This collection of articles focus on the area of: on page SEO. This article is lesson four out of five and covers the topic of Body text and Alt tags.

On Page SEO – Body Text

An important tip to bear in mind, when preparing the main body text is to think about your human reader. We’ve all visited sites that have far too much information displayed. This may hold more SEO potential power but will instantly put off your reader.

As a basic guide try to stick within a 450-600 limit on each of your pages. The lower the amount of the words you show, the more scope you have for a better content layout, with appropriate use of header tags. Try to keep your content clear and concise. Make good use of the italics and bold formats to help pick out keywords on your page. Don’t use the underline format unless it represents a link as this may confuse users.

Attempt to liberally sprinkle 3-4 keyword phrases throughout each page of content. Don’t go over the top but keyword rich content is a great SEO technique. For your top 3-4 keywords, try to make sure they make up roughly about 20% of the whole page content: title, headers, alt text and content.

They are many free keyword density analysers available online. Simply copy and paste your text into one of these tools to gauge your keyword density, then tweak accordingly.

The power of good SEO copywriting must never be underestimated.

On Page SEO - Image Alt Tags

The purpose of Alt tags is to allow text browsers to see what images represent and also as an aid to partially sighted or blind internet users. With the high percentage now using broadband, the age of text browsing has fallen by the wayside. The only real users of Alt tags these days is the visually impaired who require this data to make full sense of a web page.

The use of images should be kept to a premium and only used to enhance the visual appeal of your website. The fewer images a page has the faster it will load and fast loading pages are looked on favourably by search engines such as Google and therefore hold SEO importance.
When you use images make sure you follow these recommendations:

• Ensure each image has an Alt tag except images used for spacers. The naming of space images can be very irritating for disabled users.
• Do not overload your alt image tags with keywords. The purpose of these tags is to describe the image. Do use keyword phrases, but make sure it makes sense.
• No need to say ‘image of..’ just the description
• Many free online tools will check for any missing alt tags, these can be very useful.

Remember to take advantage of both keyword rich content and well labelled Alt tags as part of good SEO practice.