On-page Optimization consists of making changes to your website that will effect your SERP (Search Engine Results Page) rankings. As you would have learnt in the Website Optimization tutorial, a websites ranking is determined by both on-page and off-page factors. In this tutorial we will be examining some onpage changes that you can make to increase SERPs.

So to start with, what is the most important ranking factor for onpage optimization? It is without a doubt, the <title> tag. The title tag tells Google just what exactly your page, and overall website, is about. Simply having your domain URL within the title tag won’t do you much good, what you should have in the title tag is a keyword that represents what your site is about, and that you also hope to gain a ranking under within the SERPs.

The more competitive your keyword is, then obviously the harder it will be to get a ranking under that keyword term. This doesn’t mean however that you shouldn’t try to rank under a competitive keyword as someone has to rank on the first page, and selecting a good title tag that represents what your site is about is important. If the keyword just so happens to be competitive, then so be it.

The next most important factor is using a heading tag, with the <h1> tag holding the most importance, that reflects what your individual web page is about. For instance if you had a site that taught people ways to make money online, then you’re going to be using heading tags that had keywords such as make money within them. These heading tags tell Google what your page is about, and Google will use them to help determine if your page is relevant enough to display as a search result.

Whilst some pages may meet on-page optimization factors that make them more relevant than say a page that isn’t as relevant, Google may nevertheless display the less relevant page. This is due to things such as Trust Rank, whereby Google comes to trust a certain site’s material due to it proving itself as not being spammy, and proving itself to be a reliable resource under previous search terms. Just look at Wikipedia for example. Just about any article on Wikipedia will rank well on Google and appear on the first page even though Wikipedia itself may not be optimized specifically for that keyword term. This is because Wikipedia has gained a high Trust Rank and Page Rank, both of which are important factors when determining a site’s ranking.