On-page factors in SEO
Search engines make use of robots or spiders to index websites. Basically this boils down to a software program that follows links to find pages. The robot will then view the source code of the page and gather valuable on-page information about the page it is on. The information gathered is then used in the algorithm to calculate the theme and meaning of the page. The end result is that the on-page factors as a very important influence of the ranking of a page and what terms it ranks for.
The Online Marketing techniques
The fact that the robot views the source code of a page makes it crucial that the source code is viewable and understandable to the spider that makes use of basic HTML to interpret a page, it is therefore crucial that you comply to the W3C standards when it comes to website design. Matt Cutts (Google engineer) said once that HTML coding standards are not that important. Well I know I am no Google engineer or any ingeneer, but it makes no sense at all. If you have to run arround concerned about why your site dropped from the SERPS you cannot wonder about the interpretation of the HTML in your website and the possibility of it being missinterpretted. Here is my explanation on why good coding practices are important.
Example
HTML is the code that are being used in the source of all web pages. Regardless in what language the web page was originally designed, HTML is always the output source and this is the code that the spider reads. In the example you will see the Title tag in an HTML page. You will note the identifying open tag that tells the spider where the specific tag starts and the close tag that looks the same but has a (/) at the front of the identifier, that indicates that the specific item is closed.
<title>Here is the page name</title>
If for example the title tag is open due to a coding error by the web designer.
<title>Here is the page name <meta>blah blah blah</meta>
The spider will have a problem identifying the specific tag as the page title and continue reading the rest of the code as the page title. This can result into an inaccurate theming of the page or even identifying the page with possible blackhat strategy to fool the search engine.
When it comes to on-page factors it essentially means the HTML code that compiles a specific page.
As explained on-page factors are of high importance when it comes to SEO. Fortunately there are free tools available online that makes life allot easier for people to ensure that the necessary coding standards have been met to ensure that a spider can index a page and understand accurately what it is about.
The W3C are the leaders in setting HTML coding standards for the web. They have free tools available for you to scan the code in your pages and to ensure that they are fully up to standard.
On-page factors are in a sense the brail of what the visitor sees when visiting the page. Although there are numerous methods of hiding code from the visitor, spiders are in most cases able to read this code. Many try to fool spiders in that way, by repeating keywords inside hidden text (Keyword stuffing). This in most cases ends up in the search engine banning the page or removing it from its index blowing all chances of the site ranking well soon.
It is important now more than ever that website owners focus their SEO on being as natural as possible as search engines more and more base their search results on the history that a website has build with them through the years.
List of SEO factors
Spiders can read more than 200 different factors from the on-page and off-page components. Therefor it is essential that you understand the concept. Here follows a list of some factors that must be regularly evaluated and checked. The current value and importance is high, but I must stress that the importance of these factors are changed on a regular basis.
Title tag <title>Page name</title> The title tag contains a short description of the page with keywords that matches the theme of the page. Search Engines often use this tag as the title of a web page in its results pages.
Document text This is normal text that users can read when viewing a web page. Themed or related words.
Apart from the keywords that are targeted in a page, search engines also look for related words to determine the relevance of a page to the targeted topic.
External links This will be discussed in the linking section. However it is important to note that the external links and link text can have both a positive and negative effect. The factors that effect it are discussed in more detail in linking.
Internal links
When content is relevant to other content in the same website it is good to link to them when text is used relevant to the page linked to. This is good for internal linking structure.
Age of document Early last year Google has registered a patent that has become very well known in SEO circles. The patent clearly mentions the age and history of a page and it’s content.
Copywriting This factor is relatively new and is without a doubt the future of all search engines’ ranking factors. Search Engines are rating the standard of the author’s presentation in a document. The more natural the better. I would like to mention that in my opinion usability will soon form part of this on-page factor.
Language This is a logical factor as search engines are focusing more and more on local content. For example Google in South Africa has already got search available in languages like Afrikaans and Xhosa. It is therefore logical that results will match the language the search was requested in.
Headings Headings are usually found at the top of a paragraph and are used to indicate the theme or relevance of the following paragraph.
Document Depth This also forms part of the linking discussion.
Frequency of content updates and changes This factor has proven to be more and more important. In short the more frequent the updates or additions to a website the better. This indicates an up to date valuable resource of information.
Site structure Site structure is becoming more and more important as usability becomes part of the future of search engine rankings. The hierarchy of a site must therefore be properly planned and layout properly applied.
Grammar and spelling Search Engines strive for more accurate, reliable and quality results. One of the strategies they are gradually applying is the authoring quality. This includes things like grammar, structure, spelling and use of stop words like: the, it, up, can and where. This usually determines the style in which the author wrote the content. More stop words usually indicates longer more complete content. This is completely the opposite as was the case before 2003, during which time stop words was bad.
Content Quality This is inline with authorship and is determined by matching the writing style of the author. The Amount of outgoing links can also indicate a valuable resource of information.
W3C coding standards W3C coding standards is as a rule the minimum requirement for SEO’s to accurately judge and evaluate their sites. Although many websites are ranking well whilst not applying these standards it is logical that it can cause problems for search engines to properly evaluate and understand what it sees if a proper coding standard is not being used. At the end of the day it also makes it more complex to find reasons for sudden drops in rankings.
Document type Search engines by now has the technology to determine the relevancy of the search query they receive and then also base their results based on the document type. Not to mention that users can also define a specific document type for their searches.
Importance depends on targeted search phrases, also the probability of the searcher defining specific doc types in advanced search features of search engines.
H1- H5 etc, Bold, Italic and underline In the past these HTML tags played a major role in the determining the relevance of a page. These days it can also have a negative effect or are completely disregarded by the SE’s.
Duplicate content Content can be matched with similar content from another site and often cause a search engine to totally disregard the duplicate copy. By modifying the content you gain nothing as the search engines has the technology to pick up whether or not a copy is the original or not. If referencing content from another site it is wise to rather link back to the site the original content is on.
Stemming and latent semantics Content can be matched with similar content from another site and often cause a search engine to totally disregard the duplicate copy. By modifying the content you gain nothing as the search engines has the technology to pick up whether or not a copy is the original or not. If referencing content from another site it is wise to rather link back to the site the original content is on.
Bulleted text Bulleted text is from a usability point of view a very important, besides it being very read friendly.
Exit links Exit links is largely responsible for establishing the relevance of a page. Linking to a good quality site using link text that is relevant to the page being linked to. In total contrast to what many SEO's belief this can increase the chances of your page to rank well for the term used in the link text.
Contextual links Almost the same as the previous point but these links can be external or in the same site. They increase the relevance for the page being linked to regardless if it is in the same site or another
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