SEO Best Practices SEO Best Practices
Search Engine Optimization
(SEO) Best Practices
30 Practical Tactics to
Improve your Search Results
Lori Ulloa
Senior Digital Marketing Strategist
R2integrated
According to Google, search engine optimization is often about making
small modifications to parts of your website. When viewed individually,
these changes might seem like incremental improvements, but when
combined with other optimizations, they can have a noticeable impact on
your site's user experience and performance in organic search results.
The following sections are best practices for elements that will work in
tandem to optimize your website. To get you started, here is a printable
SEO Cheat Sheet.
Keywords
Keywords, also known as key terms, are the basis for SEO. It’s difficult to
anticipate exactly how a user will find a particular website, as 40% of all
search queries are unique. However having a deep understanding of a
site’s audience, business goals and content is crucial in determining ideal
terms. Optimal key terms will reflect the theme of a page’s content and
should be chosen with the above three parameters in mind.
1. Keywords should actually be phrases. For example, if your
company wants to be known for marketing, specializes in
direct and does business in Maryland, your homepage should
focus on a phrase such as “direct marketing Maryland.”
2. Key terms should be very relevant to the content on each
page.
a. Chosen key terms should be repeated within content
for not only SEO but also usability purposes.
Page Title Element
Titles appear at the top of a webpage. The title is also what displays at
the top of an individual result on a search engine result page (SERP).
This element is important in identifying the content on a page and should
be different on all pages as it relates to that content. It will also help users
determine the content on a specific page. For large websites with
dynamic content, the CMS (Content Management System) will determine
how this element is handled. Check with your developer for options.
3. Titles should be about 60-67 characters in length including
spaces (only to prevent truncating).
4. Titles should be different for each page on a website but a
loose naming convention is suggested for consistency.
When combined, small
modifications can have a
noticeable impact on your
site's performance in
organic search result 5. Titles should be relevant to content on the page that it’s
identifying and should contain the same target keywords.
Meta Description
The meta description, an element in html, is a paragraph that will display
on the SERP page under the title. This paragraph should accurately
describe the content on the page. Duplicate descriptions can be
penalized by some SEs. For large websites with dynamic content, the
CMS will determine how this element is handled. Check with your
developer for options.
6. Meta descriptions should be about 120 - 200 characters in
length including spaces but can vary.
7. Descriptions should be different for each page on a website.
8. The description should be relevant to the content on the page
and should include targeted keywords
h1-h3 (Header) Tags
The h1 tag should only be employed once per page and should define the
most important key phrase. H2 and h3 tags call attention to other
important information within the content.
9. H1 tag should be employed once per page. H2 and h3 can
occur many times to emphasize key terms but usually in
section headers.
10. H1 tags should not be the company name if the company
name already has prime placement in the domain name.
Exceptions to this can be an “about” page or “contact us”
page.
Homepage URLs
There should be only one resolving URL for the homepage of a website.
The resolving homepage that a user types into the address bar is often
what we suggest. However, asp.net sites function differently. When
navigating to the homepage from within the site, the homepage
sometimes defaults to www.domain.com/index.aspx or /default. Search
engines see this as a different web page. Furthermore, this issue applies
to the www. vs. non www. versions of a homepage (canonicalization).
Search engines see multiple versions of content and don’t know which
one to index. Therefore both of these issues can result in duplicate
content problems. Until recently, this could be fixed with a server side
Keep an eye out for an
upcoming webinar from
R2i on how to determine
the right keywords to get
your website in front of
your targeted audience. redirect, but now you can at least specify a preferred homepage in
Google (with 65% market share of search) using Webmaster Tools
(signup and installation of code is required) or a snippet of code to specify
the canonical in the document head.
11. There should be only one version of a homepage.
a. A server side redirect could be applied to homepage
“versions” and to the non www version of a site.
12. Specify your homepage within a Webmaster Tools account.
Subpage URLs
The URLs are a great place to house keywords and are readable to SEs
when structured properly if your CMS allows URL restructuring.
13. Avoid use of characters such as “_” to separate variables. If
variables are to be separated, they should be separated by “-
“or “+”.
14. With dynamic content, re-write URLs that contain long
character strings and ids that may include characters such as
“?”.
15. Include key terms within your URL that match other targeted
key terms and accurately describe the content on the page.
Homepage and Subpage Content
Content is important not only to help users determine the usefulness of
your site but also to serve as a place to house targeted keywords. If little
content exists or is embedded within images, it’s more difficult to repeat
key terms at an optimal level. In addition, the meta keywords, page title
and keywords in the description should describe content on the page.
