It’s a Ultimate SEO Guide
for those who want to make their website search engine friendly.
Picking an SEO Friendly
CMS
When looking to build a website, determining which CMS (content
management system) you are going to use is a critical first step. Sure, you
could have someone code your site from scratch, but why waste the effort when
you don’t have to (not to mention that’s probably a terrible idea, for lots of
reasons)?
There are literally hundreds of CMS options, and it can be hard
to determine which one is the best. Unfortunately, not all content management
systems are created equal, and some can actually do more harm than good (as an
SEO rule of thumb, avoid anything .NET/ASP, and anything made by Adobe).
As an SEO company, one of the problems we see most often is
clients who’ve built their websites on a CMS that does not support SEO best
practices, thus making it difficult (if not impossible) to rank for their
target keywords. Without further ado, here is a list of features you should
insist on in an SEO friendly CMS:
11 Must Have Features
1. Static, customizable URLs – You should
be able to define both the page name and the directory structure for the entire
website, page-by-page (not database driven, unless it can be manually
overridden if necessary). Keyword rich and search engine friendly URLs are an
SEO must have. If this feature is missing it should be a deal killer.
2. Support for custom URL
redirects (301s, 302s, etc). – At some point you will change
a page name, move it, or change its structure in your site hierarchy. In order
to keep the trust and value of any inbound links to that page and to avoid
creating a poor user experience, you MUST properly redirect it when you move it
using a 301 permanent redirect. Your CMS should allow you to do this one page
at a time if needed, or for blocks of pages. You should also be able to directly
edit your .htaccess file, if needed.
3. Customizable Title tags and
Meta tags on Every Page – The Title tag and Meta description tags are
important SEO elements, and should be unique for each page. They should always
be carefully written and never duplicated from page to page. Meta keywords tags have no value, and should be left blank. These
tags should not be database driven, but
written manually and thoughtfully for each page.
4. Custom Image File names and
Image ALT Tags for Each Image – Search engines look at image
file names and ALT tags for keyword usage to help define the topic of a page
and the site as a whole. You need to be able to choose the image file name, and
you should have the ability to define an ALT tag and if needed an image Title
tag.
5. Support for Rel=Canonical tags
and Meta Robots tags on Each Page – These elements help to
prevent duplicate content penalties, especially with eCommerce websites. You
should be able to add this tag on a page-by-page basis as needed.
6. The Ability to Directly Edit the
HTML on ANY Page – This is important for customizing content, link anchor
text, NoFollow tags, heading tags and other HTML elements.
7. Automatically Generated and
Updated Sitemap.xml File – Search engines use this file to find and index all
of the pages on your site. It can be a real pain to maintain manually, so the
automatic feature is extremely handy. If you have videos on your site, you
should also have a separate video sitemap.
8. Support for Blog Integration – Every
website needs a blog, since that is the best way to ensure ongoing content
growth (which search engines love).
9. Clean, Lean Coding – Your CMS
should make use of HTML best practices, using clean, current code (validates
100% with W3C), and that loads quickly. Valid, fast loading code is appealing
both to visitors and search engines. Avoid code filled with useless or
excessive JavaScript, unnecessary non-breaking spaces and antiquated tables
instead of clean CSS. If possible, find a CMS that supports HTML5/CSS3. For
images, use compression, and for layout elements consider using CSS sprites.
Make sure to set page caching quite a ways out.
10. Rich Snippet Support – Schema and RDFa,
for example. Authorship and Publisher markup in particular should be possible,
but other rich text markup such as reviews, products, apps, locations and
services are also a good idea if relevant.
11. Mobile Support – This could be
responsive design, where the site auto-adjusts to any screen size or device
type, or it could be a dedicated mobile version of a site. Whatever option you
go with, at this point in time not having a mobile friendly version of your
site is a major negative factor.
4 Very Nice to Have Features
1. Web 2.0 Integration – If you want
people to share what they read on Facebook or Twitter or any other social site,
you need the ability to integrate buttons to make that sharing easy. You might
also want things like open graph tags, Twitter cards, Facebook insights, etc.
2. Custom 404 Page – Hopefully
your site will never have any 404 errors, but if it does it’s nice to have
something show up other than “404 error – page not found”. Create a custom 404
page that lists your most popular pages and perhaps a search box. Keep them on
the site! Consider making your 404 page funny, like these:http://fab404.com/
3. Automatic Link Management – Whenever
you change the name of a page, any links to that page break. While implementing
a 301 redirect for the changed page will fix this, you would ideally want to go
through the site and change all links to reflect the new page name. Doing this
manually sucks, so find a CMS that supports automatic link updating.
4. User Generated Content – Make it possible
for visitors/customers to rate products or services, leave reviews, etc. For
some industries this is a must have, not a nice to have.
WordPress (.org) is, by far, the most SEO friendly CMS
available (with some minor modifications), and it’s a good fit for the
vast majority of website needs. If you need eCommerce capabilities, WordPress
offers those too. From Cart66 and WooCommerce to
custom Magento installations, there are plenty of good options
on this front.
