Right now you’re probably thinking what the .htaccess file has to do with the topic of SEO. This is an SEO blog right? In fact, it plays quite an important role in the way your website is ranked by the search engines. The problem is that few people are aware of its importance and it could be affecting the ranking of your website right at this moment.

What Is A .htaccess File?

According to Wikipedia, a .htaccess file is “the default name of a directory-level configuration file that allows for decentralized management of web server configuration.” If you’re not a computer whiz (and I’m not), such a definition is simply impossible to understand. So putting aside all the computer programming terminology, a .htaccess file is a small file which is placed within a website to perform a number of functions.

In this article, we will talk about 2 of these functions (there are many others) because they are the only ones related to SEO. I will also show you how to write the .htaccess file so that you use your .htaccess file for maximum SEO effect.

Blocking Users

A .htaccess file can be used to allow and block users by domain or IP address. The reason why you would want to do such a thing is because there are many online tools which people use to grab their competitor’s keywords. This then allows them to target your keywords and potentially bump you down the search engines. For example, one such tool is SpyFu.  They literally allow you to spy on your competitors. If you want stop such tools from being used on your website by your competitors, then simply structure your .htaccess file like the example at the bottom of this article.

Redirecting URLs

If you did a search on Google and looked through the search results, you will find that some websites are indexed with www. in front of them and others without it. If you were to search even deeper, you may even find some websites indexed twice, once with the www. in front of them and others without it. Why is this the case?

This is because backlinks have been built to both the www. and the non-www. but the search engine treats them as separate websites. This means that you are essentially building links to 2 separate websites instead of just the one. As a result, any SEO benefit is getting divided up between 2 websites when they could helping just one and getting much better results. In order to avoid such a problem, you have to redirect one URL to the other. It is best to redirect the URL with the least amount of backlinks to the one with the most amount of backlinks.

.htaccess File Example

Below is the .htaccess file I use for most of my websites. It blocks access to the biggest and well-known spying tools on the Web as well as redirects a non-www. URL to a www. URL. Modify the code slightly by replacing “yourdomain” with your URL.

Simply copy the code, paste it in a notepad file and then save it as .htaccess. Then upload it using ftp or other means to your website.

It’s amazing how a little bit of code can make a big difference to your SEO efforts.

Just in case you’re wondering, this is the only time that I will make reference to programming code when talking about SEO. The role of the .htaccess file was far too important to ignore and not share with all of you.

SEO is so addictive! Yes, it’s like a drug but in contrast this is actually healthy. You have to excuse me for the different nature of this article. I just feel that the time has come to share my passion for SEO with everyone out there.

The reason why it’s so addictive is because once you know how to do it and see the results of your hard work first hand, you just want more and more! For example, if you’ve been targeting a certain keyword for a certain amount of time and then you discover that you’ve finally reached number 1 on Google, you both feel elated and start to think about new possibilities! Such as “what if I targeted another related keyword? How many more visitors would that bring?” The best thing is that all you have to do is replicate what you did for another keyword. And things are always easier the second time!

Another reason why it’s so addictive is because there is a certain benefit in being able to say that you are number 1 on Google for such a keyword. For example, if you owned a company which provided home loans, and your website reached number 1 on search engines such as Google, you can pretty much say that you are most popular and most used home loan provider in the country. The reason why I say this is that the majority of people outside the SEO and Internet marketing community still believe that the website that appears on top of the search engines is the most clicked on website, hence the most popular. As a result, the image of your company can be dramatically enhanced if you appear at number 1.

By simply knowing the necessary on page and and off page SEO, you can reach number 1 for any keyphrase, provided it is realistic. These days, it is practically impossible number 1 for 1-word keyphrase such as “car”, “house” or “holiday” because of the intense competition. However, 2-word and 3-word keyphrases are more realistic. Just remember that you still target those keyphrases that get a decent amount of searches.

Before you know it, you will get addicted to SEO and never look back.

We all know that backlinking is essential for SEO success. I outlined this in my article about off page SEO. However, there are still a couple of backlinking mistakes committed by people worldwide which is costing them dearly in search engine rankings, traffic and most importantly, revenue.

1. No Anchor Text

This is the most basic principle of a good backlink. If you want your backlink to help your website rank for a certain keyword, then the keyword must be in the anchor text of that backlink. For example, if the main keyword of your website was “designer wedding clothes”, then the text which should be included in your backlink should be “designer wedding clothes.”

