Don’t Forget Onsite Optimization!

Guest Post By Brian Harnish of Artistic SEO [commentary by Jeremy Rivera]

While many of us in online marketing are SEOs and work on a full time basis with web sites, and keeping ourselves updated with tons of articles from everywhere on the interwebs, it’s possible for some of us to lose track of the basics from time to time.  That’s why it never hurts to review the basics [of onsite search engine optimization] every once in awhile to keep our foundation strong and hopefully never forget these essentials to ranking well!

Title

This may be a no-brainer but there are still a few web sites I’ve been to that have even neglected to add their title!  Or, they leave an obvious default title that is not going to help anyone who’s searching on Google find the site.  It’s important to have a good well-written title!  The function of the title tag is to tell search engines what the page is actually about.  So, be sure to have your major keywords in the title, at the very least.  The title should be around 50-60 characters at the most.

Meta Description

A well-crafted Meta Description is another important on site item on your page.  This is essential because it does 2 things at once:  it tells potential clients running across your listing on search engines what your page is about, and can help convert a lead by enticing clients to click on the link and move forward into your site.  However, it really isn’t used by Google to that much as far as keywords are concerned.  Keep the description to 150-160 characters.

H1s, H2s, H3s

These are all header tags.  They need to be a part of the page because keywords and descriptions within these header tags tell Google what is actually on the page.  It helps to establish a page structure/hierarchy that will actually help your rankings. [Header tags also help break up the various topics on the page for the user, so it makes for a much easier experience.]

Internal Linking

This is another important page item.  Using appropriate internal linking does 2 things at once – it tells people what’s behind a link on a page, and it tells the search engines what to follow, what not to follow, what to index, and what not to index.  In short, links are the backbone of the world wide web.  Without links, you can’t expect Google to do much in terms of spidering and indexing your site.  Use links with anchor text that accurately describes the name of the page.  It’s important not to mislead your users or search engines, as doing so can raise red flags that your site may possibly be considered spam.

Keyword Mentions On the page

There is an age old myth in SEO that’s based on keyword density.  The keyword density myth includes requirements that claim anything from a 10% keyword density to more than 25% keyword density is a ranking factor and can get you ranked.  In all of my experience as an SEO, I have not seen this to be true.  One or two mentions of a targeted keyword on a single page is really all you need.  Anything more than that is unnecessary. [SEO Moz did an excellent article on keyword targeting that deserves a read]

Images

This may be the last thing that you think of when it comes to basics, but it’s probably one of the most important.  If you create images for your site and they take too long to load, that can cause search engines to spider your site more slowly than they would have otherwise, leading to slow site load times and other issues that can have a negative effect on your rankings.  In addition, it can cause a high bounce rate, a major limiting factor when it comes to increasing your lead conversions.  Instead, always ensure that you optimize your images for the fastest download times.  This will make it easier on both your users and search engine spiders who spider your site. [Additionally, if you're adding images, be sure to upload them with appropriate file names. A project I assisted with had a background image labeled skeleton.jpg, and 4 months later it was ranking for "skeleton in desert", "jack skeleton" and other terms, when there was no other reference at all on site in meta text or text about "skeleton".]

Image Alt Text

This is usually incorrectly referred to as the image alt tag.  It’s not actually a tag.  It’s the alternate text attribute of the image tag.  The reason it’s an attribute is because it’s something that you add to the image tag that tells it what to call the image.  See, by default Google does not read images – while they may spider and index them by file name, Google sees images as a blank space on the page.  So, you need to have some kind of text that appears in place of the image to tell the search engine what’s really there.  Enter image alt text.  Keyword rich, appropriate image alt text can actually help your rankings.  But, be sure that it describes the image itself and isn’t just laced with a number of keyword repetitions that are useless to the user.

Valid coding practices

This is true whether you’re a designer, SEO, or developer.  You need to have good coding on your site.  If you don’t or you’re not sure, then you’d best get over to the W3C and crack open your site with their HTML validator to ensure that you have valid code.  Or, you can utilize any of the cheap or free HTML validator software that’s available online.  Valid code ensures that your site design is going to work on many modern browsers on the market. [Remember that with all of the various browsers, and various versions of those browsers that site rendering may be different on each platform, and browser specific elements can be established in your CSS code to adjust for this. Additionally, more outdated browsers are now getting messages from places like Twitter that their browser is outdated, and should be updated.]

These are essential basics [for onsite optimization] that must be on your site to help it rank well.  Even if you know these by heart already, it’s always a good idea to review them from time to time to ensure that you’re optimizing your web sites correctly.  Remember – only you can prevent web site penalties!