This isn’t a comprehensive list of features by any means, but
any CMS with these elements will be about as SEO friendly as it can get. Beyond
this list, look for additional features as dictated by your company needs.
Hosting
Believe it or not, server speed, server
up-time, server location, IP address and type of hosting are all elements that
can impact your rankings, some directly and some indirectly. Since Google wants
its users to have an awesome experience on the sites that Google delivers in
search results, Google tries to analyze sites from a UX (user experience)
perspective.
A site that loads slowly, that is down often, or that shares IP
addresses and/or hosting servers with less than savory sites (shared hosting)
can negatively impact that user experience. Beyond that, being on a shared
server can pose major security risks for your website, depending on how well
your hosting provider has things configured.
To avoid any such problems, it is recommended that you host your
website on a dedicated server that has the capacity to handle your site
features and traffic (with capacity to spare) to avoid any downtime. Having
secondary and tertiary servers as redundancies is also highly recommended
(cloud platforms can help with this). Though certainly not required, you may
also find some benefit in using a server located in the country that matches
your TLD (i.e. USA for .com, .net, UK for .co.uk, etc.).
It is also highly recommended that you have a dedicated C class
IP address for your website, and that you don’t share that IP address with ANY
other websites. This avoids any potential cross-linking devaluation issues, as
well as preventing bad neighborhood issues. A bad neighborhood occurs when a
number of sites on a shared IP address are identified by Google as spammy, thus
hindering the rank-ability of any other site on the same IP address.
Make sure to schedule regular backups
of your website and all databases at non-peak traffic times (2am is usually a
great time). Also, make sure to regularly test the page load speed on your
site. If you’re running WordPress, the best option available is probably WP Engine.
Page Load Speed
On April 9th, 2010 (almost 3 years ago, come on
already!), page load speed officially became a
part of the Google search ranking algorithm.
For usability reasons, best practices dictate that a web page should load
within 1-2 seconds on a typical DSL connection. However, according to Google a
load time of 1.4 seconds is the threshold between a fast page and a slow page.
That means, ideally, that every page on your website should load in 1.4 seconds
or less, to receive the maximum SEO and usability benefit for fast loading
pages.
Google gathers page load time data through actual user
experience data collected with the Google search toolbar, and may also be
combining that with data collected as Google crawls a website and from other
sources. As such, page load speed in terms of the ranking algorithm is being
measured using the total load time for a page, exactly as a user would
experience it, and not just user perceived load time (visual load time).
One of the best resources for tips
and tricks for lowering page load speed is http://developer.yahoo.com/performance/rules.html,
and one of the best tools for testing your site is http://tools.pingdom.com/fpt/ (unless
you have Google Analytics configured, in which case that is the best possible
source of page load speed data).
There are a few key things you can do
to increase that page load speed to reach Google’s recommended page load speed
of 1.4 seconds or less. Three things that would be most impactful would be
leveraging browser caching, CSS Sprites for images where possible, and reducing
the image file sizes as much as possible for images that can’t be sprited
(different file types, removing unnecessary color channels, etc.). You might
also see benefits by using a content delivery network
(CDN) for your images.
We would also recommend reducing the total number of CSS and
JavaScript files by combining them into fewer files, and minimizing the file
sizes by using compression and code minification where feasible.
W3 Total Cache is
an excellent WordPress plug-in that can help with page load speed issues, and a
simple CDN can be set-up via Amazon AWS for very little money. You can learn
how to do this here.
Code Validation
The W3C markup validator service can be found
at this location http://validator.w3.org/
Because there are so many programming languages and so many ways
to accomplish any one thing using each language search engines rely on certain
rules in which they read the content of the website.
Having code that adheres to these rules removes and helps to
minimize errors when parsing or separating the code from the content of any one
page.
Search engines such as Google have openly stated that W3C
standards are what they suggest when making the code easy to understand for
them. We typically only test the home page of the website, because many issues
can be easily fixed a crossed the entire website using just its page templates.
Site Hierarchy and Navigation
Picture your website as a series of pyramids,
5-10 sitting side by side. It should look something like this:
The tip of each pyramid represents a top level page, such as
Home Page, About Us, Products, Services, Contact, etc. Each of these top level
pages should be optimized for a root keyword with significant search volume.
The middle and base of the pyramids represent sub-pages, pages under the
top-level pages that are topically related. These should be optimized for
variations of the top-level or root keyword.
For a website about, say, Bicycle Repair, you might optimize the
pages as follows:
·
Home Page – “Bicycle Repair”
·
About Us – “Bicycle Repair Shop”
·
Services – “Bicycle Repair Services”
The root keyword, the main topic of the entire site, would be
Bicycle Repair. As such, the home page is optimized for Bicycle Repair, and all
other main pages for variations of that keyword.
Then, you go one more level down. Since Services is optimized
for Bicycle Repair Services, pages under that page should be optimized for
things like Cheap Bicycle Repair Services, San Francisco Bicycle Repair
Services, Bicycle Repair Services in Utah, etc. The higher up a page is within
the site hierarchy, the more search volume the keyword assigned to that page
should have. The lower the page is in the hierarchy, the lower the search
volume of the keyword phrase.
