The Truth About OnPage SEO

Like most would be ‘make money online’ profit seekers, I have read mountains of blog posts and forum threads in search of the golden key that will bring me money online. In the end, like we all do, I have found that 99% of the information out there is repetitive or flat wrong. I don’t mean mistake, I mean intentionally mis directional.

One the common mistakes centers around on page SEO. Let me first talk about what everyone touts as the correct way to build on page SEO before I dive into what works for me.

If you are uninformed or new to the scene, then understand that search engines have to places to look to identify and process your site for listing in the search engine result pages (SERPs). On page, and off page. Real quick, on page means that the search engine spiders crawl your site and look in key locations to identify what your site is really about and then rank you against other sites that are in similar categories. Off page means that the very same spiders keep a running tally of other sites that LINK TO YOU, and what TERMS they use to link to you. I won’t get into off page beyond that today.

Now the typical belief for on page SEO is that you have to do most, if not all of the following:

• Use a domain and URL naming convention that USES your keyword. ie. http://www.keyword1.com/best-keyword2
• Modify the title tag of the INDIVIDUAL PAGES to match the keyword those pages are targetting
• Change the metadescription for EACH page to target the keyword desired
• Set your blog post title and/or H1 tag to a title or phrase that contains primary targetted keyword
• Include keyword in H2 tags
• Use keyword in ALT tags for images
• Use inner linking (linking to other pages on your own site with keywords as anchor text)
• Use a keyword density (how many times your keyword is used in proportion to other words in the article/post) of 3-5%. In other words, for every 100 words, only 3-5 of those words are your targeted keywords.
• Use targeted keyword in first sentence and last sentence

That is a real quick list of what is considered to be the ‘end all’ of on page SEO by the ‘make money online’ community (I may have left one or two off accidentally as I am still drinking my coffee and it’s early heh). Much of this list comes from a conglomeration of individual studies that may or may not still be relevant. At the time of writing this post, I can tell you that at least half has never helped me. Does that mean it doesn’t work? Of course not. Just that I have not seen it work and cannot vouch for it’s usage.

So let’s go through the list and address it all one at a time. Not that nearly all of these can be circumvented by proper off page SEO. On page SEO has far less relevance than the inbound links your site gets.

Domain and URL Naming: This one is easy. It works. Period. Choose a domain name that has your primary keyword and you will have a FAR easier time. Emphasis on easier. Why? Because it is not NECESSARY. Think about it. Does ‘Amazon’ mean ‘buy dvds’? Yet it ranks for it. The URL naming conventions only help, they do not HINDER. If everything were equal (link wise and SEO wise) then the domain naming would be the tie breaker. When possible, use keywords in domain and URL. If you are branding this may not be a good choice, but when farming…do it.

Modifying the title tags: This also seems to be pretty essential. Though NOT necessary, it is VERY helpful. I use this regularly and have seen SERP increases through modifying this tag. Not to mention, it is one of the few things people see from your site when you appear in the SERPs. Along with the metadescription and the URL. If your title has the keyword, it will be highlighted in the SERPs, and the first line of the actual result that appears in Google.

Metadescription: This have very little to do with SEO in my experience. However, that does not mean it should be ignored. Why? It is the second part of your site that will be seen in the SERPs. Therefore it is PERFECT for a Presell. If someone is searching for ‘boner pills’, use this are to tell them that you have the cure that ‘raises’ hope and allows them to live a ‘long’ life. I think you get the idea. Also, keywords will be highlighted here when visible in the SERPs. Doesn’t hurt, but doesn’t help SEO. Use it for preselling and watch your hits increase beyond the typical for your ranking position.

Post title and H1: This does help. Is it necessary? No. But it definitely does help. Not to mention, if you use plugins like All-In-One-SEO then the title tag of each page is modified to include the post title. This makes modifying the title tag much easier. You can get around this, but why would you?

H2 Tags: I have yet to see this make a difference. Will it help? Maybe. But I have not seen it. For my money, you can ignore this part. If you have an easy way, like the SEO plugin, to put this in then use it. Otherwise, I think you can probably pass this off as garbage with little regret.

ALT Tags: Just like the H2 tags, I have seen no help. That may just be my results, but I have not seen much help. You can probably ignore this as well. Not to mention, most blogs (especially farms) do not have many images. If you have a blog like cheezeburger where it is all images…then this may be a necessity. But I have no image blogs so I cannot say whether this will be necessary or not.

Inner Linking: Yet another thing you can overcome with good offsite SEO, but if you control a page with authority, USE IT. This can, and has for me, move you up the SERPs overnight. For example, if you have a domain about cheeseburgers with a PR4, and you want to rank for ‘pickles’, write a few posts about ‘pickles’ and link the phrase in each post to the first post about ‘pickles’. You have just voted for yourself for that phrase and will nearly instantly get indexed. I have literally captured a #1 spot for a longtail after just two inner linked targetted posts. I still hold that #1 spot and it brings ~5 hits a day. Small amount? Ya. But all I did was write two posts and link them to the first one! Do that 20 times and you got 100 visitors! EASY! DO THIS!!!

Remember not to over do this though. Over linking screams of spam. Try linking no more than twice to any domain. You can go over this amount, but do so sparingly. Try to hit one or two inner links a post.

Keyword Density: much of this comes form the days where people made entire pages of just one phrase repeating itself, to trick a spider into thinking it was more relevant than the next. Today spiders see high usage of a phrase as indicative of spam sites. So this measure of 3-5% comes from an aversion to getting flagged as spam. This is relevant as an avoidance measure so use it as a ceiling for keyword usage. Is there a magic number of times to use your phrase? No. In fact, I tend to use it only twice - in the first and last sentences (see next part); and I do just fine. So long as your content is centered around the keyword, using it in those places seems to be enough.

First and Last Sentence Keyword Usage: This seems to be all that’s necessary for keyword usage in a post. At least from my experience. This initially tells the spider what your post is about, and then at the ass end, reminds it what your post was about. More often than not this helps with the SERPs enough. Note that if you are targeting adsense words, that this often will NOT be enough. But we are not talking Adsense targeting right now, but SERPs. That is another topic altogether.

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OK. You have not read a quick overview of what 99% of the SEO and MMO gurus preach. Honestly, use this as a jumping point to research and experiment with these points and you know more than enough about on page SEO. Stop wasting time now, and get off your ass and start working to make money online.