Search engine optimization part 1 - keyword best practices
Thursday 05, Jun 2008 | blog
Share
What is SEO?
SEO stands for search engine optimization. It is the practice of making website pages more visible to search engines and more relevant to keyword search terms. The aim is to make a web page appear closer to the first page and top list of results within SERPs (search engine result pages) to increase the quality of targeted traffic. And besides, traffic from natural search engine page results is free!
Keyword best practices (make sure you get this balance right)
Title tag
Strong tags
Italic tags
SEO stands for search engine optimization. It is the practice of making website pages more visible to search engines and more relevant to keyword search terms. The aim is to make a web page appear closer to the first page and top list of results within SERPs (search engine result pages) to increase the quality of targeted traffic. And besides, traffic from natural search engine page results is free!
- Search engines do not index websites, they index web pages.
- A search indexed web page means your page is stored in a search engines database. A web page is listed within search results when a search user types in a keyword, combination of or a keyword phrase that matches with the keywords within an indexed page.
- Search engines index pages using software known as spiders or crawlers that crawl through the web checking for updates and new pages.
Keyword best practices (make sure you get this balance right)
Title tag
- All pages must display a unique title tag containing rich keywords terms
- Search engines use text inside the title tag as the most important source of information about the page
- Google has a 66 character length including white space and Yahoo is 120. Title tags that exceed the character length limit are cropped. However, Google displays the last word that completes on the 66 character limit, but we suggest a 65 character max
- Search engines ignore words like ‘and’, the, to, or, etc. So, do not waste character length by including these words
- Avoid single keywords by including them as part of a phrase
- Use alternate phrases and synonyms
- Use upper case letters. For example,
- My Unique Keyword Rich Title Tag
- Prime keywords or phrases should be used as headers.
- H tags are used by search engines to determine important words within the content of the page.
- H tags should be used only once ranging from H1 – 6, where hierarchical importance begins with H1.
- Use H1 once on a page, and best practice to use H2 no more than twice
- Google benefits diminish after H3
- Body content provides an opportunity to exploit a range of keywords, phrases, synonyms, etc. within general content areas
- Density takes into consideration all keywords placed within all elements of the page. General content areas should be used to emphasize keywords and phrases to achieve the optimum density of 5% (density fluctuates depending on keyword competition). However, do not repeat words or terms unnecessarily
- The occurrence of keywords and phrases are counted by search engines to determine the overall theme of the page. Do this too much and search engines will detect foul play
- and penalize rankings. Do this too little and the page will not compete with competition
- that does it well.
- For example, a page containing 100 words should include between 5 and 10 keywords
- Use keyword research to define the terms that should be included.
- Anchor text should contain high traffic keywords.
- Links are crawled by search engines and given relevance for keyworded text. Linking keywords to key pages around the site would also increases internal linking, having a positive impact on page rank
- Take advantage of linking keywords and phrases within the body content
Sed ut perspiciatis unde omnis iste natus ester sit voluptatem accusantium doloremque laudantium, totam rem aperiam, eaque ipsa quae ab illo inventore veritatis et quasi architecto beatae vitae dicta sunt explicabo. Nemo enim ipsam voluptatem quia voluptas sit aut fugit, sed quia consequuntur magni dolores eos qui ratione voluptatem sequi nesciunt. Neque porro quisquam est, qui dolorem ipsum quia dolor sit amet, consectetur, adipisci velit, sed quia non
Strong tags
- Place importance on various words or phrases
- The strong tag is a good way of alerting search engines that specific keywords within the
- general content are more important than others.
- Note that search engines only place a small amount of weight on strong tags, so they are not as important as other elements mentioned above.
- Bolded text should use 'strong' tags and not 'b'
- Example,
Sed unde omnis iste error sit voluptatem accusantium doloremque laudantium, totam rem aperiam, eaque ipsa quae ab illo inventore veritatis et quasi architecto
Italic tags
- As per explanation of strong tags directly above
- Include keywords in file names and alt text
- Meta description is critical for influencing CTR from search engine result pages
- The key purpose of meta description is to influence click through rates (CTR) from search engine result pages (SERP) and to inform search engines of the context of the content. Where meta descriptions consistently match the page content this can assist in building the reputation of the website in question.
- Due to SEO abuse, meta descriptions and keywords have less affect on the ranking within major search engines, but it is best practice and consumer friendly to ensure meta descriptions follow best practice.
- However, smaller search engines may still use them, and certainly most search engines rely on meta description (particularly Google) to provide information on the page within its Search Engine Result Pages (SERPs).
- Include unique meta descriptions to clearly describe the page within a character limit of 150 characters.
- To allow anchor text on keywords and phrases, plus strong, italic, and other formatting use the text editor within your CMS
0 Comments
Join the conversation