This is called creating keyword silos, and it is a critical
component of SEO and user friendly site design. Not only does this make your
site topically clear to search engines, but it makes site navigation super
simple for users as well. For optimal search engine and user usability, don’t
go more than 3-4 levels deep (i.e. Top Level Page, Sub-Page, Sub-Sub-Page). A
user or search engine should be able to get to any page on your site in 4
clicks or less. This is called a flat architecture.
Your site’s navigational elements will follow this exact same
structure. Speaking of navigational elements, make sure that all site
navigation consists of HTML and CSS only. Don’t ever use JavaScript or Flash
for your navigation, as that can cause both search engine indexing problems and
user experience problems. The details are complicated, so just don’t.
Never underestimate the value of
long-tail traffic. More and more queries each year are long-tail, and by
anticipating questions people might type into search engines and creating
matching content, you can get far ahead of your competitors. You can also mine
data from your analytics organic keyword data, your Google and Bing Webmaster
tools search query data, and other sources like Google Trends, Google’s Keyword Tool, SpyFu, Quora, and Yahoo Answers.
URL Structure
A site’s URL structure is extremely important
to both users and search engines. Poor URL structure can not only hurt
rankings, but can prevent pages from being indexed and lower the
click-through-rate (CTR) in the SERPs (Search Engine Results Pages). Though
they have dialed back some on that value, Google is still biased towards exact
keyword match non-hyphenated domains, so get one if you can.
It is extremely important that URLs be readable, user friendly,
and that they contain the keyword of the page. It should never be longer than
256 characters (though ideally under 100 characters), and should contain no
query parameters, strange number sequences, spaces or symbols. If a number
sequence is needed for eCommerce reasons (like a product ID), append the number
to the end of the search engine friendly URL. (i.e.
http://www.awesomesite.com/killer-keyword-url-1234/)
If relevant, a geo-qualifier (such as Seattle WA) should also be
included in the URL. It should use a file ending that identifies the page type
(.html, .php, etc).
A proper URL will consist of
lowercase words separated by dashes/hyphens only (no
underscores, since Google combines words separated by underscores, and no
uppercase letters).
The URL structure should never go more than 3 sub-directories deep,
just as the site navigation should never go more than 3 directories deep. The
more important the page, the higher up in the directory structure that page
should be. The URL structure should function as a bread crumb, telling visitors
exactly where they are within the site.
An ideal URL structure is as follows:
http://www.keywordrichdomain.com/keyword-category/keyword-rich-phrase.html
This URL structure is written perfectly for both SEO and search
engine indexing. It is short (74 characters), descriptive, keyword rich, and
contains no query parameters. The use of a category can help with usability,
but it is not necessary for SEO purposes. In fact, it can be beneficial to have
all pages in the root directory.
Internal Linking and Anchor Text
It is very important to cross link within the
pages and content of one’s site using keyword rich anchor text and/or from
within keyword rich content that matches the linked-to page. Pages of similar
topic should cross link to each other using relevant keywords in the anchor
text or surrounding body text. There should ideally be 5-10 top-level pages on
your site that effectively cross-link to each other and that have more inbound
links than any other pages on your site. These pages will become your site links.
When linking internally, keep in mind
that all internal links should use absolute URLs (i.e.
http://www.domain.com/page-name.php), not relative URLs (i.e.
/page-name.php).
In addition to linking from within
the text of a page, keyword rich anchor text should be used in the main
navigation elements. Where space prevents the use of the keyword for the page
being linked to in the navigation, it is important to include the title element in the navigation anchor tag, as
follows:
<a
href=”http://www.domain.com/” title=”Home of the awesome
keyword”>Home</a>
The same goes for links outside of your site. When you get a
link on a blog, forum or press release, some of those links should include the
keyword of the page being linked to in the anchor text. At present, the ratio
of anchor text from inbound links that is considered safe is 15-30%.
Also, the keyword used in the anchor text going to a page should
be topically consistent. One should not use “Keyword Topic A” in the anchor
text for one link, and then “Keyword Topic B” in the anchor text of another
link to the same page (unless Keyword Topic B is a very close variation of
Keyword Topic A). A page should have one core topic, so be consistent.
While Google is more than capable of
crawling and executing basic JavaScript, they don’t always get things right. To
be on the safe side, all links that you want crawled should be in plain old
HTML (this includes navigation elements). If you’re considering using something
like AJAX on your site, be aware of the risks and how to minimize them.
Broken Links
Because Google and other search engines crawl
the web link-to-link, broken links can cause SEO problems for a website. When
Google is crawling a site and hits a broken link, the crawler immediately
leaves the site. If Google encounters too many broken links on a site it may
deem that site a poor user experience, which can cause a reduced crawl
rate/depth, and both indexing and ranking problems.
Unfortunately, broken links can also happen due to someone
outside of your site linking in incorrectly. While these types of broken links
can’t be avoided, they can be easily fixed with a 301 redirect.
