Hi, Marshall and Gary here,

At Small Business Internet Marketing, when working with clients in developing their internet marketing strategies, we are required to explore both “On-page and “Off-page” search engine optimisation factors. The search engines look at these two areas when calculating how to rank your site’s individual web pages.

On-page search engine optimisation factors can best be described as the content contained on your pages that is relevant to a particular search query. The great thing about on-page SEO is that you have total control over it…. you can simply edit your page content to improve it.

Off-page SEO is not as easy to manipulate. Your web page rankings are not only determined by the page content but also by its popularity. Your page popularity is calculated by the number of other sites linking to your pages, the linking text used and also the importance and rank of those linking pages. Links from pages with a high page rank or authority sites such as .edu and .gov sites can weigh in heavily.

Today we are going to take a closer look at “On-page” search engine optimisation factors; you are unlikely to get back links and score well with off-page factors if your on-page content is not up to the mark in the first place. We’ve included our top 7 on-page SEO factors for small business.

#1 – Your page title tags must contain the keywords or phrases that you are trying to rank for. The title of your page doesn’t appear on the page as such, but rather at the very top left of the browser window and also in the highlighted blue link text in the search engine results. To create a title for your page you need to insert your title between the following tags <title>Your Page Title</title>. When applying this rule to small business, you should always try and make your page titles product or service specific.

#2 – Use “h” tags for the keywords or phrases that you are trying to rank for. Think of a “h” tag as a content or section heading or even a headline within your body copy. To create a “h” tag for text on your page you need to insert your headline between the following tags <h1>Your Headline</h1>. The numbers in the “h” tag simple refer to the size of the text used. Search engines read “h” tags first to understand what your page is all about. Your page will be viewed as more relevant if the search engines can see your keywords and phrases in your “h” tags. Small business owners should use these “h” tags for highlighting their different product or service categories and then individual products.

#3 – Include your keywords or phrase in the meta description tag – When displaying results, the search engines tend to highlight the searched keywords or phrases to identify relevance to that particular search. The meta description tag on each of web page ends up being the 2nd and 3rd line of your search engine listing. Any relevant keywords in this tag will also get highlighted. The meta tag description, should be a more descriptive sentence which uses the main keyword or phrase and offers more detail to encourage a click through. When creating meta descriptions for small business applications you should try and focus on a unique feature of a product or service and it’s resulting benefit. The meta tag description is expressed like this in your web page: <meta name=”description” content=”Keyword rich description here”>

#4 – Your first and last paragraph should include your keyword or phrase. Search engines tend to pay more attention to the first and last quarter of each page than the rest of the body copy. This is not to say that you don’t include your keyword within the middle half, but rather pay close attention to the opening and closing paragraph and ensure your keywords are included. Remember to always write your content with the reader in mind first and the search engines second. As a general rule, when writing copy for your small business, you should look at the opening paragraph as an introduction and broad overview of the product, followed by the features of the product, followed by the benefits received and the differentiation of your offering followed by a summary.

#5 – Aim for a keyword density of between 3-5%. Keyword density simply refers to the number of times your keyword or phrase appears for every hundred words. The last thing you want to do is “keyword stuff” or be seen as spammy. You need to ensure your keyword or phrase appears regularly enough to ensure the search engines see your page as relevant to a particular search query but not high enough to get penalised and your ranking lowered. Use this free tool to check your keyword density. http://www.keyworddensity.com/

#6 – Internal page links should contain your keyword or phrase. Search engines use the words in your link text or “anchor text” to analyse the relevancy of the page you’re linking to. A common mistake made by small business is to link back to your home page by using “Home” as the link text. This is a wasted SEO opportunity; you should be using “Your Keyword/Phrase Home” instead. For example, if you’re a run beauty therapist small business, you could use “Beauty Therapist Home”. A word of advice; unless you want to rank well for it, don’t even think of linking to an internal page using “click here” – use the page title or relevant keywords.

#7: Content is King – keep it original. A search engines main priority is to return relevant search results and deliver a satisfying user experience so they won’t want to return results for multiple sites containing the same content. Duplicate content penalties for sites that seem to be displaying content identical or very similar other site content is becoming more common. Try to avoid blatant duplication of other site content. If you have to use other site content, try and rewrite or “repurpose” it as we like to call it.

Next on Small Business Internet Marketing we’ll take a closer look at the “Off-page SEO factors. So you don’t miss out on this mini series, keep up to date with our RSS feed.

Make sure you check out our feature video that we tracked down for you.  I hope you enjoy it.

Your business buddies

Marshall and Gary