2. Linking To The Wrong Page

This follows on from the previous backlinking mistake. It also emphasises the importance of choosing to target 1 keyword per page. For example, if you have a webpage which is optimised for the keyword “designer wedding shoes” then all the backlinks with the keyword in the anchor text should be sent to that page. Don’t send it to your home page or any other page. Sounds simple and logical, but so many people forget about this.

3. Linking From Irrelevant Sites

Search engines thrive on relevancy and reward those who help it achieve that objective. Make sure that all the links pointing back to your website are from relevant websites. For example, if your website was about designer wedding clothes, make sure that a plumbing website does not link to you. Sometimes, there may be cases where you cannot control this, however, in most instances, the website linking to you will get punished for linking to an irrelevant website instead of you.

A certain exception to this rule include article directories, video sharing websites and social media sites. However, all of them have categories and as long as your backlink is in the most relevant category, you will be fine.

4. Linking From Dodgy Websites

Make sure that the website you are getting linked from is not a dodgy website. Apart from affecting the reputation of your website, this can lead to your website getting punished from the search engines. A dodgy website refers to any website which uses black hat SEO strategies. For example, there are a lot of “link farms” out there on the Web which have been created specifically for website owners to put a link back to their website. Avoid such websites because they only encourage unnatural linking (which is black hat) and which will only get your website punished.

In rare cases, you may get other put a link to your website on one of these, however, most of them do require your consent. At the end of the day, these link farms will become harmless when the search engines start ignoring them.

5. Getting Reciprocal Backlinks

Many SEO experts out there encourage website owners to get reciprocal backlinks. This refers to 2 websites linking to one another.

The truth is that reciprocal backlinks give you very little if any SEO benefit. This is because it appears unnatural to the search engines for 2 websites to be linking to one another.

On the other hand, one-way backlinks give you the most SEO benefit. And you get this through a variety of ways as indicated in my article about off page SEO.

Avoid Mistakes To Succeed Online

Sometimes it’s those little things which make something successful. When it comes to Internet marketing and SEO, doing backlinking correctly is one of those little things which pays off in droves.

In a previous article, I advocated using Google Keyword Tool to perform keyword research. This is because it is the best free tool out there to find out what keywords people are searching online. I mean, this tool gives you Google’s search data on a platter and the fact that is available for use to everyone means that you must take advantage of it.

The part where most beginner keyword researchers get stuck on is figuring out the difference between broad, phrase and exact match and which one they should be using for their research. I hope this article will clear this up for many of you.

Understanding The Terminology

If you’re new to keyword research, understanding the difference between broad, phrase and exact match is crucial. I must admit that when I started doing keyword research, I also had difficulties understanding the difference. I eventually worked it out and I hope this explanation makes it easy for you too. I will be using examples to demonstrate the difference because it is the easiest to way to understand.

Broad Match

This refers to a search query which shows all the keywords which contain the search terms in any order.

For example, if I did a broad match search for “designer wedding gowns”, then the following keywords would appear:

• wedding gowns by designers
• designer wedding dresses and gowns
• designer made wedding gowns

As you can see, all the words in your search query appear in your above keywords in any order.

Phrase Match

This refers to a search query which shows all the keywords which contain the search terms in the same order.

For example, if I did a phrase match search for “designer wedding gowns”, then the following keywords would appear:

• best designer wedding gowns
• designer wedding gowns sydney
• most popular designer wedding gowns in 2010

As you can see, all the words in your search query appear in your above keywords in that order.

Exact Match

This refers to a search query which shows all the keywords which ONLY contain the search terms.

For example, if I did a exact match search for “designer wedding gowns”, then the only keyword that will appear is:

• designer wedding gowns

This type of match search is very specific.

Now that you understand the differences between each match search, you won’t be surprised to find out that there are more searches for broad match than for phrase and exact match. You should be able to see this when you alternate between broad, phrase and exact match on Google Keyword Tool.

Which One Should You Use?

The million dollar question is which type of match search you should use for keyword research. This is something that few SEO consultants talk about. What I’m going to reveal here is something which most gurus will never reveal.

So here goes.

Exact match search is the most accurate estimator of short-term traffic potential.

This is because it is much easier to rank highly for exact match because they have far less competition. However, they also have less searches.

But here’s the good news.

When you start ranking well for exact match, you will then start ranking for phrases which contains your initial exact match keywords. So you will then be able to tap into phrase match which gets more searches and more traffic.

But here’s the best part.

