On the previous entry, I summarized two of the most important on page optimization techniques for effective SEO, which include title optimization and meta tags optimization. This article will discuss further on other useful techniques comprising important HTML tags, keyword optimization and synonyms, link optimization, and image optimization.

Important HTML Tags

It is necessary to highlight certain parts of your website that you want your readers to look at. There are several tags in html which allows you to do so. For instance – the header tags [h1] [h2] [h3], Bold [strong], Italic [em], etc. The text inside your header tags (e.g. [h1]) is given very high importance by the search engine. Usually you can use them to define the page/post titles or the important sections of your website.

Header Elements:

Header 1: Header 1 should be used to define the most important section of your page. Usually Header 1 is used for Site’s title or header text.

Header 2 & 3: Header 2 and 3 can be used for Page/Post titles or important sections of your pages. Separating your content with headers is a good practice as it makes your site more readable and easy to navigate.

Text Styles:

Bold: You can bold certain words which are of high importance. Sometimes it’s good to bold your keywords where appropriate. However overdoing this may get you penalized.

Italic: You can use the [em] tag to emphasize certain words which will appear in italic.

Quote: This is very useful when you are quoting from someone.

Keyword Optimization & Synonyms

Your site’s content needs to be optimized in such a way that it can suit both search engines and your readers. Stuffing your site with too many keywords can make your site unreadable. So you will need to have some sort of balance between your keywords and your content.

Important elements of Keyword Optimization:

Research: Do a proper research before you decide on your keywords. There are plenty of free tools that can help you to do keyword research.

Keyword Density: Try to have a moderate keyword density so that it can help the search engine to determine that your page is indeed related & relevant to the keyword that you are targeting.

Synonyms & Related Keywords: Use synonyms instead of having a high keyword density. This helps to make the content sound natural while helping in SEO.

Long Tail Keywords: It’s often good to target some long tail keywords as they are comparatively easier to rank for. During your keyword research you should be able to gather some good long tail keywords that you can optimize your site for. But you can also come up with your own long tail keywords; for example try adding some common words like – ‘best’, ‘free’, ‘cheap’, ‘top’ etc. along with your actual keyword and you might eventually get some good long tail keywords.

Link Optimization

It is important to optimize your internal and external outbound links for search engines as well as to give your visitors a better navigation.

Important elements of Link Optimization:

- Try to use good Anchor Text when you are linking to other people. Include the appropriate keyword in the anchor text which gives the outbound link a ‘proper meaning’ and value.

- A good and clean internal link structure with a proper use of anchor text will definitely help. For instance, “Credit Card Application” is a better anchor text compared to “click here”.

- If you are using a CMS, then try using permalinks. This way your keywords/post title will be on the link itself and thus it will valued more by the search engines.

Image Optimization

If your site has a lot of images, you need to optimize them too as they can’t be read by the search engines. It’s very easy for a human reader to interpret the image into its meaning. However for a Web crawler the whole interpreting process is completely different. Search Engine spiders can only read text but not images. So you need to use some special tags for your images in order to give them some meaning.

Some Important Image Optimization Elements:

Alt text: ALT text or Alternate Text is the text to describe your image when your mouse moves over an image on your web page. The text should be meaningful but short. You can use your relevant keywords as ALT text. If your browser can’t display the image for some reason, the alt text is used in place of that particular image.

File name: always use meaningful file name for your images, use names like “apple-iphone-cover.jpg” instead of meaningless “DSC24045.jpg”. Keep image file name same or similar to the ALT text.

Image Title: always use the title tag in images which will show the title as tool tip when a user moves his mouse over the image. Example of an image with title tag: [img src="http://imagelocation.jpg" alt="Image description" title="Title of the Image"]

Image Linking: Whenever you want to link to your image, use the image keywords in your link text. Example: use “view an Apple iPhone”, instead of “Click here to view” as the anchor text.