On-Page SEO Best PracticesTips to make users and search engines love your website

@HUGrichmond

So, what is SEO anyway?

“Search engine optimization (SEO) is the practice of increasing the quantity and quality of traffic to your website through organic search results.” ~ Moz

SEO Strategy: On-Page vs. Off-Page

Off-PageWhat other sites communicate to a search engine about your site

● Links● Trust● Social

On-PageWhat a site communicates to a search engine

● Content● Meta data● Site architecture

Today’s presentation will focus on on-page tactics

Make Great Content

Satisfy a Demand

Add Targeted Keywords to Page Titles

How do you write great page titles?Keep titles concise around 50-60 characters or so to ensure the entire title is visible.

Put the keyword at the beginning of the page title (you don’t want to risk searchers not seeing it if it gets cut off)

Do not duplicate page title tags. This affects your search visibility!

Make sure the keywords on your page title accurately describe what the user expects to find.

Add Targeted Keywords in Meta Descriptions

How do you write great meta descriptions?Keep them to optimal length for search engines which is roughly around 155 characters.

Use keywords intelligently and naturally

Make them compelling to get searchers to click (use questions, mystery, call-to-action, offer value to the searcher)

Make sure the meta description is relevant to the page and page title.

Don’t forget to make them unique!

Let’s say you’re craving a burger … how might you search?

This is an example of a good page title and meta description

Keyword phrase in the meta description

Meta description is enticing, uses great adjectives.

Keyword phrase in the page title and closer to the beginning

This is an example of a poorly optimized page title and meta description

Page title does not have keyword phrase in it;. Losing valuable real estate to optimize for other terms.

Original meta description is short. The rest of the meta description is cut off.

Optimize Your URLs

Good!

Could you have guessed what this page was about just from the URL?

Use the Right Anchor Text When Linking Internally

Anchor text are the visibly clickable words within a webpage or blog post.

Avoid saying things like “click here”, instead use keywords related to the page you’re linking to.

Search engines use anchor texts linking to a page as an indicator of a page topic or which keywords the page should rank for.

If your anchor text says “most delicious burgers in Richmond” the page should definitely point to a page that discusses that.

Use Keywords in Image Alt-Text Alt-text’s purpose: this attribute provides alternative information for an image if a user cannot see it (slow connections, errors or if the user is seeing a screen reader).

Use keywords naturally within the image alt-text.

Make sure the keywords are relevant.

Avoid keyword stuffing!

Low impact on SEO, but still worth optimizing when you have time.

Image courtesy of National Geographic.

Make Sure It’s Linkable and Shareable

Make content accessible (not all content should be gated)

Content that’s not linkable will be unlikely to rank

Include ways to share on social

Works Cited and Helpful ResourcesOn-Page Factors: https://moz.com/learn/seo/on-page-factors

On-Page SEO 101: Tips for Keyword Optimizing the Most Critical Parts of Your Website: http://blog.hubspot.com/marketing/seo-site-keyword-optimize-ht#sm.0001fj5tejvc1f7tqxq1v7obml9dn

Basic SEO Best Practices: http://www.rickwhittington.com/blog/basic-seo-best-practices-google/

A Data Driven Guide to Anchor Text (And Its Impact on SEO): https://ahrefs.com/blog/anchor-text/

Any Questions?