13 Key Focus Areas For Better SEO

Google and other search engines look at over 200 different pieces of information when deciding where to rank a page.

It is important that you understand the focus areas for search engine optimization (SEO) and what in particular Google is looking for in your web page content and other digital marketing activity.

The following post will take a closer look at the main areas, showing best practice and the reasons why it is important.

Non www vs www URL

Since you cannot predict which URL users will type in their browser bar. It is really a matter of choosing which type you actually want to use for your canonical location, and then redirecting the other one to it.

Once you have chosen one then stay with it. It will make your website appear more consistent to your users and to search engines.

Some of the arguments pro using www are; it actually means something it is a hostname, it gives more flexibility with DNS, allows easy segregation and it gives the ability to restrict cookies.

Against using www; shorter is better although there are no technical benefits taking this route.

One of the most basic issues is that some website owners have two versions of their site on the internet.

You know how some websites addresses start with www, while others start with the site name? Well this is because their website owners have set-up a redirection from one to the other.

Sounds complicated? Well it really isn’t. But it is vital to best SEO practices.

The most important aspect here is that your website will either re-direct to www.example.com or http://example.com. If it doesn’t then you have duplicate websites and this will need addressing urgently.

Most industries are competitive enough, without the need for trying to compete with your own website!

URL

A URL is human readable text designed to replace IP Addresses that computers use to communicate with servers, they also identify file structures.

Keeping URL’s relevant, accurate and compelling is highly important to ranking well on search engines.

The URL should be briefly descriptive and if the site’s structure has many levels the URL should reflect this with folders and subfolders. Individual URL’s should also be descriptive without being lengthy. The URL should reflect what is on the page.

example.com/
example.com/shoes
example.com/shoes/ladies
example.com/shoes/mens
example.com/blog

The above example shows a very simple structure for a shoe website. While your website might well be different it should still follow the basic principles above.

Fixing a poorly structured site can be done, but will take time and almost certainly require a professional to assist. It is not just a simple case of changing URL’s as you also need to consider what happens to visitors when they use the old URL’s.

Page Title

The title tag remains an important part of your SEO as it the overall label for the content of a page.

There are three main rules concerning page titles;

Have one distinct page for each major topic you are addressing.
Do not get too granular, don’t create a webpage for every keyword variant.
Do not reuse title tags.

Title tags remain an important part of SEO and are well worth paying particular attention to them. Each page should have a unique title, otherwise you will be indirectly trying to confuse search engines as to the relevancy of your pages.

Remember an important tip, if you are struggling to think of a distinct tag for a Web page then why does that page exist in the first place.

Meta Description

Meta descriptions provide a concise description of what the contents of a page contains. Meta descriptions are commonly used on search engine results pages (SERP’s) to display preview snippets for a given page.

Although Meta Description tags are not that important to search engine rankings they are hugely important for user click through from SERP’s.

The Meta Description tag should employ keywords but also contain a useful and compelling description that a searcher will want to click. It should also be rounded off by a strong call-to-action (CTA).

Put simply, you need to tell the potential visitor what they can expect when they arrive at your site. Example:

If your website has a booking procedure on it and you want visitors to use it then part of your Meta Description should say that, “…..visit our website and book online today!”

Raising the profile of your website so that it is shown on the front page of Google is one thing, but writing a compelling Meta Description to “sell the benefits” of a user clicking on your site is vital for a healthy conversion from SERP’s.

Headings

In order to have a successful SEO strategy, it is important to have headings and highlighted keywords.

Heading are vitally important as they not only allow the reader the option of skimming the article for what they are looking for but they also allow the search engine to determine what content is on your site much quicker.

One of the best ways of getting your content to stand out is to use headings. You can use several headings / subheadings per article.

These headings are identified in the code by the use of H1, H2, H3, H4, H5 tags.

You can feature a multiple range of headings to high-light different sections of your page; however, you should one ever use 1 H1.

Best practice indicates that the H1 should describe the main topic of your page. Here you can feature some of the main key phrases and use the others throughout the content itself.

Blog

Blogging is proven to boost SEO as it offers repeated opportunities to utilise keywords in an informative way. Blog posts are frequently found on the first page of Google.

Remember, in most cases not too much changes on a site once it is built. As a result of this, Google and the other search engines don’t need to come back to it very often.

Creating and updating a blog section is a very easy way to “invite” the search engines to pay more attention to your site.

By sharing important and relevant information through blogs you will give your site more kudos and it will position you as an expert and a trustworthy source in your field.

Blogging can also help you market your site as blog posts can be shared across multiple social networks.

If your blogs are informative, helpful and interesting your site can start to be recognized as authoritative in your niche area.

Not every blog post needs to be designed with SEO in mind. However it is a wonderful opportunity to get critical keyword information over in an informative and almost hidden way.

XML Sitemap

XML sitemaps serve as a way to communicate directly with the search engines, alerting them to new or amended content very quickly and helping to ensure that the content is indexed faster. It is also important to help search engines understand that your site is the original publisher of content.

Think of a XML sitemap as a blueprint for your site, making it easy for search engines to find their way around to the relevant pages and information. This is highly important as Google in particular ranks web pages as well as websites.

Four of the main reasons for using a XML sitemap are;

If your site is not well-structured or does not have good internal links.
If your site is new or has few external links.
You have dynamically created pages (e-commerce sites)
Your site is large and has plenty of content that is not well linked.

