On Page
    Optimization:

Search engine spiders ‘feed’ on HTML. It is very important to give them the proper ‘diet’ to rank well on search engines. Using proper HTML markups makes the page fun to read for the visitors and easy to crawl for the spiders.

Caveat: overdoing may get you branded as SPAM.

These are the major on page factor one should be careful with while designing the web pages.

Meta Content

Page Title: Include 1-2 of your most important keyword phrases here. Ideally, around 8 to 10 words or around 70 to 90 characters including spaces.

Meta Description Tag: Is reflective of the content on the page. I should ideally be between 20 to 25 words or 250 characters including spaces. Include the main keywords at the beginning of this tag.

Meta Keywords Tag: Contains the keyword phrases that are also used in the copy of the page, Title tag, Meta description, and other tags. It is advisable to add plurals and common misspelling.

Web page theme

Filename: use the main keyword/ key phrase. In case of key phrase use "-" as separator (e.g. "file-name" and not "filename")

H1, H2, H3 header text: Defines the Size of fonts. For SEO the order of importance is descending starting from 1. It is advisable to use style sheets (css to define the size, font and color of the H tags).

Bold Text/ Emphasis/ Strong/ Capitalized: These tags are used highlight portions of text which are more important.

Alt Tags: Keyword relevant Alt tags give name to the images. These tags are displayed if the browser cannot display images and also explain the image to the search engines.

Title Tags for Tables: This serves similar purpose for the table as title tag does for the page.

Internal Link Structure: Content relevant and evenly spread internal links help in optimization and ranking.

External Link Structure: Be careful with the external links. Link only to relevant websites. You do not want to send the spider away from your website unless it has seen enough.

Keyword density and spread

First text on Page: Having keyword as the first word on the page helps. If the first word cannot be the keyword, have it in the first sentence or the first paragraph.

Keyword Density: Maintain keyword density of 5- 8% on a webpage. Keyword density affects ranking on almost all major search engines.

Keyword Spread: One should take care to have keywords throughout the webpage. While some search engines give importance to the first and last paragraphs others read through the entire page.

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