular and long-tail keywords, and ensuring proper content optimization techniques. Additionally, it highlights the ongoing need for evaluation and adaptation in SEO practices to maintain and improve web rankings.

1. How to make sure your website is indexed and
optimized for search engines
A deeper look at on-site SEO
By Mary Hirst

2. Search Engine Optimization (SEO) is the practice of
improving natural listings on search engines so that
people can locate your website more easily.
There are two strands of SEO
On-page: The content, keywords, images etc that you
place on your website
Off-site: The back links and social media that drive
people to you

3. On-page optimization is the base starting point for all
campaigns

4. Keywords
Keywords are significant because search engines index
them in databases and look them up again when internet
users type search terms.
Competitor analysis is one of the best ways to start
identifying keywords, and keyword suggestions tools can
also be helpful.

5. What your competitors are doing?
What keywords do my competitors use and to what
effect?
How did they optimize these keywords?
What meta data and title tags are my competitors using?
What URL extensions did they choose?

6. Keyword suggestion tools can also help you identify popular key
words and terms. Google insights can be used to research trends.

7. Choose only 4 or 5 keywords to work with. Select them by popularity
search volume and relevance.

8. Long-tail keywords
When you start researching keywords you will notice that short phrases
like “Croatia holiday” drive more traffic than long-tail keywords like
“Croatia holiday rentals in Bol”.
That said the competition for the short phrases is sometimes immense
and with the best SEO in the world you may not get a high ranking.
Therefore it is good practice to select some high relevance long-tail
keywords. Because they are less competitive you may be able to
dominate these areas.

9. Content is king
Search algorithms are constantly changing but one
thing remains the same. Google always places high
priority to the content on your web page. Page
URLs, Titles, Heading 1 &2, and image alt tags are
for keyword placement.
placement

10. Content selections
Strategically place the keywords in these areas of your website.
Homepage URL or secondary URLs
This is easy if you are using a content management
system, simply turn on the user friendly URLs feature and
type the keywords you need.
Meta tags
The meta data descriptions placed within the head of the web
page provide information about the content of your website.
The meta description will also appear in the search listings.

11. Content selections
The meta data description should be between 70 – 180
characters, there is no advantage in making them any longer.
There is some debate about the importance to meta keywords,
but most people still insert four or five words into the meta
keywords section.
There may be some pages in your website that you don’t wish
the search engine to index, you can use the meta tag robot ‘no
index’ command to achieve this.

12. Text/HTMl ratio
Out of all your code and text, aim for 25 – 70% text
ideally.
You can check this score on Woorank.com

13. Save time on evaluation: Woorank.com

14. Content optimization
When you write quality content for the user, they
will reward you with Facebook likes, social media
bookmarks and shares and they will trust your
website. This in turn will also help your SEO efforts.

15. Content optimization
In the future, search engines will look at html 5 elements
and semantics like <article>, <nav>, <header> <section>
<figure> to evaluate what type of content you have.
Micro formats
Micro data also helps search engines identify content
types and improve the display on the search engine
results page. In the future they may have a bearing on
SEO, learn more at www.schema.org

16. The importance of Social media
Put social buttons on your homepage

17. Evaluation and analysis
SEO is a practice and a discipline requiring constant
evaluation and tracking. Websites like:
www.markosweb.com and SEO Moz pro’s on page score
card, can give you a full analysis of how you are doing and
they also provide useful suggestions for future
improvements.

18. If you are new to SEO, improving your on-site strategy is
the first and fastest step in the process of boosting your
websites ranking.
The main skills of SEO
Be focussed
Be methodical
Constantly evaluate
Stay up-to-date
On-site optimisation will greatly improve your web
ranking and boost your natural listings.