To avoid both user and search engine
problems, you should routinely check Google Webmaster Tools and Bing Webmaster Tools for
crawl errors, and run a tool likeXENU Link Sleuth or Screaming Frog on
your site to make sure there are no crawlable broken links.
If broken links are found, you need to implement a 301 redirect
per the guidelines in the URL Redirect section. You can also use your Google or
Bing Webmaster Tools account to check for broken links that have been found on
your site.
URL Redirects
Unless a redirect is truly temporary, such as
for a time sensitive promotion, 302 redirects should never be used. 302
redirects don’t pass any link value, and are essentially a dead end for SEO. In
almost every scenario where a redirect is needed, a 301 (permanent) redirect
should be used.
Any page that changes URLs or is
deleted needs a 301 redirect to tell search engines and users that the page has
moved/is gone. There should never be more than one URL path to a page. You can
learn more about redirects here: http://moz.com/learn/seo/redirection
On an Apache server, redirects will be configured via the
mod_rewrite module and your .htaccess file. Making these sorts of changes is a
very technical task, and can break your website if done incorrectly. Unless
you’re very technical, it’s best to leave this one to your web developer.
That said, here are a couple of common issues, and the correct
code to use in your .htaccess file to fix them:
## Always include this at the start of your htaccess file ##
Options +FollowSymlinks
RewriteEngine On
Options +FollowSymlinks
RewriteEngine On
## Redirect HTTPS URLs to HTTP URLs ##
RewriteCond %{SERVER_PORT} ^443$
RewriteRule ^(.*)$ http://www.%{HTTP_HOST}/$1 [R=301,L]
RewriteCond %{SERVER_PORT} ^443$
RewriteRule ^(.*)$ http://www.%{HTTP_HOST}/$1 [R=301,L]
## Redirect Non-WWW to WWW ##
RewriteCond %{HTTP_HOST} !^www\.
RewriteRule ^(.*)$ http://www.%{HTTP_HOST}/$1 [R=301,L]
RewriteCond %{HTTP_HOST} !^www\.
RewriteRule ^(.*)$ http://www.%{HTTP_HOST}/$1 [R=301,L]
## Rewrite all MiXed Case uRLs to lower case URL’s and 301
redirect ##
RewriteMap lc int:tolower
RewriteCond %{REQUEST_URI} [A-Z]
RewriteRule (.*) ${lc:$1} [R=301,L]
RewriteMap lc int:tolower
RewriteCond %{REQUEST_URI} [A-Z]
RewriteRule (.*) ${lc:$1} [R=301,L]
## Redirect index.htm, index.html or index.php to the trailing
slash recursively for the entire site ##
RewriteCond %{THE_REQUEST} /index\.html? [NC]
RewriteRule ^(.*/)?index\.html?$ /$1 [R=301,L]
RewriteCond %{THE_REQUEST} /index\.php? [NC]
RewriteRule ^(.*/)?index\.php?$ /$1 [R=301,L]
RewriteCond %{THE_REQUEST} /index\.html? [NC]
RewriteRule ^(.*/)?index\.html?$ /$1 [R=301,L]
RewriteCond %{THE_REQUEST} /index\.php? [NC]
RewriteRule ^(.*/)?index\.php?$ /$1 [R=301,L]
## Ensure all URLs have a trailing slash ##
RewriteBase /
RewriteCond %{REQUEST_FILENAME} !-f
RewriteCond %{REQUEST_URI} !(.*)/$
RewriteRule ^(.*)$ http://www.%{HTTP_HOST}/$1/ [L,R=301]
RewriteBase /
RewriteCond %{REQUEST_FILENAME} !-f
RewriteCond %{REQUEST_URI} !(.*)/$
RewriteRule ^(.*)$ http://www.%{HTTP_HOST}/$1/ [L,R=301]
## Remove Spammy Query Strings ##
<ifModule mod_rewrite.c>
RewriteCond %{QUERY_STRING} enter|query|strings|here [NC]
RewriteRule .* http://www.%{HTTP_HOST}/$1? [R=301,L]
</ifModule>
<ifModule mod_rewrite.c>
RewriteCond %{QUERY_STRING} enter|query|strings|here [NC]
RewriteRule .* http://www.%{HTTP_HOST}/$1? [R=301,L]
</ifModule>
## End of htaccess file ##
Obviously, if any of these don’t apply to your site, don’t use
them. Test these carefully before you roll them live on a site! (I take no
responsibility for broken sites, you’ve been warned).
If your site has HTTPS pages for a good reason, you definitely
don’t want to go redirecting them to HTTP pages! For the spammy query strings
(say, someone pointed a ?pill query string at your site), just replace the fake
text with the real query strings, separated by pipes if there are multiple
query strings.
Robots.txt Configuration
Moz has a fantastic tutorial here. It’s thorough enough that we see no need to craft something
similar here! Sufficeth to say that you should use your robots.txt file to
block pages that you don’t want indexed. You can see our current robots.txt file here, for reference.