Google Analytics

Google Analytics is a free tool that can track the performance of keywords during an SEO campaign.

Every campaign on the internet needs to be tracked in order to understand the value and success of it. Tracking tools can be used to calculate the return on investment (ROI) of a particular campaign.

Five of the main reasons to use Google Analytics are;

It is completely free.
You can find out how users find your website other than your core set of keywords.
You can find out which pages and links your visitors click the most. This will tell you if your optimization campaign is directing traffic through to the correct pages.
It will inform you of how many new visitors your SEO campaign is bringing to your site.
Utilizing the report you can make important changes and tweak new copy writing to bring more quality prospects.

The sheer scale of the information available through Google Analytics means that some website owners can get bogged down trying to find the most relevant data to them.

Partnering with a reliable digital marketing agency can help to eliminate time lost here and provide the website owner with concise, relevant reporting of their website and visitor activity / behaviour metrics.

Text versus HTML Ratio

All websites have a certain amount of backend code and a certain amount of normal text that can be seen by its users. The Text versus HTML ratio refers to the amount of text on a web page versus the amount of code.

Although the recommended ratio varies anywhere from 30% to 70%. Google’s Panda Update placed more importance of the ranking of your site if it was content driven.

These factors are cited as why a high text to HTML ratio is better;

Web pages with a high text content tend to be more readable and understandable for people.
Also high content indicates better user experience which is a prime search ranking factor.
Less code can mean more speed, which again leads to better user experience.
A cleaner code and a higher ratio of text makes it easier for search engines to index and crawl the site.

In days gone by it was deemed “acceptable” to have pages with 200-250 words of content; however, this is no longer the case and Google will very often look to “punish” websites with “thin content”

Search engines algorithms understand the value of content better now and will “reward’ websites that have larger areas of content (providing it is of value).

Depending on your industry, it is not uncommon to see pages that have 750+ words, there are some sites that will have articles that reach 2,000 words.

Remember, if you want your website to stand out in a busy marketplace, content is one of the most effective ways of achieving this.

Images

As the old adage goes; “A picture is worth a thousand words”. This is not necessarily the case with search engines and Google, but a good graphic image can make a large impact on a dull page.

If you use images to illustrate and heighten what your text is saying then it will make the flow of the content much more attractive and more appealing to your visitor.

Images do affect your SEO ranking and are a critical factor to your site. But there are many aspects to consider using images for SEO. The following factors will help your images to increase the likelihood of them actually improving your SEO.

Image File Name, this title is directly pulled by search engines to show your images in search.
Scale for image SEO, loading time is highly important . The faster the site the easier it is to visit. Scale the image to the exact size you want to show it.
Reduce file size, make sure that the scaled image is served in the smallest file size possible.
Add image to caption, don’t place the image just anywhere. Put it where the relevant text is situated.
Alt text and title text, the alt text is added to an image so there is descriptive content if the image can’t be displayed. The Alt text should contain keywords and is very important for SEO purposes..
OpenGraph, this will ensure your image is included in social sharing.
XML image sitemaps, this will give search engines the right information how to find your images.

The main elements to focus upon here is the image file size and the ALT tag,

Keep your file size as small as possible and you will improve page loading times and provide a better user-experience.

Use ALT tags to correctly identify what the image is about. Failing to do this and the search engines just see a blank space on your page.

Microformats

Microformats are bits of code that bookend information on your website and tell search engines what kind of data it is.

Search engines can use your microformats to present your SERP listing with what is called a “rich snippet”. So instead of your listing being just your URL and description, it might actually present a fuller picture.

Using microformats can give you more control of the snippets displayed in Google SERP’s. Once your site is properly using rich snippets you will see them also appear in your Google custom search and Google site search results.

Microformats are bits of code that bookend information on your website and tell search engines what kind of data it is.

Mobile Websites

It is of critical importance that your website is mobile friendly and not just designed for PC based searches and use.

Mobile searches have now overtaken desktop and are on the increase, and this is because of the usability factor. Busy people need information quickly and increasingly often this is now when they are on the move or in transit with only mobile access.

There are three configurations you can choose to make your site mobile-friendly, but you should take note of the following key points.

Inform Google when a page is formatted for mobile, this helps Google accurately serve mobile searchers your content in search results.

Keep resources crawlable. If Googlebot does not have access to a page’s resources, i.e CSS, Javascript or images they may not detect that it is built to display and work on a mobile browser.

Avoid all mistakes that are common to frustrate mobile visitors, such as unplayable videos. Mobile pages that provide a poor user experience can be demoted in rankings.

Finally understand the differences between different devices as they all have their own idiosyncrasies; Mobile refers to smartphones and are similar to desktop browsers, Tablets are devices in their own right, Multimedia phones are phones with browsers and Feature phones in which browsers lack the capability to render normal desktop webpages coded using HTML.

The Wrap Up - 13 Key Focus Areas For Better SEO

Not one of these factors by itself will raise your site in SEO rankings but a combination of all or most will without doubt boost rankings.

Having these technical aspects of SEO under control won’t always be easy, but the resource that you put into it will pay dividends.

Some of the above are one time fixes, that when carried out will help search engines to understand more about your site. Others are ongoing efforts that will assist in helping you to climb the search pages, with the ultimate aim of being on the front page of results for the most valuable terms.

If you would like to raise the profile of your website, or are worried that a competitor is always showing above you then talk to Voova Digital. We have a range of services that can help you to become more visible in search results.

For more information contact us today on the following numbers: