Search Engine Optimization (SEO)
is the process of affecting the visibility of a website or a web page in a search engine's "natural" or un-paid ("organic") search results. In general, the earlier (or higher ranked on the search results page), and more frequently a site appears in the search results list, the more visitors it will receive from the search engine's users.
Create unique title tags for each page
•Each of your pages should ideally have a unique title tag, which helps Google know how the page is
distinct from the others on your site.
•using a single title tag across all of your site's pages or a large group of pages
Avoid:
•Use brief, but descriptive titles
•Titles can be both short and informative. If the title is too long, Google will show only a portion of it in
the search result.
•using extremely lengthy titles that are unhelpful to users
•stuffing unneeded keywords in your title tags
Violations of SEO:
Irrelevant/Weak Content
Spam
Paid-for Links
Seeing Like a Search Engine
Just as search engines need to see content in order to list pages in their massive keyword-based indices, they also need to see links in order to find the content. A crawlable link structure - one that lets their spiders browse the pathways of a website - is vital in order to find all of the pages on a website. Hundreds of thousands of sites make the critical mistake of structuring their navigation in ways that search engines cannot access, thus impacting their ability to get pages listed in the search engines' indices.
Below, we've illustrated how this problem can happen:
In the example above, Google's spider has reached page "A" and sees links to pages "B" and "E". However, even though C and D might be important pages on the site, the spider has no way to reach them (or even know they exist.) This is because no direct, crawlable links point to those pages. As far as Google is concerned, they might as well not exist - great content, good keyword targeting, and smart marketing won't make any difference at all if the spiders can't reach those pages in the first place.
On-Page Optimization
That said, keyword usage and targeting are still a part of the search engines' ranking algorithms, and we can leverage some effective "best practices" for keyword usage to help create pages that are close to "optimized." When working with one of your own sites, this is the process we recommend:
- Use the keyword in the title tag at least once. Try to keep the keyword as close to the beginning of the title tag as possible. More detail on title tags follows later in this section.
- Once prominently near the top of the page.
- At least 2-3 times, including variations, in the body copy on the page - sometimes a few more if there's a lot of text content. You may find additional value in using the keyword or variations more than this, but in our experience, adding more instances of a term or phrase tends to have little to no impact on rankings.
- At least once in the alt attribute of an image on the page. This not only helps with web search, but also image search, which can occasionally bring valuable traffic.
- Once in the URL. Additional rules for URLs and keywords are discussed later on in this section.
- At least once in the meta description tag. Note that the meta description tag does NOT get used by the engines for rankings, but rather helps to attract clicks by searchers from the results page, as it is the "snippet" of text used by the search engines.
- Generally not in link anchor text on the page itself that points to other pages on your site or different domains (this is a bit complex - see this blog post for details).
Employ Empathy
Place yourself in the mind of a user and look at your URL. If you can easily and accurately predict the content you'd expect to find on the page, your URLs are appropriately descriptive. You don't need to spell out every last detail in the URL, but a rough idea is a good starting point.
Shorter is better
While a descriptive URL is important, minimizing length and trailing slashes will make your URLs easier to copy and paste (into emails, blog posts, text messages, etc) and will be fully visible in the search results.
Keyword use is important (but overuse is dangerous)
If your page is targeting a specific term or phrase, make sure to include it in the URL. However, don't go overboard by trying to stuff in multiple keywords for SEO purposes - overuse will result in less usable URLs and can trip spam filters.
Go static
The best URLs are human readable without lots of parameters, numbers and symbols. Using technologies like mod_rewrite for Apache and ISAPI_rewrite for Microsoft, you can easily transform dynamic URLs like this http://moz.com/blog?id=123 into a more readable static version like this: http://moz.com/blog/google-fresh-factor. Even single dynamic parameters in a URL can result in lower overall ranking and indexing.
Use hyphens to separate words
Not all web applications accurately interpret separators like underscore "_," plus "+," or space "%20," so use the hyphen "-" character to separate words in a URL, as in google-fresh-factor for URLs example above.
KEYWORDS
Google's AdWords Keyword tool is a common starting point for SEO keyword research. It not only suggests keywords and provides estimated search volume, but also predicts the cost of running paid campaigns for these terms. To determine volume for a particular keyword, be sure to set the Match Type to [Exact] and look under Local Monthly Searches. Remember that these represent total searches. Depending on your ranking and click-through rate, the actual number of visitors you achieve for these keywords will usually be much lower.
What are my chances of success?
In order to know which keywords to target, it's essential to not only understand the demand for a given term or phrase, but also the work required to achieve those rankings. If big brands take the top 10 results and you're just starting out on the web, the uphill battle for rankings can take years of effort. This is why it's essential to understand keyword difficulty.
On Search Engine Rankings
There are a limited number of variables that search engines can take into account directly, including keywords, links, and site structure. However, through linking patterns, user engagement metrics and machine learning, the engines make a considerable number of intuitions about a given site. Usability and user experience are "second order" influences on search engine ranking success. They provide an indirect, but measurable benefit to a site's external popularity, which the engines can then interpret as a signal of higher quality.
For Search Engine Success
Developing "great content" may be the most repeated suggestion in the SEO world. Yet, despite its clichéd status, appealing, useful content is critical to search engine optimization. Every search performed at the engines comes with an intent - to find, learn, solve, buy, fix, treat, or understand. Search engines place web pages in their results in order to satisfy that intent in the best possible way, and crafting the most fulfilling, thorough content that addresses a searcher's needs provides an excellent chance to earn top rankings.