Once you start ranking #1 for a search phrase, there is somewhat of an “authority kick” where you start ranking for your keywords not just in that order but also in different order ie broad match variations. Furthermore, you will start ranking for semantically related phrases too.

Hence, broad match is the most accurate estimator of long-term traffic potential.

What does this all mean?

This essentially means that you should be focusing on ranking for exact match searches first. They may have the least amount of searches but they are also the doorway to ranking highly for phrase match searches and then eventually broad match searches. This is one of the main reasons why I advocated targeting 1 keyword per page in a previous article.

At the end of the day, SEO is a long-term investment in being able to rank highly for broad match searches. You cannot expect results overnight, but by targeting the right keywords, you can be on track to achieving your objective faster than others.

The time has come to list the top 10 SEO mistakes committed by website owners worldwide. If you are complaining about your website not ranking high enough on the search engines, then have a good look at this list and make sure your website is not making any of these mistakes.

I’ve divided up this article into 2 sections: on page SEO and off page SEO mistakes. As you read through this post, you will realise that the mistakes listed here are strongly based on what I’ve covered in my previous posts about SEO.

On Page SEO Mistakes

This section refers to SEO mistakes made on your actual website.

1. Not Targeting 1 Keyword Per Page

This is the most important facet of on page SEO yet so many people are either unaware of its importance or forget to do it. It’s 100 times easier to target just 1 keyword per page than to target 10 keywords per page. At the very maximum, you can target 2 keywords but try to keep it to one. Focusing your efforts on 1 keyword per page will get greater results quicker. I can guarantee it.

2. No Keyword In URL

The URL of each page should have the keyword you are targeting for that page. If it doesn’t, then you are going to make it harder to get that page ranking for that target keyword. Fix up your URL if you have to because this is crucial to SEO success.

3. No Keyword In Title Tag

I cannot count the number of pages I’ve been webpages not have their target keyword in the title tag. Just in case you’re not aware, the title tag is what appears at the top of your browser when you’re on a webpage. This is the one mistake I see the most because it is so obvious when I visit a webpage. It’s amazing how many home pages of websites have the word “Home” in their title tags. You MUST have the target keyword in your title tag because it will make a huge difference to your SEO efforts. This is certainly one of the top 10 SEO mistakes out there today.

4. Bad Use Of Meta Description And Meta Keywords

The most common mistake regarding meta description is people not using it at all. Just in case you weren’t aware, the meta description is a short description which is used to describe your website in search engine result listings. You might as well use it to entice people to visit your website when they find you on the search engines. It’s also doesn’t hurt to have your target keyword there.

Regarding meta keywords, the most common mistake is people adding a ton of keywords there. You should restrict yourself to a maximum of 5 to 8 keywords because any more will be seen as keyword spamming by the search engines and this will get you punished.

5. Bad Keyword Density

Unfortunately, many people are still committing this grave SEO mistake. Some are mentioning their target keyword as much as possible on their webpage to try and get it to rank highly. It used to work in the early days of the Internet when search engines were relatively dumb but nowadays it’s bound to get you severely punished or even banned.

On the other hand, there are those people who do not mention their target keyword enough on their webpages. This is also bad because the search engines have no idea what keyword your webpage is trying to rank highly for.

The goal should be a keyword density of 3% which is not too much and just enough for good SEO.

Off Page SEO Mistakes

This section refers to SEO mistakes made outside your website, but which hamper your website’s ability to rank highly on the search engines.

6. Bad Keyword Research

Keyword research is the basis for SEO success. If you target keywords which have high competition, then your ability to rank highly and get traffic will be reduced in the short term. On the other hand, you should not simply target keywords because of low competition because there may not be enough people searching for that keyword. It’s all about finding a balance between the number of searches and the number of websites competing for that keyword. Use tools such as Google Keyword Tool can help you do that.

7. No Keyword In Anchor Text

Off page SEO is all about building backlinks aka links back to your website. However, in the process of doing that, many people forget to put their keyword in the anchor text of the backlink. For example, if the primary keyword of your website was “computer repairs”, then you want to computer repairs in your anchor text, just like in the following:

“Visit the best computer repairs service in town.”

Please note that the above is just an example.

This must be one of the most simple top 10 SEO mistakes committed today.

8. No Anchor Text Variety

While it’s great to use your target keyword in the anchor text of your backlinks, you must also mix and match with other keywords. In other words, if you have 100 links with the same keyword in your anchor text, then the search engines will get suspicious that a robot is at work and will punish your website. For this reason, you should find about 5 other related keywords and use them in your anchor text too. The greater the variety, the better your SEO results will be.

