An optimized web page can increase the likelihood of:
- Higher rankings in Google and Bing
- Links and shares
- Earned traffic from social platforms (Twitter, Facebook, Google+, LinkedIn, Pinterest)
- Building a brand and drawing in repeat visitors
URL
- Describes a site or page to visitors and search engines
- Identifies the file structure of a given website
- Includes primary keyword phrases
- Use hyphens to separate words for readability
- Do not use underscores, spaces, or other characters to separate words
- Too many hyphens may make the URL appear spammy
Meta Description Tag
- HTML attributes that provide a brief explanation of the page
- Often used to display a preview of a web page on search engine results pages
- Draws a reader to a web page
- Suggested length: 100 – 150 characters
- Double quotes will cut off the description
- If necessary, use single quotes instead
Title Tag
- Technically called title elements
- Defines the title of a web page
- Often used on search engine results pages to display preview snippets for a web page
- Should be an accurate and concise description of the content of a web page
- Appears in browsers, search engine results pages and external websites
- The closer the keyword is to the start of the title tag, the better it is for your ranking
- Place important keywords close to the beginning of the title tag
- Consider using title tools to see how a web page’s title would appear in Google’s search results before launching the web page
- If the title is too long, search engine will cut off and add an ellipsis at the end
- Through it is not a rule, try to stick below 512 pixels wide
- Suggested length: 55 characters
Header Tag
- Includes up to six levels, H1 to H6
- The H1 tag is the major heading of a web page
- Briefly describes the topic of the section it introduces
- Use H1 once per page
- Avoid skipping heading levels
- Start with H1, then move down sequentially
Article Copy
- Content should be comprehensive, useful, and relevant
- Employ related terms and phrases throughout the article
- Avoid overuse of keyword stuffing
- Highlight keyword phrases with bold or italic fonts where necessary
Visual Assets
- Visual elements provide an opportunity to show up in an image search result
- The following image related items are all important for optimization:
- Filename – Helps search engine identify what the image is about
- Surrounding text – the text around an image may either be a copy that follows the image. An image is often used to supplement the text around it
- Alt attribute – Alt text is provided for an image in case it cannot be displayed, and for the visually impaired
* Compress images, files and code to improve page loading speed
Embed Code
- Makes it easier to share visual assets
- Can build links back to your domain
- Do not stuff keyword-rich links into your embed code
Social Share Widgets
- Include share buttons on the top and bottom of the page for Facebook, Twitter, Google+, LinkedIn, StumbleUpon
Open Graph Meta Tags
- Allow control over what content shows up when a web page is shared on most social media platforms
- og:title – title of the page or content
- og:site_name – name of the web page
- og:description – brief description of the web page
- og:type – category or type of content
- og:image – URL of an image to represent the web page
- og:url – link to the web page
Twitter Cards
- Allow control over what content shows up when a page is shared on Twitter
- Use a Twitter Summary Card with a large image
- Tags are similar to open graph tags
- twitter:card – similar to og:type, describes the type of content you are sharing
- twitter:url – URL to represent the page
- twitter:title – title of the page or content
- twitter:description – brief description of the page
- twitter:image – sets the image to go with the tweet
Ranking factors change and evolve, but by focusing on these key elements, your page will likely rank higher, bring in more traffic, and earn more links and shares.
