These kinds of articles get written all the time, but first of all I’d like to just let you know that these are all tips that I actively use in SEO and from my experience & absolutely work. If you are already doing all of these things then reviewing them on a regular basis and reading some of my other SEO articles should be your first port of call. There are so many SEO ranking factors due to a massive and complex directory and algorithm, however what you must remember is that the majority of websites, and competitors are making these mistakes by overlooking basic SEO.
1. Title Tags, Most Important Ranking Factor
If you have your SEO campaign all drawn up, and you understand what it is your trying to achieve, then your next step is to obviously start creating content, or this even applies to content already created. Your page title is the single most important ranking factor known to man (at this time). If you don’t get this right, you can forget great rankings unless you have literally ticked the majority of other factor boxes.
Ok some tips for what your titles should be like.
- Directly include the keyword in your title.
- Forget the use of and, or, where, unless vital to make the title make sense.
- Include a call to action, remember your listing in google is a potential advert. Sell yourself. Make use of words like ‘order’, ‘buy’, ‘read’ – this will encourage CTR instead of just impressions!
- Don’t repeat a word more than twice. (usually applying the keyword). Three times can be acceptable if absolutely necessary (i.e to make it make sense).
- Your page should be about a single keyword you want to rank for really, so don’t put multiple keywords into your title.
Ok Lets use my spoon example:
Case: I have a spoon shop in Norfolk, UK, we sell nothing but spoons, and we only do local delivery.
Examples of Bad titles:
<title> We sell great silver spoons at Spoons Direct </title>
<title> Untitled Document </title>
<title> Spoons at Spoons Direct </title>
Ok Lets go for the most perfect title I can think of here:
<title> Buy Silver Spoons – Norfolk Spoon Online Shop </title>
Now I think that it’s pretty concise, it would help to rank for terms like ‘spoons norfolk’, ‘buy silver spoons’, ‘online spoon shop’.
I have only repeated the most important keyword in a reasonable way, ‘Spoon’ & ‘Spoons’. Which is likely that google wouldn’t even notice because one is plural. There is some myths on google being able to clip the plural on terms or add it, but this for us has not been seen (hence why we have covered both).
2. Internal Linking Anchor Text
Anchor text in links is the actual text which makes up the link.
e.g: <a href=”link”>Meow Cat</a>
‘Meow Cat’ is the anchor text in this link.
Click Here is a Nightmare to SEO
Ok this brings me onto ‘click here’ or ‘more information’ or any other of form of click through anchor text without a proper description. Like external link, the anchor text tells Google (and other search engines) before it even goes through to the next page, what it is about. If you use keywords within your anchor text, you are already telling Google:
A) That page is important, thats what I’m linking to it.
B) It’s about ‘KEYWORD’.
Click here is the worst way to describe a link, but I can also understand why it is used so much. We also do need to tell our users what to do, and sometimes its inescapable, however you can use links within articles, paragraphs to link to other pages, you can simply have the links underlined so users know that they can click on them, it doesn’t disrupt the flow of text and I also find it pleasing to the eye within design. The other way to help avoid a click here, is if its an image link, then use the ALT text of the image to accurately describe the page you are linking to.
3. Use Heading Tags <h1>, <h2>, <h3> for SEO
You really must use heading tags, again, out of most likely billions, of not trillions of indexed pages in search engines, they don’t have many ways of telling what is the most important text on the page. A lot of other SEO experts used to believe that bolding text was one way, hence you see some pages with littered bolded keywords, which looks stupid, and really does not work, at least not now. But headings are what break up a page, and tell you what topic is about to proceed them. You can also see that I have used headings in this article, we have the main <h1>, and then the other major headings are <h3> and then for any sub headings within an <h2>. Its because I want to tell the search engines what my article is about in a clear concise way. A lot of people complain that a <h1> is too big, etc, but you can easily style them with CSS.
If you got any questions, leave a comment below, I ALWAYS respond.
