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Understanding SEO: On-Page

Kyle James — Wed, 06 May 2009 13:00:06 +0000

Search Engine Optimization (SEO) is not pixie dust or snake oil. It’s a group of fundamental things that when done to a website it makes your site more accessible and usable. The thing that I tell people all the time is “A search bot is your dumbest blindest user. If you aren’t creating your site with that in mind then you aren’t accounting for this then you aren’t accounting for everyone.” What is great is that SEO really is just following web best practices. For a college that is trying to be Section 508 compliant this is a huge step in the right direction. The problem is that to so many people SEO has been given a bad name from people that “game” the system. It’s not that complicated or difficult to do 80% of the stuff properly. It’s that people simply do not know any better.

In its basic form there are two types of SEO, On-Page SEO and Off-Page SEO. This week we’ll look at On-Page SEO, and next week we’ll take a look at Off-Page SEO.

Introduction to Search Engine Optimization

Before we really dig in, if SEO is brand new to you then I highly suggest reading this post I wrote a while back, How to SEO a College Homepage 101. SEO revolves around keywords and placement of those keywords in specific locations on a page. This enables search engines to recognize that that page should show up in Search Engine Result Pages (SERPs) for that keyword. We’ll talk about doing keyword research another time though.

What Matters On-Page

There are five elements that really matter to the On-Page optimization process. Are these the only five things? Of course not. But if you can handle these five basic things and do them properly then you will see a solid return and are probably 80-90% optimized. Of these five, there are three that are most important so let’s discuss them first.

Page Titles

Page Titles are the single most important SEO element on a page. Most people don’t pay attention to them because they aren’t an element that we spend a lot of time looking at. But page titles are EXTREMELY important for search results. The page title is the title of the search result and if it’s not relevant or says something as basic as “HOME” then how is this going to convince people to click on it at all?

Page titles should have relevant keywords (relevant means describing what this page is about) while also being no longer than 70 characters (because this is the limit that will show up in search results). Try and get the important keywords to the front of the title, and if there is room it’s perfectly ok to stick the name of the site at the end. The page title should tell me what THIS page is about and should be convincing in order to stand out in a long list of search results.

Optimized URLs

From a usability standpoint describing what the page is about in the URL can help someone figure out what they are clicking on when you send the link to someone through an email. It also is the only way that a search engine will know what the page is about from the URL. You definitely want to keep it short and friendly, but having a few relevant keywords can go a long way towards ranking for those keywords. This is one of those things that most Content Management Systems (CMS) just suck at doing right. Having a long URL of a bunch of random characters that a database can read in order to pull unique content might work, but it doesn’t tell anyone what the article is about.

Take a look at the following two articles both about a recent Braves game and try to tell me what you think the articles are about.

*Note: If you have a content management system that creates URL’s filled with ID numbers and want to make it more friendly you probably want to ask about “URL aliasing” or “URL mod rewrite” for your system.

Header Elements

If you haven’t heard of semantic markup then it’s definitely worth spending some time reading about it. Anyway what we are talking about here is specifically H1, H2, H3, and H4 HTML elements on a page. This means that your page title shouldn’t simply be bold but actually wrapped in Header tags and the same for subsections. Think of a word document that asks you to use Header elements. It is the same idea here. In fact all the sections of this document are in various levels of header elements. For those designers out there it’s as simple as setting up CSS to style the various header elements as you see fit.

Meta Keywords and Meta Description

The final two elements are the meta elements on the page, meta keywords and meta description. Although Google currently does not even look at meta keywords because of their nature to be abused, it is still a best practice and if they were to decide to start looking at meta keywords again you will be ahead of the game with minimal work to do. I recommend 3-5 meta keywords per page of content, but never waste your time optimizing for more than 10.

Meta descriptions on the other hand are still used and can help people decide to click on your listing in the search results. They don’t always show up, but if it is appropriate it can be what convinces people to click on your result and not the one above or below it. Be sure to get your keywords in the description and do not go overboard. One or two sentences are plenty and no more than 150 or so characters.

[Update: as Brad notes in the comments it's better to have no Meta description than to have the same meta description on every page on your site and he is absolutely correct. This can do more harm than good if each page's meta description, and keywords for that matter, aren't relevant and unique to that page of content.]

Recap

So just to recap the five elements on a page that matter the most towards on-page optimization:

Page Titles
URL’s
Header Elements (Semantic Markup)
Meta Description
Meta Keywords

I flopped Meta Description and Meta Keywords because a description is more important than keywords in the meta elements. If you can do these things correctly you are well on your way to making your site easily found in search engines.

What do you think? Anything else that you do to a page and think REALLY matters that I should have listed? I would love to hear your thoughts.

Links of the Week Feb 15th, 2008

Kyle James — Fri, 15 Feb 2008 16:38:40 +0000

I hate to start a weekly link wrap-up this way, but I feel it’s my duty. If you haven’t already heard about the tragedy Northern Illinois University then Andrew Careaga over at Higher Ed Marketing has a good wrap with links to other bloggers reactions. My prayers go out to them.

This weeks links has about 50/50 between news and how to articles. What is the feeling about the weekly link wrap-up? Do I have too many links, not enough, or just right? Do people like news or more how to information? The weekly wrap-up is still morphing as this is the fourth or fifth installment and I’m learning and changing them as I go.

