Top 10 easy ways to maximise SEO on your site pages
Use unique Titles & Meta
Take stock of each page’s content, and make sure you write relevant Titles and Meta descriptions that explain what is on that page, without resorting to using your business name. Identifying a keyword and use it in both the Title, in the Meta (and a few other places, which we’ll get to) is best SEO practice.
Make sure images are the right size
Too big images affect load times; too small look unprofessional. Both might not load at all and how smooth does that little red cross look? (Read: not really.) WordPress image libraries will often suggest a good size for that theme, but a good rule of thumb is around 1200 x 800 pixels, unless they’re a big background shot. Make sure they’re .jpeg’s, not .png’s, unless necessary.
Use only one <h1> tag
Google’s a simple beast. A <h1> tag gives her a name to call your page, and find it when other people are searching for it. Don’t give your page multiple “names” – that’s confusing. To everyone, and Google. Oh, and remember that keyword? Good SEO means putting it in here too.
Keep other <h> tags for relevant content
Blog posts and information-heavy pages are good for <h2>, <h3>, <h4> <and so on> tags. Again, a descriptive short phrase. Don’t bother adding them to repeating items like contact forms or footer elements.
Use Alt tags on images
Like meta for your pictures. Short sentence or phrase describing the page that it’s on works best. Again, dig out that keyword and include it here.
Write unique OpenGraph titles & descriptions
Ignore the fancy name. All you need to know about this bit is filling it out give you control over how it’s shown on Facebook and Twitter. If you don’t fill it out, automated content generators will pick a picture and a sentence or two. Which one, who knows? So tell them what you want (good life advice, in general).
Add appropriate schema information
This generates a rich snippet, that short summary of a page you sometimes get in search results of Google in a nice format with star ratings, author photo, image, etc. Filling this out gives search engines only the important and precise information to display in search result snippets.
Keep URL’s short & include keyword
The page’s URL needs to be short. The URL is generated from your Meta and Page Title, so check back in with this box and cut it down. First remove the articles (“the”, “a”, “an”). Next, consider acronyms or abbreviations where possible – EDMs instead of Electronic Direct Mail, for example. UNLESS it is your keyword. Yep, we’re back there – keyword needs to make an appearance here too.
Use your keyword once in the first 150 words
Okay, last time. Promise. Make sure you use your keyword in the first 150 words of the content. Of course, you probably will be using it lots as this word is what that entire page is about. However, don’t overdo it – this is what’s known as keyword stuffing. Popular with outmoded and bot-driven content; unpopular with Google.
Use synonyms in content
Keywords are important, but think broader. Is your page about cats? No worries. Strong SEO means using “cat” in your <h1> tag, in your intro, in the meta, in the URL, in OpenGraph, in your image Alt text… but in the rest of the content, dust off that thesaurus. What about feline? Tabby? Chat about your ginger tom, or your moggie. Content that’s written the way a fellow human being would want to read it, rather than what we think a search engine wants, gets better results. Google and your end user.
We could go on. We could make this list the Top 20 SEO Things… but it might be easier to show you the rest. Contact us today to chat through how our SEO techniques can help get your business seen online.