XML Sitemap Configuration
In a nutshell, make sure your sitemap.xml file exists immediately after
your root directory (www.domain.com/sitemap.xml), and that it contains a
properly formatted list of every page on your site that you want Google and
other search engines to list in their indices. If a page wouldn’t make a good
search engine entry point, it’s probably best not to list it. You can learn the
nuts and bolts of creating a sitemap here, and specialized sitemaps here.
Title Tags
After the URL, the second most important place
on a page to have the keyword is the Title tag. A proper Title tag will:
·
Be less than 55 characters in length (and never shorter than 15
characters).*
·
Be unique to and descriptive of that page (never use identical
or mostly identical title tags on multiple pages on the same site).
·
Use the keyword of that page twice if space permits (once at the
start, followed by a separator such as a colon and a space, and then once again
in a call to action). If the character limit prevents the use of the keyword
twice, use it once in a good call to action, with the keyword as close to the
beginning of the title tag as possible.
·
If relevant, include a geo-qualifier (such as Seattle WA).
·
Typically not be used for branding purposes, unless you have a
major brand whose name would increase SERP click-through-rates. If you must
include your brand name, use it at the end of the Title tag, not at the
beginning.
* – While you may hear some SEOs
say to limit Titles to 70 characters, it’s a misconception. Google is actually
using a pixel width limit, not a character limit. Title tags appear in 13.5pt
Arial font by default (18px), with searched for keywords bolded, and Google has
a pixel width limit of 512 pixels.
You can see if a Title will truncate
by doing the following: simply use Excel, set column width to 512px, set
columns to wrap text, and font to Arial 13.5pt. Type in your Title, and bold
the main keyword. If the line breaks, your Title tag will truncate. (You can
also use this tool to check: Title Length Tool).
Using 55 characters is now considered the safe upper limit, as
this Title character limit will avoid truncation 95% of the time.
Proper title tag structure is as follows:
<title>Keyword Phrase:
Call to Action Using Keyword Phrase</title>
A colon and a space are used as the separator because it uses
the least amount of characters. You can also use – or | (a dash or a pipe).
The Title tag is the first description of the page that search
engine users will read, and it is extremely important to both users and search
engines that it contain the keyword they are searching for. This will not only
help to improve rankings, but can significantly improve the click-through-rate
on search engine results pages (SERPs).
Meta Description Tags
Meta description tags are used as the
description searchers will see in the search engine results pages (SERPs).
Having the keyword used properly in the Meta description tag is not a part of
the ranking algorithm, but will increase the likelihood that users will click
on the link to the page. It should adhere to the following guidelines:
·
Be unique and relevant to that page, be written as ad text, and
contain a call to action.
·
Be no more than 160 characters in length, including spaces and
punctuation (and no less than 50 characters).
·
Contain 1-2 complete sentences, correct grammar and punctuation.
·
Use the keyword once or twice (once per sentence, as close to
the start of each sentence as possible).
·
Include a geo-qualifier (City and/or State), such as “Seattle
WA”, only if relevant.
A proper Meta description tag would be:
<meta name=”description” content=”Keyword Phrase used in a question? Keyword Phrase used in a good
click-inducing call to action.” />
To further encourage the search engines to use the description
you provide, add this tag to every page:
<meta name=”robots”
content=”noodp, noydir” />
This tells search engines not to use snippets from DMOZ or the
Yahoo Directory. Some people think this tag is no longer needed. We disagree,
and have seen some pretty wonky descriptions come from not blocking this.
Meta Keywords Tags
These no longer have any SEO value on
Google, Yahoo or Bing. The current best practice is to leave these off of your
site entirely. If your CMS forces you to have this tag present, either leave it
blank or make sure that there are no more than 1-2 keywords in the tag, and
that those keywords are used at least twice each on the page in question.
While these tags have no SEO value, misusing them can still have
a negative impact on your rank-ability. Keyword stuffed meta keywords tags are
still a negative signal, and could negatively impact your ability to rank
organically.
Heading Tags
Search engines weight text for SEO value based
on text size and position on the page. Heading tags are supposed to be larger
than the other text on the page, and should typically be the first thing in the
content section of the page; thus the added benefit of having the keyword in
the heading tags.
Every page should have an H1 tag, as search engines look to the
H1 to help determine the topic of a page. It should be the first thing in the
body text of the page, and should appear prominently.
The keyword of a page needs to be
used in the H1 tag, and in at least half of the total heading tags on a page.
There should never be more than one H1 on a
page. H1 tags should never wrap images or logos, only text.
From a usability perspective, paragraphs should never be longer
than 5 lines of text, and it is wise to break up a page every 2-3 paragraphs
with a sub-heading in the form of an H tag (H2 or H3). Testing has shown that
when users are faced with a large block of unbroken text, most either skim over
the text or skip it altogether.
We recommend no more than 1 heading tag per 150 words on the
page. It is VERY important that the keyword of a page be used in the H1 tag, as
close to the beginning of the H1 as possible. Ideally, if a page has at least
300 words of content, there should be at least one additional H tag on each
page that contains the keyword, for added SEO value.
