Nicole McCullumSEO is not rocket science; anyone can achieve high rankings on search engines by mastering the techniques and implementing them in a diligent and strategic manner. However, because many of us are looking for the secret sauce we often focus on the big things rather than the small things that can make a difference and help us succeed.
Here are 3 SEO techniques that are often overlooked. If your on page optimization does not have these elements, you can always go back and add them to help boost your rankings.
- Use keyword variations.
It is recommended that you optimize for one focus keyword per page. However, optimizing your individual web pages using a variation of the same keyword on that page will help you to target and rank for multiple keywords. Keyword variations are words that are similar in meaning, for example: SEO Training, SEO Class, and SEO Course. This is also a great alternative to keyword stuffing and being redundant by repeating the same keyword.
- Use the strong tag.
Visually, the strong tag text</strong> and bold tag text</b> are the same. However, although they look the same, from a technical standpoint they are not. Web crawlers tend to see something different when analyzing text that uses the strong tag versus the bold tag. Using the strong tag when it makes sense places emphasis on the keyword, letting the search engine robots know that it is of importance, while the bold tag doesn’t do the same.
- Create internal links using your on page keywords.
Internal links are text links that go from one page to another page on the same website. Internal links help define the hierarchy of a website and makes it easy for search engine bots to access and crawl the links on your website. Google recommends having a reasonable number of links on each page. It is recommended that you have 3-4 internal links on each page using a variation of anchor text and not just linking from your keyword. Internal links should be linked to related pages and to the pages that don’t get as much traffic as your homepage, which in turn helps to increase the PageRank of those pages.
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