SEO Best Practices - Part 1

Is your website coming up as one of the first results in Google? Do you have a strategy to increase your search engine rankings so that new customers can find you? 

Search Engine Optimization is the process of improving your website's visibility in search engines. Paying close attention to SEO can help your business grow exponentially.

Page Title

Page Title is arguably one of the most important factors for SEO. Remember that search is primarily about usability. Search engines devise algorithms that attempt to find the most appropriate web content to satisfy a user’s search. With that in mind, the Page Title is the attention grabber that draws most users to click.

Rules:

1. Use the space provided. Your title tag should be no more than 60 characters and be as descriptive as possible.


2. Give the search engine important clues about the page. Assume that the Page Title tag is the only thing the search engines use to rank your page (not even remotely close, but assume anyway). Would your Page Title explain the content of your page? Include the brand, product name, who it targets, or what its main features are.


3. Give the search user important clues about the page. Search is primarily about people, NOT machines. Think about what users will search for. The goal is not use industry terminology, branding statements or clever jargon, the goal is to give a meaningful description that matches exactly what a user will search for.

Page Description (Metatag_Description)

Page Descriptions show up on a web search as the brief two line descriptive copy below the Page Title (see search example). Most search engines use Page Descriptions as a relevancy factor. This means that even though they are not a primary factor in search placement, they do influence the end user’s perception of the importance of your content. Words that match the user’s search phrase are highlighted with bold formatting. The more bold words, the more relevant the content appears to the user.

Rules:

1. Use the space provided. Your Page Description should be two lines of 120 characters each and be as descriptive as possible.


2. Accurately describe the page and product to search users. Include words that the users would be likely to search for to find the product. Make sure to use words or phrases that are crafted for users. The text should make sense to a non-technical reader.


3. Different search engines use this field differently. Make sure to check your search results on different search engines to make sure your descriptions are appearing correctly.

Keywords (Metatag_Keywords)

Keywords are not a critical factor to SEO anymore. Once the Holy Grail, these have fallen by the wayside. That being said, it’s still a good idea to populate your site with keywords that reference the anchor text in your page links. This will help increase your relevancy score.

Rules:

1. Don’t spend too much time on this.


2. List the Product Code, Manufacturer, Model, and any other pertinent info, all separated by commas.


3. Don’t duplicate your keywords by relisting them as plural, capitalizing words, or adding hyphens. Just list each keyword once.

written by

Paul Bresenden

President & Creative Director

Tags: seo, best practices