Image Names and ALT Tags
For the benefit of search engines, code
compliance, and visually impaired users, every image MUST have an ALT tag. The
ALT tag should accurately describe the image, and should contain a keyword
relevant to that page only if the keyword is relevant to the image as well. The
ALT tag should be the same for every instance of that image on the entire site.
<img
src=”keyword-rich-image-name.jpg” alt=”Describe Image” />
Image file names should be comprised of words separated by
dashes, should be descriptive to both users and search engines, and should
accurately describe the image. If relevant, it should also use a keyword
relevant to the page/domain.
NoFollow Tags
All links pass a bit of trust, PageRank and
anchor text. This 3rd party endorsement system is at the heart of the Google
search algorithm. It measures how different pages link together, and weights
those links based on traffic, popularity, relevance, age, size, content, and
hundreds of other components.
When pages that Google deems relevant link to other pages, some
of that trust and authority flows through that link to the site being linked
to. A “followed” link is essentially endorsing the page being linked to. Anchor
text also passes through links.
Enter the rel=”nofollow” tag. Google introduced this tag to help
prevent ranking manipulation through comment spam. While the use of this tag
used to prevent ANY trust or anchor text from being passed on, Google has
recently made some changes.
Now, when the tag rel=”nofollow” is
used in an anchor tag (link), Google will usually just pass less trust to the page being linked to (~50% less,
from what we have heard). Using this tag is like saying, this page is nice, but
we don’t want to endorse it. Of course, Google can ignore you and pass whatever
they choose…NoFollow is little better than a suggestion these days, especially
when it comes to NoFollow’d social links (Twitter, Facebook, etc.).
With that in mind, from an SEO perspective, you would probably
only choose to use the rel=”nofollow” tag in the following instances:
1. On any user created
link within blog or forum comments, author profiles, etc. If it’s likely to be
spammed, use NoFollow.
2. On any internal
link that links to a page with no SEO value (i.e. login pages, RSS feed pages,
etc) – If the page has no user value, or if it’s a page you don’t really want
showing up in search engines as an entry point, feel free to use the
rel=”nofollow” tag on links to that page. Just make sure that every page on the
site is linked to from at least one other page on the site, so that all pages
can be indexed (a user sitemap is the best place for this).
Remember, NoFollow may still pass link juice to the linked to
page, but usually less of it.
A proper NoFollow tag would be used like this:
<a
href=”https://www.domain.com” rel=”nofollow”>Page Name</a>
Keep in mind though, it is perfectly normal to link out to other
sites on occasion, and linking out to at least some other sites with followed
links is a part of appearing “normal” in Google’s eyes. Don’t link out to
external domains from every page, but definitely do so with followed links from
at least a few pages, particularly blog posts as relevant.
Content
Last but far from least, one of the most
important on-site SEO elements is text content. Search engines want to see
roughly 200-300 words or more of unique text on
each page (there’s some debate on the minimum, but this is a safe number).
We recommend having roughly 400-600 words of unique text per
page, and never more than 800 words on a single page (this is for usability
reasons, not SEO reasons, and blog posts are an exception to this rule;
1000-3000+ word blog posts rank amazingly well).
This content on a page should contain the exact target keyword
about 3-4 times, and perhaps a few more times on long pages. Having unique,
keyword rich, topic focused text on a page can help to improve search engine
rankings significantly.
It is also highly beneficial to use
variations of the keyword. For example, for “chocolate pudding”, you would want
to use “chocolate” and “pudding” somewhere on the same page. It is also highly
valuable to use related keywords. In the case of “chocolate pudding”, you might
also want to use “creamy”, “Jell-O”, “dessert” and “tasty”. This technique is
referred to as LDA (Latent Dirichlet Allocation) and helps to establish
excellent topical relevancy, and increases your chance of ranking
significantly.
You should also use the keyword at least once in a
<strong> tag and/or an <em> tag on every page.
That said; at the end of the day make sure you are writing
content for your human users, and not just for search engines. If it’s not
worthy of commenting on or sharing, it’s probably not worth writing.
To rank and stay ranking in a competitive space and to appeal to
Google’s QDF algorithm (query deserves freshness), regular content growth is
very important. We recommend that every site have a blog, and that they write
in that blog at least once per week (once per day if possible).
It is also beneficial to update the content of existing pages
from time to time. Google can tell how often a site is updated, and takes that
into account in rankings. The more often changes are made to a site, and the
more often unique content is added, the greater the value of that site to users
in the eyes of the search engines.
In addition to content growth, search engines and users love to
see content diversity. Text is great, but images, videos, polls, PDFs, and
other interactive resources have both user experience and SEO benefits. Videos
and images, in addition to helping with SEO, can also drive additional traffic
to your site via image search and video search results.
Duplicate content is viewed as
a big negative by every major search engine, Google in particular. It can not
only hurt rankings, but can prevent a page from ranking, and sometimes result
in de-indexing of an entire domain. Search engines want to see unique content
on a site, and in their search results. A search results page with 10 different
websites that contain the same content would be a poor results page indeed.