Scientists Make First Map of Man’s Marine Footprint – The first comprehensive analysis of human impacts on marine ecosystems shows that humanity has profoundly affected nearly half of the world’s oceans, with just a few spots remaining pure.
Page Titles – Best Practices – Title tags are vital from both usability and SEO perspectives. We use the following format for page title tags: Page Title – Department Name – University Name.
What’s Next for YouTube (Video Editing, Recommendations, Advertiser Analytics)- Last night at an event in NYC dubbed “Videocracy,” YouTube gave marketers a sneak peak at some upcoming initiatives.
Woman hits Best Buy with $54M suit for losing laptop – Lawsuit is meant to publicly embarrass Best Buy into changing its privacy policy and to expose its ‘disregard for customers’ personal information,’ woman says
The University Tube – One Source for College Videos! – Found this new College Video Site
BREAKING: MySpace Announces ‘Post to MySpace’- Our friends over at MySpace have sent over an announcement for a feature allowing you to promote your content with your MySpace profile.
Cue Up the Acne-Fighting, 128-Meg MP3 Player- In Tokyo, acne control rocks. The 1.2-ounce MP3 player promises to improve a gal’s complexion while pumping out J-pop.
Fifty Percent Chance Lake Mead Will Be Dry By 2021, Models Show- Lake Mead was created by the Hoover Dam’s blockage of the Colorado River. The dam, of course, was one of the prototypical mega-engineering efforts of the 20th century and a symbol of how human ingenuity could conquer any obstacle, including supplying water…
42 Ways To Distribute Your Content – Are You Making Your Customer More Intelligent, Or Interrupting Them? Not Sure? Try One of These…
Internet Marketing Strategy: A Step-by-Step Diagram – Internet marketing is not SEO. It’s not PPC. It’s not e-mail or web design, or social media. It’s the sum of many parts.
Is the Government Pushing Ethanol Too Aggressively? – The federal government has decreed that we will use 9 billion gallons of ethanol this year, which begs the question of where it’ll come from and where we’ll buy it.
10 Principles Of Effective Web Design – Usability and the utility, not the visual design, determine the success or failure of a web-site. Since the visitor of the page is the only person who clicks the mouse and therefore decides everything, user-centric design has become a standard approach…
100+ Useful Web Resources for Small Business and Non Profits – creating, maintaining, and optimizing an online presence from small businesses and non profits; how to get into search engine results, how to redesign an old site, what tools are available that are useful, inexpensive or free.
Social Media and Social Network Starting Points – Organizations have a lot to consider once they decide they want to jump into social networks and social media. There are many opportunities to slide off the rails, or worse, to let the effort fall into disarray.
How-To Tuesday: RSS Feeds- How-To Tuesday from SquarePeg. Each week we’re going to try and pick a topic and do a quick demo or show some neat benefits of using it. This week I’m talking about subscribing to RSS feeds.
Best Buy To Recommend Blu-ray Hi-Def Video- The consumer electronics retailer said it will showcase Blu-ray hardware, DVD titles, and software products in its stores and online in the United States, dealing another big blow to the competing HD DVD format backed by Toshiba.
MySpace Quietly Launches Games Site- Still number one social networking destination MySpace has entered the casual flash games market with games.myspace.com.
Looking for the next big thing? Social gaming startups heating up- As the Facebook Platform matures (i.e. Facebook cracks down on application spam and users become more skeptical/tired of applications), entrepreneurs and investors are looking for ways to break away from the mold of the now over 15,000 applications…
Netflix Opts for Blu-Ray High-Def DVDs- Netflix Inc., the online movie rental company, said Monday it is switching exclusively to the Blu-ray format for high-definition DVDs, following four major movie studios in selecting the Sony technology over one pushed by Toshiba Corp.
YouTube – Link Building 101 Rap – There are no words to describe this… you just have to watch for yourself!
10 Insights From 11 Months Of Working At Google- What it is has been like working at Google. Interesting, fun, surprising, insightful, inspiring, impactful, and more such words. This post shares that experience.
Studies Say Biofuels Worse Than Gasoline- When all relevant factors are accounted for, biofuels produce more greenhouse gas emissions than fossil fuels.
Wikimedia’s 2007 Financials Posted- Wikimedia Foundation posted their audited 2007 financial statements last week. Their fiscal year actually ends June 30, so these are already almost eight months old, but they reveal some interesting information about the entity that controls Wikipedia…
Social Networks Still Growing Strong, Engagement Leveling Off- Looking closer at the engagement metrics, it’s notable that MySpace users still spend the most time on the site versus users of other social networks.
6 Basic Questions to Ask When Picking an Email Marketing Solution- There are all kinds of solutions out there, but I’m primarily focusing on software solutions that streamline your email marketing efforts, companies like Constant Contact, Emma, ExactTarget, MailChimp, Bronto and Vertical Response.
It’s Official. People Love Online Videos. Billions Of ‘Em.- It would seem people spent quite a lot of time in front of their computers in December watching online videos. According to the latest numbers from Comscore, a total of 141 million unique viewers, an increase of 2.5 million, watched 10,156,199,000 videos.
Safari is about to get crazy fast- Apple has really run with the KHTML engine, forking it off, renaming its development version “WebKit” and making it faster and leaner than Firefox on the Mac and both Firefox and Internet Explorer on the PC.
How Many Times Can This Work? SponsorMyLoans.com – Most recently, Luke Livingston has started Sponsor My Loans in an effort to pay off his student loans — in $200 monthly increments.

Have a great weekend!