In the last article, we discussed “on-page” optimization and the use of tags as a way to get search engines to bring you targeted website visitors. In this article we will go into much more detail because this is not only very important but also easy to do (once you learn how to do it).

meta tag. The information in a meta tag is what guides the indexing of the page. Anyone searching for the words in the meta tag will be directed to that page (or a competing page). The meta tag is placed near the top of the web page, near the header.

The phrase “meta tag” can include both the keywords meta tag and the description meta tag. The keyword meta tag contains the primary and secondary keywords that describe the content of the page. The description meta tag is usually one or two sentences about the page. If a page’s description contains the exact keyword search term entered, the description for that page will most likely appear in the search results. If you have a description that is different for each page, using different keywords, then you have a much better chance of getting your web pages to appear in organic search results.

Both the keyword tag and the description tag are “crawled” by search engines and are then used to index that page. Some search engines (such as Google) use the description tag as the “chunk” of words that appear in search results.

The words in this tag also carry significant weight with search engines looking to provide their customers with the most relevant search results.

The title tag. Part of the hidden HTML code, this tag appears at the top of the web page, and therefore this is where you should place the main keyword for that page. If possible, put a secondary keyword in there as well. The tag will be the same as the page title.

Titles and subtitles. These are called ‘h’ tags that are used on a web page. They are not as important as the two tags mentioned above. But they can add a little extra “link juice” to your web pages and thus help improve your search engine rankings. Header tags should have some important keywords.

Content of the website. The main keyword should be used in the first and last sentences (or at least in the paragraphs). They can be made bold to further attract the attention of search engine spiders who take the bold text to indicate that the words are very important. The biggest danger with using keywords in page content is using too many. Google then spanks you for Keyword Stuffing and will penalize you in the search rankings.

Alternative tags. I think these are great. You can put words behind your images and tell search engine spiders what the image is about. These words are read by spiders. They cannot read images. So, the Alt tag is a way to use images on web pages to improve your search engine ranking.

“On-page optimization” of a web page is what we have described in this article. Do it for all your web pages and you will steadily climb the search rankings.