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One Simple On-Page Change That Can Lead to Dramatic Results

Search Engine Optimization

Search engine optimization (or SEO as it's popularly known) is a set of tools and techniques, which, when applied to a Web site lead to higher (that is better) ranking in the search engines. These tools and techniques are often divided into two main categories - on-page factors and off-page factors. Off-page factors refers to backlinks - links from other sites to individual pages on your site.

On-Page Factors

Basically on-page factors and those things over which the Webmaster has direct control. These factors include such items as meta tags, alt tags, and page content. When it comes to page content many sites leave out the one tag that can lead to a dramatic improvement in search engine rankings - that is the H1 tag.

The H1 Tag

The H1 tag stands for heading 1. There are also tags for heading 2 (H2), heading 3 (H3), and so on. H1 tags are typically used toward the top of the page and most likely (but not necessarily) include the page title (and of course your target keywords or phrases). Be default, anything in an H1 tag is displayed in a large bold font. However, you can use cascading style sheets to redefine the way your H1 tag looks - just be sure to use them.

Performance

For an academic research paper, we used an online retail site and just added an H1 tag to the homepage. The result was that the site improved its ranking by 6 places in Yahoo and 12 places in MSN within a few days (the site was not yet ranking in Google).