Chapter 6 (Part-D): METHODS FOR EFFECTIVE SEO - ON-PAGE Optimization

Part-D; METHODS FOR EFFECTIVE SEO 

ON-PAGE OPTIMIZATION

(Keywords, Title-tag & Meta-tag)

When working with one of your own sites, this is the recommend process:

    

• Use the keyword in the title tag at least once. Try to keep the keyword as close to the beginning of the title tag as possible. More detail on title tags follows later in this section.
• Once prominently near the top of the page.
• At least 2-3 times, including variations, in the body copy on the page - sometimes a few more if there's a lot of text content. You may find additional value in using the keyword or variations more than this, but adding more instances of a term or phrase tends to have little to no impact on rankings.
• At least once in the alt attribute of an image on the page. This not only helps with web search, but also image search, which can occasionally bring valuable traffic.
• Once in the URL. Additional rules for URLs and keywords are discussed later on in this section.
• At least once in the meta description tag. Note that the meta description tag does NOT get used by the engines for rankings, but rather helps to attract clicks by searchers from the results page, as it is the "snippet" of text used by the search engines.
• Generally not in link anchor text on the page itself that points to other pages on your site or different domains 

What should optimal page density look like then? An optimal page for the phrase “running shoes” would thus look something like:

TITLE TAG

The title element of a page is meant to be an accurate, concise description of a page's content. It is critical to both user experience and search engine optimization.

As title tags are such an important part of search engine optimization, the following best practices for title tag creation makes for terrific low-hanging SEO fruit. The recommendations below cover the critical parts of optimizing title tags for search engine and usability goals.

Be mindful of length

Search engines display only the first 65-75 characters of a title tag in the search results. (After this length, the engines show an ellipsis - "..." to indicate when a title tag has been cut off) This is also the general limit allowed by most social media sites, so sticking to this limit is generally wise. However, if you're targeting multiple keywords (or an especially long keyword phrase) and having them in the title tag is essential to ranking, it may be advisable to go longer.

Place important keywords close to the front

The closer to the start of the title tag your keywords are, the more helpful they'll be for ranking and the more likely a user will be to click them in the search results.

Leverage branding

Every title tag can be ended with a brand name mention, as these help to increase brand awareness, and create a higher click-through rate for people who like and are familiar with a brand. Sometimes it makes sense to place your brand at the beginning of the title tag, such as your homepage. Since words at the beginning of the title tag carry more weight, be mindful of what you are trying to rank for.

Consider readability and emotional impact

Title tags should be descriptive and readable. Creating a compelling title tag will pull in more visits from the search results and can help to invest visitors in your site. Thus, it's important to not only think about optimization and keyword usage, but the entire user experience. The title tag is a new visitor's first interaction with your brand and should convey the most positive impression possible.

Using keywords in the title tag means that search engines will "bold" those terms in the search results when a user has performed a query with those terms. This helps garner a greater visibility and a higher click-through rate.

  

      

       META TAG

Meta tags were originally intended to provide a proxy for information about a website's content. Several of the basic meta tags are listed below, along with a description of their use.

The Meta Robots tag can be used to control search engine spider activity (for all of the major engines) on a page level. There are several ways to use meta robots to control how search engines treat a page:

Index/noindex tells the engines whether the page should be crawled and kept in the engines' index for retrieval. If you opt to use "noindex", the page will be excluded from the engines. By default, search engines assume they can index all pages, so using the "index" value is generally unnecessary.

follow/nofollow tells the engines whether links on the page should be crawled. If you elect to employ "nofollow," the engines will disregard the links on the page both for discovery and ranking purposes. By default, all pages are assumed to have the "follow" attribute.

Example:

noarchive is used to restrict search engines from saving a cached copy of the page. By default, the engines will maintain visible copies of all pages they indexed, accessible to searchers through the "cached" link in the search results.

nosnippet informs the engines that they should refrain from displaying a descriptive block of text next to the page's title and URL in the search results.

noodp/noydir are specialized tags telling the engines not to grab a descriptive snippet about a page from the Open Directory Project (DMOZ) or the Yahoo! Directory for display in the search results.

X-Robots-Tag HTTP header directive also accomplishes these same objectives. This technique works especially well for content within non-HTML files, like images.

Meta Description Tag

The meta description tag exists as a short description of a page's content. Search engines do not use the keywords or phrases in this tag for rankings, but meta descriptions are the primary source for the snippet of text displayed beneath a listing in the results.

The meta description tag serves the function of advertising copy, drawing readers to your site from the results and thus, is an extremely important part of search marketing. Crafting a readable, compelling description using important keywords (notice how Google "bolds" the searched keywords in the description) can draw a much higher click-through rate of searchers to your page.

Meta descriptions can be any length, but search engines generally will cut snippets longer than 160 characters, so it's generally wise to stay in these limits.

In the absence of meta descriptions, search engines will create the search snippet from other elements of the page. For pages that target multiple keywords and topics, this is a perfectly valid tactic.

Not as Important Meta Tags