There are two main types of duplicate content:
1. Duplicate content
within your own domain (such as is often caused by CMS issues, like WordPress
tag and author pages). This is a very common problem with e-commerce websites.
2. Cross-domain
duplicate content, where your site is hosting content that is identical to
content used on other websites. This is also a common problem with e-commerce
websites, as well as article sites, news sites, and less than scrupulous
scraper sites.
Duplicate content is generally defined as any page that is 30%
or more the same as content elsewhere on the web. Duplicate content is found
using N-grams, which look for identical sequence of 10 words or more, excluding
common usages and stop words. Too many blocks of identical content on a page =
duplicate.
If content must be duplicated within your own site, for
whatever reason, you have three options:
1. make use of the
rel=”canonical” tag on duplicate pages
2. use the <meta
name=”robots” content=”noindex, follow” />tag on duplicate pages
3. block indexing of
duplicate pages in the Robots.txt file
When it comes to cross-domain duplicate content, you can use the
above options, but the best practice is to simply not have cross-domain
duplicate content anywhere on your site. It is better to be safe than sorry in
this regard.
Because Google is putting more emphasis on user experience, page
load times are also now a factor in search algorithms. You should ensure that
every page on the site will load in 1-2 seconds on a typical DSL connection.
When a user exits the site via the back button, it hurts rankings, and few
things elicits the use of the back button more than a slow loading page. With
this in mind, make sure the file size of images or video in your content are as
small as possible.
Using flash or images in place of
text is considered a big negative. While search engines like a variety of
media, it must not take the place of text.
Flash looks good, but it is not SEO friendly. In addition, requiring that users
have Flash to view a website has been shown to increase load times and bounce
rates, and decrease usability. It also means that your site would appear broken
to someone using an Apple mobile device such as the iPhone or iPad. If you need
Flash-like visual elements, there are alternatives.
However, if you absolutely must use
Flash, there is an SEO friendly technique for websites using Flash known as SIFR, where the flash is replaced with text if the user does
not have flash installed, and that makes the HTML text always available to the
spiders. This way, the flash content is presented to user’s who have flash, but
is always readable by the search engines, as well as users who don’t have flash
installed.
Avoid all Black Hat SEO
techniques. When trying to rank for a competitive keyword, you may be
tempted to try some less than kosher SEO tactics…DON’T! Black Hat SEO is a very
big negative, and if discovered could result in your site being removed
completely from Google’s search index.
This means:
·
No keyword stuffing. This means NONE, not in any way. Don’t hide
keywords in DIVs, strange made up Meta tags, or anywhere else on the page or in
the code. It is not worth the risk of being de-indexed.
·
No disabling of the back button, and no pop-ups/pop-unders
stopping you from exiting a site
·
No sneaky redirects
·
No pulling large blocks of content or entire sites with iFrames
(no SEO value)
·
No Meta refreshes (unless the refresh time is 0)
·
No hidden text (unless you’re using a user accessible collapsing
DIV, which is fine)
·
No hidden links
·
No text of the same or very similar color as the background
·
No displaying different content based on user agent (except for
URL names, which is OK)
Though advertising can be a great way to make money, it
seriously detracts from both the user experience and the SEO-ability of both a
website as a whole, as well as individual pages. Ad calls slow down page load
times, often create a poor user experience, and in some instances can trigger ranking
penalties tied to the Google Panda updates.
You should carefully weigh the pros and cons of using ads, based
on the purpose and goals of your website. For some sites, the tradeoff will be
worth it.
Here is a visual example of a
perfectly optimized page (courtesy of Moz):
 |
| Perfectly Optimized Page |
Optimal Content Sample:
A sample page optimized for the keyword “Seattle SEO”, ideally
written, is as follows (HTML in Orange):
<h1>Seattle SEO</h1>
<p>If you are a
business in Seattle with an online presence, then your business could likely
benefit from professional Seattle SEO services. What is SEO you say? Quite
simply, it is the art of optimizing a website or webpage to be more search
engine and user friendly, ideally resulting in improved search engine rankings.</p>
<p>The vast majority
of internet users make use of search engines to find what they are looking for.
Regardless of whether you own an online business or a brick-and-mortar
operation, a website is a must-have to maximize your revenue potential.