9. No Link Source Variety

There are plenty of ways to get backlinks, however, one of the top 10 SEO mistakes committed by people too often is by using only a minimal amount of link sources. For example, some people simply use article marketing to get their backlinks. Others just use social media. The reality is that you should use a wide variety of sources to get your backlinks. This is because the more sources you use, the more natural the backlinks appear to the search engines, and the higher your website will rank.

10. No Natural Build Up Of Links

Building on the previous mistake, you have to make sure that the amount of backlinks your website gets takes place in a natural, human-like manner. For example, getting 300 links in 1 week is almost certainly going to make search engines suspicious about your website and they will punish you accordingly. However, if you get 300 links over the course of a month, then that will appear to be more natural and they will more than likely than not reward you.

Fix Them And Then Avoid Them

I suggest that you go through all of your websites and see whether they are committing the SEO mistakes covered in this post. After fixing them, it’s all a case of avoiding the top 10 SEO mistakes so that your websites get the rankings and traffic they need and deserve.

There are many reasons why you would want to outsource SEO. You may have read my earlier posts on on page SEO and off page SEO and found them to be very useful. However, not everyone is keen on doing the work involved.

The beauty of living in a globalised world is that you can easily find people in other countries who have got the right SEO knowledge to actually do the work for you. And more often than not, they can be relatively inexpensive to hire.

This post will go through some of the ways to find such people.

Elance

This is a great way to find SEO personnel anywhere on the planet. It’s also better than most other services because you get really professional people signing up instead of amateur ones which don’t do a great job.

There are 2 ways you can use Elance:

• You can go and personally find people by category and email them to see if they’re interested in working for you (every worker has a rating system so you can see what previous clients thought of their work)
• You can post your job with a detailed description and get candidates to apply for the job.

I tend to have greater success with the second option than the first.

Ask Your Friends

Another way to outsource SEO is by asking your friends whether they know of someone who offers a good SEO service. If that proves to be unsuccessful, you can go on online forums and ask around there. You are sure to get an answer somewhere there.

SEO Buddy Pro

The way I outsource my SEO is with a service called SEO Buddy Pro. I find it to be the best SEO service out there currently on the Internet. It involves paying a monthly fee so that a specially trained SEO team in India does all the work for you.

There are 2 packages currently available:

• Pro Pack
• Domination Pack

For starters, the Pro Pack should be enough, however, if you really want to start dominating the search engines, then the Domination Pack is the one for you.

There’s no denying that SEO is vital to online success, however, there’s no reason why you couldn’t outsource SEO so that you can enjoy the other things in life more.

If you’ve been doing internet marketing for as long as I have, then you would know about the importance of the SEO mindset. You need to have this type of mindset if you want your website (or websites) to rank highly on the search engines, get lots of traffic and at the end of it all, get lots of sales and customers.

If you are a newbie to online marketing, it’s certainly not easy to adopt the SEO mindset. It’s just one of those things that becomes a habit and that you adopt unconsciously. In fact, as I am writing this blog post, I am (without knowing) using this mindset.

What Is The SEO Mindset?

Put simply, it’s when you think about creating websites, pages, content, links in terms of maximising SEO. It’s not easy to explain so I’ll use the example of this blog post.

As I am writing this blog post, I am strategically placing semantic keywords throughout so that when the search engines come around to index this blog post, this will get a more favourable ranking.

(Semantic keywords are those keywords which are related with the main keyword, in this case, SEO mindset)

In addition, before even writing this post, I’ve chosen the pages I want to link to as well as the anchor text I am going to use for each of them. It’s now all a matter of placing them neatly within this blog post.

How To Adopt This Mindset

The key to adopting this type of mindset is to have a detailed and thorough understanding of on page SEO and off page SEO. Once you understand these two concepts (which were covered in my previous posts), you will never again create anything online without thinking about SEO. Which is a great thing I must add.

There’s nothing worse than creating great content but not making it easy for visitors to find it online.

If you haven’t yet done so, I implore you to read over my posts on the topics of on page SEO and off page SEO because all you need to know about getting high rankings and lots of traffic is here. Make it your goal to keep reading them until you understand every sentence. If you still don’t understand anything, you can always contact me and I will be more than happy to help.

After more than 2 years in the internet marketing industry, there’s no doubt in my mind that the SEO mindset is the difference between earning a couple of dollars sporadically online and a healthy, consistent, full time living online.

