This Search Engine Optimisation tutorial for beginners covers the important on-page SEO ranking elements. Those that can affect the position of your website with in the search engine results pages. This covers the basics of on page search engine optimisation.
It teaches you all about the content and keywords of your web page and also includes the important elements such as the title tag, meta description tag along with the H1 title.
Let’s face it, anyone who has a website, especially a small business website would like to get to the top of Google and preferably to the top of page one. Following my on-page SEO tutorial for beginners can be a cost effective way of optimising your website and increase your chances of that number one slot.
The most important elements of on-page SEO : Search Engine Optimisation Basics
The single most important element of your website is undoubtably the content. Without content, there is nothing for the search engines to index. Good content is the whole reason for your website so get a copywriter involved if writing is not your strong point. After the content is sorted then you can turn your attention to the other elements.
In the following example I shall use the Salisbury Computer Repairs website.
The title tag
The page title tag is the most important element of on-page SEO and should certainly be changed if it’s set as ‘home page’. You can find the title tag by looking in the source code of the web page. The title tag is towards the beginning of the page in the head section. You can see the title tag for this web page in the example below.
<title>Computer Repair Southampton | Laptop repairs Southampton</title>
Obviously you’ll need to change to something that best reflects the subject of your page.
Your title can be between 50 and 60 characters including spaces. You could use more but they may not be seen in the search engine results on a PC.. Smart phones will often display more. I believe it’s to do with pixel width.. Happy to be corrected on this, please email me if I’m wrong.
The title is not what you see at the top of your web page but the words that appear in the page tab when you open your page in a browser like Internet Explorer (Edge), Google Chrome or Firefox.
The meta description tag
The meta description tag is the text that will appear at the bottom of your entry in the search engine results page. This is your opportunity to encourage potential visitors to click on the link and visit your web page.
<meta name=”description” content=”Computer Repairs Southampton, We repair Computers, PCs and laptops for customers in Southampton, Hampshire. Call Us now“>
Your meta description tag can be up to 156 characters including spaces. Any more characters will not be displayed in the Google SERPs.
H1 header text – On-Page SEO
You can use header text in a similar way that they do in the news papers. Again, you may need access to the source code depending on how you normally edit your website. Try to make your first header using H1 text and only use H1 once per page.
As an example.
<h1>Welcome to Southampton Computer Repairs</h1>
You can also continue with H2 as you see fit.
Thanks
Andy – On-Page SEO : Get Found Online