On-page Optimisation

Page strength builders

There are some relatively simple, on-page ways to ensure your site is optimised for search engine relevance and performance.

optimising metatags

The meta information about and within a page gives the search engines minute details about the files and information held. Metatags appear in the head of webpages, and contain data meant to help the search engines understand more about what is in the page. optimising metatags is something that helps identify and separate each page or item of information you wish to share.

Although the use of keywords can help to optimise metatags, it is important to remember what metatags are actually meant to do: offer a brief summary of what can be found. Metadata is used by computers to categorize and sort information quickly – it is information about data.

Focusing more on the keywords than the actual information offered by a metatag may have an adverse effect on the efforts. Search engines find it very easy to identify metatag manipulation, making over-optimisation easier to penalize or (more likely) discount. In general, most metatags do not carry a lot of weight, so stuffing them won’t help much anyway. The risk here generally dwarfs the potential gains.

Different search engines might weigh the value of metatag information differently, making these tags the subject of a range of different optimising techniques. While there is definitely merit in understanding the role of metatags and perhaps singularly testing their relevance, generally speaking, if you use the metatags to provide a brief, accurate description using keywords appropriately, they will work well for you.

Can I skip some metatags?

The answer is yes, you can skip some metatags and still find success. There are more metatags out there than are needed – so depending on how many pages and tags you need to create, it helps to know which ones to look at and which you can skip.

A great example of this is how over time, Google devalued the meta keywords tag, making skipping this tag a possibility in Google-focused efforts. Not having a meta keywords tag will not hinder your potential in Google, so many SEOs suggest to skip this to spend time on more valuable efforts.

However, remember that Google is not the only search engine, and what they say and what might work best could easily be different things.

Some SEOs would advise instead, to complete the keyword tags but to not spend too much time or effort in doing so. This covers you in other engines that might still value the tag, and if it is not over-optimised, it will not hurt you in Google.

Other metatags that are available but unnecessary might include:

Applying a mechanical population of the metatags can make them less effective as well. It is best that the metatags of each page are unique, accurate and succinct. Typically, it means you need to try to make the process of completing the metatags a manual one (or as manual as possible). Mechanical variation is easy to detect.

Think of metatags as a small signal that is usually easy to complete, once, to receive whatever benefits might be possible. Skipping most of them might not hurt you, but if adding a few of them correctly might help you, which direction makes the most sense to your business plans?

For more on metadata and metatags: http://www.w3schools.com/tags/tag_meta.asp

http://codex.wordpress.org/Meta_Tags_in_WordPress

Titles and attributes

In addition to metadata, a good idea in optimisation is to make the most of your titles and the descriptive attributes of images.

While titles may be self-explained, image alt attributes are important to understand clearly.

An “alt” attribute is an alternative description of an image. The alt attribute is read by browsers and displayed for those who have image viewing disabled or modified, or those using a browser equipped for helping users with vision or hearing challenges. If an image does not load properly, the “alt” text will usually display in its place. It allows you to be Section 508 Compliant (http://www.section508.gov/).

The following are metatags, titles and other attributes that you should understand when you are optimising your site content:

  • Page title: The page title is not technically metadata on a page, but optimising this tag is a crucial step in most optimising efforts and usually happens at the same time. The title tag tells the search engines and the users what the page is about, so keywords used here will tend to be very focused. There is really no limit in how long your page titles can be, yet there is a limit to how many characters will display in any search engine or browser. There are differing opinions on the best possible length for an optimised page title, but 70 characters or less will tend to keep your entire title visible. Placing keywords in the beginning of the title is also widely acknowledged as a smart move. Use word order to align potential long tail connections. “Creative Furniture Design In London” might help you with searches on “creative furniture London,” “furniture design London,” “creative furniture design” and more. Remember that once analytics have collected data to analyze, titles can be changed and optimised for greatest performance.
    • If you use titles of varying length, realize that usually less than 70 characters are visible
    • Titles should directly reflect terms and ideas found in the content of the page for greatest effect – irrelevant keyword stuffing is not a best practice, and will have limited effect
    • Keywords furthest to the left will be seen as most valuable
    • Sometimes a shorter title packs more punch
    • Think of longtail combinations when you craft your longer titles for deeper pages, and use word order to strategically position them for multiple combinations
    • If you want to identify a regional/geographical connection, establish it in your title
    • Test, measure, and modify page titles as your pages become stronger online
  • Meta description: The meta description describes what the page holds. Using keywords in this tag is not going to help the page rank for those keywords. What the description does, is to display in the search engine results page (SERP). It is the description often displayed for the page. In this respect keywords may make a connection for the searcher that encourages them to click-through to your page. A good description is probably best considered as a lead-in to the page, and not much more. They do have value in an ability to “sell” but probably not much more than that. Think of a couple descriptive sentences, and aim for about 165 characters.
    • Make the point of your meta description optimisation to entice user clicks
  • Meta Keywords: As previously noted, the meta keywords tag is one that has little value. In optimising a site, adding 10-20 keywords specific to the page content is not a bad practice, but not one that will help you gain a lot of ground. While Google may discount it, other search engines may not, so completing it quickly, accurately and efficiently is a good practice to adopt.
    • Create short, varied keyword tags specific to their page content
  • Meta robots: The meta robots tag tell search engine bots what you prefer to happen with the page content. They are short, simple tags that are actually quite powerful. They are written with a NAME attribute set to “ROBOTS” and Content attributes set with values that direct the bots. Values for the “CONTENT” attribute are: “INDEX”, “NOINDEX”, “FOLLOW”, and “NOFOLLOW”. You use the “robots” meta tag to assign these values to first the page content, then to how the bots should handle outgoing links from that page of content. For example, using “INDEX, FOLLOW” as the content values means the page should be indexed by search engines, and outgoing links from the page should be followed. Using “NOINDEX, FOLLOW” would mean that the page should not be indexed, but the links should be followed, and so on.
    • The default is to index and follow the links, so this is not a necessary tag to add if this is the result you wish to see – use this tag instead to block pages from being indexed, or to prevent on-page links from being followed
  • Image “alt” attributes and “titles”: The descriptive attributes of an image can be used strategically for SEO. Alt attributes are what displays when the image reading functionality is turned-off or the image has an issue loading in a user’s browser. The image “title” attribute is what displays on a hover triggered by an image mouse-over. If appropriate, using some keywords here can offer you a deeper contextual connection on a page of similarly-themed content. For example, say you have a page on creating legal documents, and in this page an image of a sample legal document is provided. Weaving “legal document” with selected modifiers to describe the image in the “alt” and “title” attributes can help.
    • The “alt” and the “title” attributes of an image can be the same thing
    • If you don’t want text on the hover, don’t use the title attribute
    • Section 508 compliance specifically requires the use of alt attributes : http://www.section508.gov/