I came across a printed out version of a guest post I did on SEOForums.org about 12 years ago. Truthfully, I was shocked at how relatable it was to today’s SEO. The post looks removed and I don’t believe it’s in archive.org. Take a look at it below (fun to see the “social bookmarks” of 2011).
It’s amazing how little has changed in 12+ years. I think points 1 & 4 are especially pertinent to todays SEO. The social networking and bookmarking of point 3 is interesting as social proof is still well weighted in the search ranking algo. Point 2 is funny because it’s not relevant to today’s SEO. Google has gotten so much better at understanding formatting and language.
Below is the text copy of the guest post. Hope you enjoy reading it as much as I did!
The 4 Most Overlooked On-Page Factors for SEO
Note from MOGmartin, this is a guest post by Sam Page:
Sam Page is the in-house SEO Manager for Southwest Equipment in Lewisville, TX. He started working online in 2008 with his own website and has carefully developed his skills in SEO over the last 4 years. He specializes in e-commerce and sales websites. Follow him on Facebook.
So, you think you have your website perfectly optimized? Perfect keyword density, great internal link structure, title tags and meta tags nailed, plus perfectly placed landing pages, huh? Those are great things to do, but like everything in SEO, you can refine your page and come even closer to the ideal search engine algorithm buster.
- Google Caffeine introduced an emphasis on loading speed. With the internet needing to be faster and faster, the quicker your site can load, the better. There are several things a person can do to speed up their loading times. This includes fixing broken links, adjusting images, editing flash or java, streamlining your landing page layout, and checking to make sure your host isn’t slowing you down (most common with shared hosting). Should this be your first priority? Probably not, Matt Cutts mentioned that this affects only 1% of search queries. Speed up your site; Google did.
- Be careful with your bold text. While it’s important to implement bold text, I don’t recommend using it outside of citation or heading. I come across pages all the time with keywords in bold and can’t help but think it looks like Spam. If it looks over-optimized to me, it will to Google. I am very sure the staff of spam fighters at Google have already addressed this issue. I still believe the best way to organize your site is by keeping it more formal and using the h1, h2, h3… tags.
- Don’t forget about social networking or bookmarking. You want to integrate your entire social network as seamlessly as possible. This may not necessarily impact on-page optimization, but it will affect the professional appearance of your site. Just link having a blog on your site to keep your content fresh, I believe that in the next year or two, social media will bring relevance and freshness to your site. Google is ranking with cues from Twitter, Facebook, and Bing/Yahoo is also utilizing Facebook ‘likes’ into their search algorithm.
- Keep your content FRESH. Want to know how to beat some very important sites in the SERP’s? Be one of the first to report a news story or update and you will likely be on your way to the top. Last night, I was listening to Joe Laratro speak about a site that had beaten major sites like The New York Times and ESPN because they were one of the first to post a story about the officiating of the NY Jets vs. NE Patriots game. He also mentioned that Google drastically moved them up because of how quickly and timely they wrote the story. To Google, authority and timeliness are king. Sure, you can write a story, but it may not be picked up by Google very fast, right? Wrong. You can submit that link to Twitter, Facebook, and Google Buzz to get it indexed much quicker. Sometimes, you’ll even see your tweets included in the Google SERP’s.
Utilize these tools and cut your website from a different cloth. If you are in a highly competitive market, these tips are absolutely necessary to ranking well and converting traffic.
Thanks for reading this throwback article 🙂
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