Once you have mastered on page SEO, it’s time to master off page SEO. If you haven’t read my previous post on on page SEO, please read that first because any off page SEO will be ineffective if on page SEO is not first up to scratch.

Off Page SEO is all about getting links back to your website so that it ranks highly for the target keywords on the search engines. These are more commonly known as backlinks.

Choose Your Keywords

The first step to performing off page SEO is to choose your target keywords. You want to come up with a list 10 keywords.

This is how you should divide your 10 keywords:

• 2 should be your primary keywords and the ones you want your website to rank number 1 for in the long run. For example, you may choose “beauty salon” as one of your primary keywords.
• 5 should be closely related keywords which are longer tailed and easier to rank highly for in the short run. For example, you may choose “beauty salon tips” and “beauty salon business.”
• 3 should be vaguely related keywords which are related to the broad topic of your primary keyword. For example, you may choose “beauty training” and “beauty services.”

Linking & Anchor Text

Now that you have your list of keywords, it’s time to link back to your website with them. The way you do this is with anchor text.

Anchor text refers to the visible, clickable text in a link. For example, if the primary keyword of your website was “beauty salon”, then you would want to use beauty salon as the anchor text, just like:

“Try out the best beauty salon on the planet.”

Note: The above is just an example.

Another thing you want to make sure when you are linking with anchor text is that you are linking to the relevant page. For example, if you using “beauty salon tips” in your anchor text, make sure that it is linking to a page optimised for the keyword “beauty salon tips.” This builds on the SEO rule of optimised each page for just 1 keyword, which was covered in my post about on page SEO.

When it comes to off page SEO, it’s much easier to rank highly for a variety of keywords by linking to various optimised pages than just the main page of a website.

Backlink Sources

You can get backlinks from a variety of sources online:

• Article Marketing – this refers to submitting articles (at least 300 words long) to various online article directories such as Ezine Articles. It’s important that you engage in effective article marketing if you want to make the most of this source of backlinks.
• Video Marketing – this refers to creating videos and submitting them to major video sharing websites such as YouTube. The most important thing is that the title, description and tags of each video contains the target keywords. Don’t forget to link to your website somewhere.
• Press Release – this refers to sending out a press release about your website and your products and/or services. Copyblogger can explain how to use press releases better than I can. Once again, don’t forget to put a link back to your website on the press release you send out.
• Blog Commenting – this refers to leaving comments on high ranking blogs. If you want to leave a comment, most blogs ask you to leave your name and website URL which is then hyperlinked with your name. This is the perfect place to use your target keyword in the anchor text to your website. Make sure that you leave informative and engaging comments on blogs otherwise moderators will simply delete your comment and you will miss out on a backlink.
• Forum Commenting – this refers to participating in high traffic forums about the topic of your website. Most forums allow you to put your website URL with your preferred anchor text in your signature. Just in case you don’t know, a signature is a small tab of information which appears under each of your forum posts. Search engines are constantly indexing forums, so the more you post in forums, the more backlinks you can get.
• Social Media – this refers to interacting with people with similar interests in online communities such as Twitter and Facebook. This is a very broad topic which will be discussed in more detail further on. The only thing that you need to know is that search engines are continuously indexing new content and links on these sites so you would be crazy not to get backlinks from these.
• Social Bookmarking – this refers to sharing your favourite links with people on the Web. This is just like the common bookmark tabs you have on your browser but this time, you are sharing these with the rest of the world. The biggest social bookmarking sites are Digg, Technorati and StumbleUpon. Once again, these sites are continuously indexed by search engines so leaving backlinks here is totally worthwhile.

While it’s great to know that there are many sources of backlinks, they must be used with great care and in adherence with the most important SEO rule of them all. This is covered in the following section and must be thoroughly understood if you want to do off page SEO correctly.

The Most Important SEO Rule

When it comes to getting backlinks for your website, the most important rule is that these backlinks must be created as naturally as possible. I cannot stress the importance of this enough!

If you are still wondering what I mean, here’s an example.

Let’s say that the target keyword of my website was “beauty salon” (following on from the example in my previous post). If you go out and get 50 backlinks with the keyword “beauty salon” in every anchor text in just 1 week, then this is not natural. Smart search engines such as Google will detect this and they will interpret this as the work of a robot. For them, if it doesn’t look like the links came naturally, then the link benefit will be drastically reduced and your website will most likely be pushed down the rankings for that target keyword. Instead of helping to improve your ranking, you will jeopardise it.

