The webmaster world seems to revolve around link building for Seach Engine Optimization.  Everyone wants to buy links, trade links, or get free links.  I think there are more web directories, text link marketplaces, and tags sites, than we know what to do with.  Internet marketers spend hour searching for sites they can get there link on.  I cannot tell you how much comment spam this site gets with people trying to get a backlink.

Well, backlinks are not the only way to optimize for the Search Engines.  Granted, the SEs, especially Google does give quite a bit of weight to backlinks.  However, with the recent slashing of Page Rank across the index and seriously discounting the link juice passed buy many types of links maybe it is a good time to get back to fundamental on page optimizing as well.  While this is not a replacement to link building, it is certainly a viable addition.

Here are a few of the basics of on page optimizations:

Meta Tags: Few people forget to include these and most scripts and Content Managment Systems help you by automatically placing them.  However, it is always best to analyze your meta tags to make sure they contain the best key words and phrases.  The most common tags for SEO use are META NAME=”DESCRIPTION”,  META NAME=”KEYWORDS” but use META NAME=”COPYRIGHT” and META NAME=”AUTHOR”, to include a few extra key terms.  But most importantly, always have a good <title> tag.  The <title> tag is probably one of the most important on page SEO techniques.

Alt Img: I am always shocked at how many webmasters do not include alt tags for their images.  The alt tags are a great way to increase keyword density with getting flagged for keyword spamming.  Best of all it is very easy to do.

URLs: Obviously having a keyword related domain name helps.  However, always consider search engine friendly URLs as part of your strategy.   www.domain.com/configuration.modules.php?name=Downloads&d_op=viewdownload&cid=2  does not work with the search engines as well as www.domain.com/downloads/antivirus/free_antivirus_software.html

Header Tags (Hx):  Proper Use of <h1> <h2> etc certainly helps the search engines determine the overall theme of your site.  A lot more emphasis and importance is placed on text contained in these tags over normal page text.  Use these header tags to increase the importance of your keywords.

Internal Linking: Most of us know the importance of using key words to link to internal sites.  It is also important to maintain an efficient treelike structute with no more than 3 clicks to any page on your site from the home page.  Also, don’t forget to include title tags for your links.  This is another good way to increase keyword density.

 Hopefully, these steps will help you move forward with your On-Page Optimization techniques.