On page SEO – Yes, we can go out and make you a bazillion backlinks, however first you need to make sure your site is clean, attractive and organized. Otherwise, what use will it be to send 1000s of people to a messy site, more so what use will the search engines be if they are sending people to brambly unmapped forests to weedwhack their way through? Here are the basics of On Page SEO for the best web design.
Unique and Accurate Page Titles for SEO
First Step: Keywords – this is the list of hand picked search terms that have relatively low competition and high traffic. In essence, you are finding where internet users are not being served. You must have your exact match keyword list in hand, ready to refer to as you are building your site. All of the links, titles, tags and content body will depend on these words. Important: You want to build your pages and content around the Keywords you have chosen for your niche to serve. Keyword ratios are important. Shoot for a 4% ratio.
The page title is what the page is about. This is one of the first lines of code. Page title contents are displayed in the search result.The title is set with Meta Tags. Example Title: <title>Sherri’s Organic Cookies</title>
Site description or Meta Description. The description is a way to let people on to the relevant things about your page. Search engines will take a snapshot from the content of your page, or use the meta description. Quality descriptions are important. People will “bounce” if they get the wrong information, so be honest. The description should accurately reflect the content.
Example Meta Description: <meta name=”description=” content=”Sherri makes the best chocolate chip organic cookies, with free delivery and recipes galore. Shipping anywhere in the United States.”>
Google claims not to use meta keyword tags.
Additionally
- Create different title tags for every page
- Use brief titles, do not stuff with keywords.
- Test – Try different descriptions to see which get better click through and conversion rates.
Site URLs for Best SEO and Web Design
Search Engines will count site relevant keywords that are in the url and give your site more credibility. All of the pages should have a descriptive text as part of the in the url. So, our chocolate chip cookie recipe should have a url: myorganiccookies.com/blog/chocolatechiprecipe.htm, not myorganiccookies.com/blog/1
It’s ok to use keywords, but don’t stuff in long strings of them.
Content for SEO
You want fabulous content for users as well as SEO. Articles are best at 1000 words, where blog posts around 500. Don’t carbon copy your content around the site. Also, you want a 4% Keyword ratio.
Navigation for Best SEO
“This is very important to search engines” -Google
Key content should be readily accessible. Make the map, chart the routes that you want people to take. You are the seasoned tour guide…wow your visitors. Show them the tallest trees, but first explain the ecosystem. Also, have a contact page menu item from your homepage. This is critical.
“Breadcrumbs” are important as they allow visitors to backtrack from deep sections of the site via a row or string of internal links. Add breadcrumb functionality.
SiteMap or SEO –
You need Two Sitemaps:
HTML – For real people. This is a collection of organized links presented as the sitemap. It gives users a complete overview of the site.
XML Sitemap – For robots and search engine crawlers – Submit through google webmaster tools.
Keep these maps up to date
404 Pages
404- Page Not Found – are placeholders for outdated or missing pages. Make a useful 404 Page, so that visitors can navigate back to what they are looking for. You can also put useful information on these pages with widgets. Also configure the webserver to give a 404 HTTP status code when non-existent pages are requested, thus the 404 pages are not indexed by search engines.
Internal/External Linking for Best SEO–
Anchor text links need to be consistent and descriptive. These are links typically found it the body of your content. Example: to link to myorganiccookies.com/blog/chocolatechiprecipe.htm – use the anchor text “Organic Chocolate Chip Recipe”, not “click here”…
Robots.txt – This is a stop sign for seach engines. Use it if you don’t want certain pages crawled and index.
Overall, Search Engines like Google aiming to provide the best user experience. If you site is full of booby traps, dead ends and inaccurately advertised content, it will equate a poor user experience and consequently lower rankings. Keep your site clean as a whistle, legit and organized. Organize it more than you think it should be!
Add some external links to Popular sites like Wikipedia. It helps give credibility to your pages.
You can download the Google SEO Starter Guide here.
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by Jason Jelonek