Even 25 backlinks in 1 week may be excessive.

It all really depends on both the variety of anchor text and link sources. Write this down on a piece of paper and stick it on your wall.

When building backlinks, make sure that you always have:

• anchor text variety
• link source variety

Anchor Text Variety

Anchor text variety refers to a mixture of keywords in the anchor text of your backlinks. For example, instead of using “beauty salon” in the anchor text of 50 backlinks, you can divide it up among a variety of keywords.

You can have 10 backlinks with “beauty salon” in the anchor text, 10 backlinks with “beauty salon tips”, another 10 backlinks with “beauty salon business” with the remaining 20 backlinks being divided between “beauty training”, “beauty services”, “beauty images” and “beauty day spa.”

It all comes down to choosing a list of 10 keywords which was discussed in the first section.

Link Source Variety

Link source variety refers to a mixture of sources for your backlinks. For example, instead of getting all your backlinks from article marketing, you should also get some from video marketing, blog commenting, social media and social bookmarking.

Once again, it appears more natural for the search engines that backlinks come from a wide variety of sources rather than just a single source. This will only help you improve your website ranking.

It’s Time To Take Over The Search Engines

With the valuable SEO information presented in this post and in my previous post, you are more than ready to take over the search engines with your websites.

It’s now all about doing the necessary work. If you are able to perform both on page and off page SEO on a consistent basis over a lengthly period of time, there is no doubt that you can reach the top of the major search engines.

If you want your website to start dominating the search engines for certain keywords, the first step is doing On Page SEO. The fact is that if your own website is not correctly optimised for keywords, then the effectiveness of any off page SEO will be reduced and you will just make it harder on yourself.

The Number 1 SEO Rule

The most important rule to remember about this topic is that each page of your website should be optimised for only 1 keyword. Too often, people try to optimise 1 page for many keywords but what ends up happening is that the page never ranks highly for any keyword. It’s just like the idea that it’s better to be an expert at something rather than the jack of all trades.

So if you have a couple of keywords you want your website to target, then create a separate page for each one. Then optimise each page for the target keyword using the information below.

On Page SEO Optimisation

I’ve divided up the topic into 6 small sections below. If you follow the information in all 6 parts and incorporate them into all your web pages, then you will have the most optimised website possible.

URL

You need to make sure that the URL of your page contains your target keyword. Let’s say that your target keyword was “beauty salon”.

If your page was the home page, then the URL should be something like this: http://www.beautysalonguide.com/

If your page was a sub page, then the URL should be something like this: http://www.howtodressup.com/beauty-salon-tips

As you can see, the target keyword is part of the URL. In general, the further to the left the keyword is, the better it is for search engine rankings.

Title Tag

This is what appears at the top of your browser when you visit a web page. To do On Page SEO correctly, you want your keyword to appear here. Using the previous example, if you had a web page targeting the keyword “beauty salon”, then you should have something like “Beauty Salon Tips” in the title tag.

Meta Description

This is what appears on search engine listings underneath the title tag of your website. This typically occupies 2 lines and its purpose is to describe your website in an enticing and compelling way to get people to click through. However, many people forget to add their target keyword here. That doesn’t mean that it should be stuffed with keywords. It should both keyword-rich and descriptive.

Keep it to 15-20 words because any more will probably get cut off by the search engines. It’s also good to put the target keyword right at the beginning or right at the end.

Meta Tags

This is where you can put in the keyword or keywords you want your page to target. This is a way for you to tell the search engines which keywords you want the page to rank highly for. However, once again, don’t stuff it with keywords. Keep it to a maximum of 10 keywords.

Keyword Density

This refers to the percentage of words on a page that comprises your keyword. If you want to improve website ranking for a certain keyword, then by mentioning a couple of times on the page helps a lot. However, don’t fall into the trap of making every second word your keyword.

Aim for a keyword density of 3%. Don’t go higher than this otherwise the SEO benefit will be reduced. So, for example, if your page is 500 words long, don’t mention your keyword more than 15 times.

Media

Finally, adding images, audio and video to your web page boosts its rankings in the search engines. It’s no secret that search engines such as Google love media and rewards those who do. When you do add an image, audio or video, make sure that its title includes the target keyword of your page.

This post describes On Page SEO in a nutshell. It’s really all you need to know about the topic and it will save you many, many hours reading through other articles on the topic on the Web.