What Is On-Page Optimization and Why Is It Important To Your Web Site Or Blog

As an Internet marketing professional, I get asked a lot of questions about doing business online. Recently, a friend turned me on to Yahoo! Answers ans asked me to respond to a few questions. Each day now, I'm spending about 15 minutes responding to questions related to marketing, internet marketing, and SEO. Here's a recent dialog that I wanted to share with my blog readers.

Question: What is On-Page Optimization and Why Is It Important To Your Website?

Answer: Search Engine Optimization is the combination of both on-page optimization and off-page optimization. Both are essential for reaching #1 rankings. I like to explain the concept in terms of building a house. If you want the tallest, most sturdy house on the block, you need a strong foundation. This is where on-page optimization comes in.

On-page optimization is what you do to make your sight highly visible to search engines. The easier your site is to crawl, the more accessible it is, and therefore, the easier to rank.

That said, you need to follow good on-page optimization principles. Many of which are listed in the various responses here. My favorites are: use of H1, H2, and H3 tags; proper Meta Tags including a robots.txt file, a keyword density between 3 - 4% and the use of bold and italicized keywords. Don't underestimate the power of good meta tags. Keep your title tag to less than 60 characters and your keywords to no more than 12. Make sure your description repeats your keyword phrase twice and your good to go.

Two final important mentions. Give a lot of thought to your navigation. Search engine spiders use this to access all the pages of your website. Make sure your links are easy to follow and minimize java. Lastly, use submit a site map to Google - you'll be glad you did.

I hope you found this question and answer valuable. When thinking about doing business online, all forms of optimization are important. Start with on-page optimization. This creates a strong foundation for building a web site that is easily navigated by both browsers and search engines.

Once you've established a strong foundation with on-page optimization, turn your attention to off-page optimization. Off-page optimization is related to building in-bound links to your web site and establishing a sufficient page value to improve rankings.

I'll be sharing more on off page optimization in following articles. For now, think about what you're doing to encourage others to link to your web site or building your own in-bound links. Both forms of optimization are important. Like peanut butter and jelly, when combined, the result is more valuable than the sum of its parts.

About the author: Michael Fleischner is an Internet marketing expert and author of SEO Made Simple: Strategies for Dominating the World's Largest Search Engine. He has appeared on the TODAY Show, Bloomberg Radio, and other Major media.

Reprint Rights: Copyright 2008 - 2009 MarketingScoop.com. This article can be reproduced at no charge as long as the author box remains in tact and all links remain active.