Optimizing Your Web Pages

Creating web pages with SEO in mind takes some practice, however by following these steps, you should learn all the basics to optimizing your web pages.  If you don’t know what SEO, check out my Search Engine Optimization Overview.

The first step to optimizing your web pages is understanding how to successfully harness the power of keyword phrases.  For more in-depth keyword information, consult Identifying and Using Keyword Phrases.

The main aspect to remember when identifying and using keywords is to find keyword phrases that relate to the information on your web page and to use those keyword phrases liberally throughout the web page.  Place the keyword phrases in the body, title, headings, images and wherever else you deem appropriate. 

The second step to optimizing your web pages is to make sure you have good content.  A web page with limited content isn’t going to rank well in search engines.  You need solid content, not just a bunch of keywords clustered together.

Thirdly, make use of your meta tags.  If you write in HTML, you have likely come across meta tags.  Meta tags are in the header section of the HTML and tell search engines information about your web page.  That information includes keywords and a description of your web page.

A fourth key to optimizing your web page is to master the usage of links.  On your webpage, don’t be afraid to link to other websites.  Doing so helps search engines categorize your website.  For example, if you have a site about basketball, feel free to link to NBA.com. 

An even more important aspect regarding links is to build incoming links to your web page.  The more links to your web page, the better.  A lot of search engines look at the number of incoming links to figure out how worthy a website is in regards to a top search result ranking.  An added bonus is to have incoming links that use keyword phrases as anchor text.  That really lets search engines know what your web page is about.

A fifth and final aspect to optimizing your web page is to keep it simple.  You don’t want a huge amount of images or a vast amount of text.  Simple, well-designed web pages are types of web pages that do well in search engines. 

By following those five basic steps, you should be able to successfully optimize your web pages easily and effectively.

Read the other parts to my SEO series:

• Search Engine Optimization Overview
• Identifying and Using Keyword Phrases
• SEO Practices to Avoid