Unfortunately, just any old website isn’t going to cut it. To get the most
benefit from your online presence, making effective use of <a
href=”http://www.vudumarketing.com/”>Search Engine Optimization</a> is a
necessity.</p>
<p>So, your business
is in Seattle, and you want a local company to build you a website and/or do
some SEO work…now what? How do you find such a company?</p>
<h2>Finding the Right
Seattle SEO Firm</h2>
<p>With dozens of
companies offering SEO services in the Seattle area, it can be a real challenge
to find the right one for your business. Of course everyone will claim to be
the best, but how do you really know if what they are selling is what you
should be buying? To that end, we offer the following advice:</p>
<ul><li><strong>Know What Questions
to Ask</strong> – It is important to always negotiate from a
position of strength. Learn the basics of <a href=”http://www.vudumarketing.com/”>SEO</a>, such as the value
of keyword rich URLs and title tags, before you go searching. Even if you just
sound like you know what you are talking about, you are much more likely to
effectively weed out imposters.</li>
<li><strong>Ask for Examples of
Past SEO Work</strong> – From testimonials to actual optimized sites and
rankings, ask to see some work they’ve done. Make a note of the examples, and
contact those companies if possible. Ask them if they had a positive experience
with the SEO company in question, and if they would recommend them.</li>
<li><strong>Determine How They
Measure Success</strong> – If their only measure of success is improved
rankings, they are probably not the right company for you. SEO, like any form
of marketing, is about making more money. To that end, tracking traffic and
conversions in addition to rankings is the ideal scenario. If they don’t
measure rankings plus some additional metrics, you should probably look
elsewhere for a better company.</li></ul>
<h2>Learn More About
Seattle SEO</h2>
<p>While there are
many other tips that could be offered, the three tips above are all that you
should need to find a high quality SEO company, one that can add real value to
your bottom line. <a href=”http://www.vudumarketing.com/contact-us/”>Learn More About
SEO</a> today!</p>
In summary of the above content:
·
It’s about 400 words in length, not counting code, putting it in
the ideal 400-600 word range.
·
The keyword is used in the H1 tag, and in at least 50% of the
other H tags, and the page is effectively broken up by sub-headings (H2 or H3
Tags). There is approximately one H tag per 150 words of content.
·
The keyword is used 5 times throughout the page, and also
appears in a strong tag (bold) and in a list item.
·
Variations of the keyword and other related keywords are used
throughout the text, helping to page to conform to the rules of LDA (Latent
Dirichlet Allocation).
·
The text of the page contains cross-links to other related pages
using keyword rich anchor text relevant to the pages being linked to. Every
page should cross-link to 1 or 2 other relevant pages on your site.
The page closes with a call to action, which is a critical
element of content writing. All content should provide real benefit to the
reader, and should encourage the reader to take some sort of further action to
secure a conversion.
Rich Snippets (microdata, microformats, RDFa)
If you’ve done a search on Google recently and
seen a search result with an image next to it, or star ratings, a video next to
the SERP, or any one of a dozen other advanced search results, you’ve seen the
impact of Schema, RDFa, etc. You can learn more from Google here,
and on Schema.org.
One of the most common implementation
out there has to do with rel=”author” and rel=”publisher”. This is where the
image of the person or business who wrote an article or page shows up next to
their search result. These are a great way to increase your traffic, and are
very simple to set-up. There’s a great slide deck here that walks you through this
particular implementation.
If your site provides products, services, recipes, apps, music,
videos, or any of dozens of other options, the chances are good that you could
use Schema to upgrade your search results!
These page-level code markups allow your search results to stand
out from the crowd, and can significantly increase your organic
click-through-rates. I’ve seen instances where the #3 or #4 search result
actually had a higher CTR than the #1 ranked result, simple because of Schema
markup.
While the scope of what can be marked
up this way is quite broad, it’s actually fairly easy to implement. Here’s a handy guide from SEOgadget to get you started. Once
you have your rich snippets code implemented, you can test the page to make
sure it was done correctly with this handy Google
tool.
Localization
If you’re a local business, local search
traffic is becoming more important than ever. More and more people are
searching using localized search phrases, or at least have local intent while
searching. If you want to rank well for these sorts of local searches, there
are a few key things you should do/have in place:
·
Create and/or Claim Your Local Profiles – You can
certainly do this manually on Google, Bing, Yelp and other sites, but the
easiest way is to use a tool like Yextto quickly and easily do this across all of
the most common sites at once.
·
Claim Your Social Profiles – With Local SEO, citations are
key (any place online that has your name, address and phone number exactly as
it appears in your local listings). The key with this is to make sure all of
your online business listings use the exact same format for your name, address,
phone number and website URL (and we mean EXACT…1-800-798-2430 is different
from (800) 798-2430…be EXACT). One of the quickest and easiest ways to get a
bunch of citations (and to prevent brand squatters) is to claim all of your
profiles via a service like KnowEm.
·
List Your Business Info in Schema – Using Schema to
identify your business name, location, business hours and other key elements
can not only help with local rankings, but can help with getting rich snippets
in your search results.
·
Show a Map and a Route Planner – Embedding a map and a route planner into your site makes
a ton of sense from a usability perspective. If you want local visitors, do
this.
·
Use Your NAP (Name, Address, Phone) and Local Keywords Throughout
Your Site – Throughout your site, in the footer, on your contact
page, and in Titles, Metas and page content as relevant. It should be crystal
clear to Google and visitors that you service a particular area.
If you’re using WordPress, you can do
some of this very simply with the Yoast Local SEO
plugin.
Social Sharing Elements
Of course, keep in mind that this isn’t an exhaustive SEO guide by any
means; it’s focused entirely on on-site SEO elements. If you’re looking for
more comprehensive SEO training guides, check out The Beginners
Guide to SEO from Moz, and The Advanced
Guide to SEO from QuickSprout.
0 comments:
Post a Comment