“Onsite SEO: Building A Solid Foundation For Your Website

Onsite SEO: Building A Strong Foundation For Your Website

Presented by Jason Hendricks(@JasonHendricks)

&

James Constable (@james_constable)

@VerticalMeasure#VMwebinar

Who is this Webinar for?

Web Developers Web Designers Content Developers Website Owners Marketing Managers E-commerce Managers Business Consultants

Twitter: @JasonHendricks @james_constable @VerticalMeasure #VMWebinar

What are we going to cover?

Title and Meta Tags (keywords, description) Site Architecture and URL Structure Heading Tags (H1-H6) and Page Content Canonicalization and Duplicate Content Optimizing Images and Using Robots.txt 404 Error Pages and 301/302 Redirects Best Practices and Tips for Webmasters Tools that we use for Onsite SEO Analysis


Why is Onsite SEO so important?


Onsite SEO

Page Content

Link Building

Let’s Start With The Basics… Title Tags – Contain most important keywords

first, no more than 70 characters Meta Keywords – unique and targeted

specifically to each page, 268 character limit Meta Description – unique, written to inspire

clicks, no more than 157 characters in length


Best Practices and Tips

Title Tags

Good: Describe the Page Content. Unique. Brief, but Include Keywords

Bad: Generic for every page Too Long – 65 Characters No keywords or Keyword Stuffing



Meta Description

Good: Accurate Summary of Page Unique Keywords – bold, attract clicks

Bad: Unrelated or Generic Keyword stuffing – low click through rate


URL Structure

Poorly structured URLs make it difficult for search engines to identify the topic of a page and can cause crawling issues, for example:

http://www.example.com/index.php?id_sezione=360&sid=3a5ebc944f41daa6f849f730f1

Well structured, search engine friendly URLs are easily indexed, contain keywords to help search engines identify topical relevance, and are easy to link to:

http://www.example.com/green-dress.php




http://www.example.com/green-dress.php


URL Structure

Good: Keywords in URL Simple Directory Structure Content in correct areas of site

Bad: Lengthy URLs – Many Subdirectories Generic page and folder names Parameters and Session IDs


Site Architecture



Site Architecture

Good: Naturally Flowing Navigation Hierarchy Text based – Internal Linking HTML and XML Sitemaps

Bad: Complexity - too many internal links Overly Narrow – many subdirectories Broken Links


Heading Tags


Not <head> H1 to H6 in decreasing importance Use as if you were writing a Word document

Use Sparingly;

Use Keywords Check coding in CSS


Heading Tags

Good: Document structure outline Use sparingly Include Keywords

Bad: Not used to define page structure Used to style text Excessive use – multiple h1s


Page Content


Indexable Content – at least 500 words Not all in images or flash Can be below the fold to help conversions

Use of keywords – 2 or 3 times each Find Natural usage – human visitors come first

Internal linking – Anchor text


Page Content

Good: Indexable, written content Keywords – users language Fresh and Unique – for Visitors!

Bad: Written just for search engines Just images, flash etc Keyword stuffing and no keywords


Canonicalization

Duplicate Content / Pagination

Only one version crawled Direct crawler to correct page E-Commerce – pagination, ‘View All’ many

ways to reach one page,



Canonicalization

Good: Pagination and duplicate content One cached version of each Refer crawler to correct page

Bad: Pointing to same page Pointing to higher level pages Not used with duplicate content


Duplicate Content

Over 80% of the same content on a page Locations Products Pagination (Canonicalization)

Only one version will return in SERPs

www and non-www. Subdomains and Subdirectories Homepage and index.html (or default, .php,.asp)


Optimizing Images

Search engines cant ‘see’ Images Alt Tags

File Name File Size – load quickly

Optimizing for Google Images E-Commerce Surrounding Text



Optimizing Images

Good: Alt Tags whenever used Descriptive filenames Small File Size

Bad: Missing Alt tags Generic File Names Long or keyword stuffing


Using Robots.txt Blocks Crawlers from Accessing pages

Hide content from being returned in SERPs Member Pages Site search result pages Admin

Don’t block content you want to rank

Separate robots.txt for each subdomain

Alternatives; .htaccess – password protect NoIndex



Robots.txt

Good: Block crawlers to index you don’t want in SERPs Use more secure methods

Bad: Insufficient use Over use – blocking pages you want in SERPs


301, 302 and 404s


302 redirects for temporary page redirects 301 if the page has moved

Broken Links – Reclaim link juice User Experience – first impressions

404s are inevitable Find out where they are coming from Custom 404 Page – match website design Pages they might be looking for Search box


301, 302 and 404s

Good: 302s only when temporary 301s for link juice and UX Custom 404s

Bad: Only using 302s Generic 404 pages - Deadend


Onsite SEO Tools


Site Audits

SEO X-Ray – SEO For Firefox

Page Title and Description

Heading Tags

Onsite SEO Tools


SEO Browser http://www.seo-browser.com/

What can a crawler actually ‘see’ Flash Image Alt tags

http://www.seo-browser.com/

Onsite SEO Tools


Web Development

Firebug – Inspect Element Wrapped in Flash code?

Crawlers able to see text/links

Web Developer Toolbar – Firefox Display Image Alt Tags

LOTS of other non-SEO uses

Q & A

For more webinars (including this one soon), check out:

http://www.verticalmeasures.com/webinars/

http://www.verticalmeasures.com/webinars/

“Onsite SEO: Building A Solid Foundation For Your Website

Documents

Transcript of “Onsite SEO: Building A Solid Foundation For Your Website