Good to Know

On-page Optimization

ASMART Solutions is a creative team that specializes in Custom Web Design and Search Engine Optimization (SEO) services in Toronto, Mississauga, Brampton and the Greater Toronto Area (GTA). In SEO (Search Engine Optimization) we implement on-page optimization and off-page optimization. We do for our client’s both of these SEO strategies to maximize on improving our client’s website ranking.

Our experts recommend keyword marketing research and analysis to be done first by our experts. This should act as an input into the Search Engine Optimization (SEO) process particularly on on-page optimization as part of the SEO process.

We have mainly four factors to consider when doing on-page optimization for our clients. One of them is Keyword Proximity which is a measure of word order and closeness. Search engines look at individual words that make up phrases. The closer all words in a keyword phrase are together, and in the correct order, the better.  We try to avoid using ‘stop’ or ‘filler’ words between the keywords. A good example is instead of using ‘web design and web hosting’, we use ‘web design | web hosting’. We always combine the keywords in the title with ‘|’ character to minimize the amount of words in the page title

Keyword Placement is the measure of where keywords are located on a page. Search engines look for keywords in the page title, in headings, in body text, in links, in image ALT text and in drop-down boxes. One thing to note here is that Search engines crawl only PLAIN text, they will ignore text contained in images, photos and videos. Page titles should contain keywords because Search engines give more weight to keywords contained in the page title.

When ‘reading’ a page Search engines start from the top-left corner right to the bottom right corner. The site’s ‘Heading’ i.e. topic of that page which is contained in <H1> header tags is placed at the top of the page. We ensure the page title contains the primary keywords. Next <H2> header tags which we consider as a subheading should contain the secondary keywords.

The page most likely will have a few graphics especially the banner at the top of the page. Relevant keywords that describe the image are placed in the image <ALT> image tags. This alternative text is included to show up when the browser encounters a problem displaying the image. It also helps search engines understand what the image is about.

Another thing that is not crucial but important is emphasizing important keywords with italicized, bold and/or underlined text. Best practices suggest the use of a maximum of 1 per keyword, other wise it can hurt more than it helps. Remember this is not crucial but it is important for them once per each keyword

The third factor to consider is Keyword Prominence which is a measure of how early or high up on a page the keywords are found. Having the keywords in the headings, subheadings and first paragraphs (first 20 words or so) in the pages is considered the best practice. In general;

• Keywords at the top of the pages are said to have 100% prominence.
• Keywords that are in the middle of the pages have 50% prominence.
• Keywords that appear at both the top and middle are said to have 50% prominence.
• Keywords that appear at the bottom of the page have 0% prominence.

   

Last but not least, consider putting on Keyword Density or Keyword weight which is the number of times a keyword is used in a web page divided by the number of words in that page. There is no generally recommended amount of keyword weight but we try to implement what is acceptable to the search engines as there is no cardinal rule.