There is no magical amount of content. However, SEO and users favor
usable content where a theme is present and understood. Although
search engines can’t read, the algorithm can pick up on character
patterns.
16. Include top targeted keywords. No more than 2-5 per page
should be targeted. The homepage can have a few more but
variations and plurals are not needed as they dilute the
keyword density.
17. Terms should repeat within context of all available outlets
(URL, page title, meta keywords, meta description, content
and tags) no more than 3-5 times for optimal keyword
repetition.
Download the printable
SEO Cheat Sheet to get
started today 18. Content should be readable and of value to the user. Connect
with user’s situation or goals in first sentence.
a. Use conversational text wherever possible, using nontechnical language, to engage the audience.
b. Break up longer scrolling pages with clear type
hierarchies and use of tags.
19. Limit the amount and variety of content on a page. If there is a
large amount of content, consider making it a long annotated
list with key terms.
HTML Tags for Key Term Emphasis and Differentiation
There are a variety of HTML tags that can be employed to further draw
attention to key terms. These tags, when employed properly, can be a
great way to add emphasis, add keywords, and define objects. These
tags include, but are not limited to: alt tags (
), strong indicators (), emphasis (), acronym and abbreviation tags.
Alt tags are descriptions of images and are a place where one can add
key terms that describe the image’s purpose within context. The strong
indicator is a more search engine-friendly application of bold and should
replace current tags where applicable. The emphasis tag is a more
search engine friendly version of italics and should be used in place of the
tag. The acronym and abbreviation tags can be used to define any
acronyms or abbreviations that could be used, such as search engine
optimization to define “SEO” or Maryland to define “MD.”
20. Employ the strong and emphasis indicators to words within the
content that you would like to add emphasis to in order to draw
SE attention.
21. Employ the alt tag to all images and try to describe the image
using key terms.
22. Employ the acronym and abbreviation tags to define acronyms
and abbreviations.
Anchor Text
Anchor text is the text used to describe a link (internal linking, inlinks) and
is the clickable text you see when a link is displayed on a page. Often,
regarding those who link to a site, it’s the company name and not the
company’s function that describes a link externally. Anchor text also
applies internally, but recent tests have shown that it is not as important
as links to your website from an external source. Although companies
typically have little control over how other websites link to them, a
Replace bold and italics
tags with more search
engine friendly HTML tags company can gain control when exchanging or requesting links within a
link campaign. In addition, if your company is a service provider that
stipulates client/partner linking, choose text that is key term rich in the
contractual agreement.
23. Should be the most important key term for that page.
24. Should not be overdone to avoid penalties.
25. Can be requested when discussing links or reciprocal links.
a. Ask partners, clients and vendors to not only link to the
homepage but also to interior pages where it makes
sense to do so.
Robots.txt
This is a root file that can be created to disallow access to search engines
for non-relevant pages that take up valuable crawl budget. Instead of
search engines crawling non-essential pages, disallowing access enables
SEs to focus on pages with important content. Often, robots.txt can be
applied to a website’s Privacy Policy, Terms of Use, member login pages
and non-essential dynamic pages associated with a store. One thing to
note, however, is that items in this file (file names) can be seen by others
who type www.domain.com/robots.txt into a browser. Thus, page names
reflecting content a company wants to keep private, such as a new
product launch, should not be in robots.txt.
26. Should be a file in the root of the site.
a. Items in Robots.txt are case sensitive.
27. Noindex should be added to each page that should not be
indexed.
28. Private pages should simply employ noindex with rel=nofollow
for links to those private pages.
Flash
Although rules are evolving for this item, typically, Flash or Flex content is
not indexed accurately as there is no way for SEs to determine the actual
content. With the recent Adobe/Google understanding, text patterns in
Flash can be picked up by SEs but an all image Flash piece or image
splash page is still a detriment to search.
29. Use SWFObject script for readability when a user does not
have the ability to view Flash.
30. Use captioning for accessibility. Accessibility rules closely
parallel organic SEO rules. Other accessibility tools can be found through Adobe. Think of a search
engine as visually impaired. Some 508 Compliance accessibility rules
aimed to assist those who are visually impaired also help search engines
determine the theme of the animated content that you’re displaying.
About R2integrated
R2integrated, a leading Internet marketing company, provides platforms
and services that enable companies to more quickly and easily distribute
critical marketing communications (publish), implement rich internet
applications (engage), leverage social media and social networks
(connect), and derive critical metrics on performance (understand). R2i
technology empowers companies to create and manage the dynamic
media and understand the social interactions that drive brand value and
sales in the age of peer-to-peer communications.
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