In Parts 1-4, you learned how to develop your online business proposition, build a keyword list, and optimize at the site level. They also introduced him to our legendary Doug (who sells antique doors, door handles, knockers, bells or pulls and fitting services) in Windsor, UK.

Now is the time to focus on optimizing each individual page. My key message is to keep each page short! You should only cover one product, service, or key information per page. If you find yourself covering more, break up the content and create more pages.

Keyword density is a key concept in page optimization and is defined as “The number of times a keyword is used on a web page divided by the total number of words on the page. Expressed as a percentage.” Another key term is keyword relevance, which is defined as “how often keywords that are related to each other appear on the page.”

(a) Metadata Optimization

Experts disagree on the importance of metadata. In the old days, search engines used metadata a lot to rank sites. Now, as a result of abuse by webmasters, metadata on ranking sites is largely ignored by major engines. However, metadata is still used by search engines to compile site descriptions in search engine results and (for that reason alone) it’s quite a time consuming job!

The META-Description tag is one of the few META tags that can be considered important as some search engines use it as a description of your site. You should keep it under 180 characters (so engines don’t truncate it) and make sure it (i) reads well, (ii) includes keywords at a reasonable density, (iii) entice browsers to click, and (iv) describe the landing page accurately (using repeated words in the page title, the first heading, and the first paragraph of page content). Doug (for his home page) opts for the following:

Antique doors and door fittings by Doug Chalmers of Middlesex, UK. Antique knockers, bells and other door hardware in brass and iron, shipped all over the world.”

The META-Keyword tag is almost useless these days, so I wouldn’t spend too much time on it. Simply put your A list of keywords for each page between the tags (remember that four of the ten must be common to each page on your site and six specific to the page in question). Use spaces, not commas, to separate keywords. On his door knocker page, Doug opts for:

“Antique Door Brass Hardware Knocker Decorative Iron Engraved Antique Knobs”

To be honest, almost all other tags are pretty useless. I would completely avoid the generator, copyright and author tags (they just clutter up your code) and only use the Content-Type, Content-Style-Type and Content-Language tags where your site is not in English.

The only other tags I would consider are the ICRA rating tag (which can attract traffic from several new family-friendly search engines) and a geo-location tag (for example, ICBM tags). Both tags might become more widely used in the future, so they’re at least worth considering.

(b) Optimization of titles and headings

The title tag is not a meta tag, but it is absolutely vital for search engine optimization. Title tags (i) are displayed at the top of the browser window, (ii) are typically used by search engines to generate the link that appears on your page in search results lists, and (iii) are used as bookmark titles for your page. For all these reasons, it is vital to get it right.

They should be descriptive and short (ideally under 100 characters) and make good use of your keywords. Overusing keywords can be considered abuse by search engines, but this won’t happen if you write the title as a trail of breadcrumbs (which is the approach I recommend). As an example, consider Doug’s knocker page:

“antique-door-knockers.com > Door Hardware > Brass Knockers – decorative and engraved antique knockers and knobs”

The title summarizes the page well, while also positioning it within the overall structure of the site. Hardly anyone uses this kind of approach, which is one more reason why you should. It is by far the best way to differentiate yourself and move up the rankings.

Search engines pay attention to header tags, so it often surprises me that webmasters don’t use them. Some avoid heading tags because they haven’t learned to control their appearance, using style sheets or their web-building software, but this is a lazy and expensive mistake! Doug uses the following headings to structure his knocker page:

Title 1

– Title 2

decorative knockers

– León Aldabas or Knobs

– Knockers or pineapple knobs

smooth knockers

– Round knocker

In general, I would avoid going down to subheadings (heading 3) as search engines will give less importance to each lower level in the nesting and dilute the value of the higher levels. If you need header 3, I suggest you break the content into separate pages.

(c) Page Structure Optimization

We talked earlier in the guide about the importance of the top left of your page. On your home page, this area should be a sitemap of all the rest of the site. On your money pages, this area should contain your first title(s) and first paragraph.

Some search engines will only measure keyword density and relevance in the first few lines, rather than the entire page. As such, pay close attention to how each page begins. Here’s an example from Doug’s knocker page:

decorative knockers (title one)

Knockers or lion knobs

(title two)

In old-knockers.comwe have the best Victorian and Georgian kitchens lock. Our brass knockers they are very popular; particularly our antique knockers and decorative or engraved knobs. In addition to our rare vintages and collectibles, we stock reproductions lion knockersincluding the Royal Lion Head Knocker and Georgian Lion Knocker, both available in polished brass or cast iron.

You’ll notice a few things here. First, the liberal use of internal links (at the home page, category page and product page level). Second, the use of B-list keywords (such as Victorian and Edwardian) and, in particular, related keywords (such as antique, vintage, and collectible). Third, the bolding of the lion knockers keyword combination (not exaggerated and perfectly understandable in this paragraph).

The rest of the page should continue in a similar vein (although you can be a little more relaxed and focus on the more tedious but important details to make a sale, like dimensions, prices, etc.) On money pages, the bottom The page should be where you place your formal navigation to the rest of the site.

(d) Page text optimization

You may have already collected some of the key points. Use bold or italics sparingly to strike out keywords (but only when justified in context). Use the two-word and three-word keyword strings we identified in Part 3 (Keyword Analysis). Above all, though, aim for no more than 450-600 total words on each page (and ideally near the lower end of that range).

Opinions differ on the ideal keyword density. A lot depends on how competitive your keywords are and how many you seriously target. For the top four keywords (and site-wide), I’d aim for a 20% density for each word individually in sector one (where sector one is defined as title + headings + bold text + italicized text + text alternative).

The overall density for regular page text content (sector two): should be 2-4% for your page-specific (and most important) keywords, 0.8-1.5% for your two or three keyword strings and 0.2-0.5% for related keywords. keywords (but with a lot of them).

Like Doug, you should use the Spannerworks Keyword Density Analyzer to measure your copy density and keep refining it until you’re happy with the results.

(e) Image optimization page

I mentioned alt text in sector one above. In general, I would keep images to an absolute minimum on your site (and only to keep the site visually appealing). However, when using images, I would make sure to have descriptive alt text for each image that (i) helps the disabled user navigate the image and (ii) is keyword dense. For example, Doug uses the following alt text for an image of a knocker:

Reproduction of a royal lion head knocker (in polished brass, also available in cast iron)

Note that you don’t need to say “image of” at the beginning of your description (in fact, this will only tend to annoy disabled users using screen readers, as their software will tell them it’s an image before reading the text to them). alt text).

Next, we turn our attention to promoting your site…

Browse the guide

Former:

SEO Expert Guide – Whole Site Optimization (part 4/10)

Next:

SEO Expert Guide – Free Site Promotion (PR) (part 6/10)