“onsite seo: building a solid foundation for your website
DESCRIPTION
In this webinar, attendees will hear from Jason Hendricks, SEO and Link Acquisition Specialist, and James Constable, Link Strategy Specialist, of Vertical Measures as they share some of the mistakes and secrets they have uncovered first hand. To rank well for your targeted keywords, you not only need a good backlink portfolio, but you also need to have your website set up correct. Find out if your website is breaking some of the golden rules of SEO, and how you can fix it to improve your rankings in a few easy steps.TRANSCRIPT
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
Twitter: @JasonHendricks @james_constable @VerticalMeasure #VMWebinar
Why is Onsite SEO so important?
Twitter: @JasonHendricks @james_constable @VerticalMeasure #VMWebinar
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
Twitter: @JasonHendricks @james_constable @VerticalMeasure #VMWebinar
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
Twitter: @JasonHendricks @james_constable @VerticalMeasure #VMWebinar
Best Practices and Tips
Meta Description
Good: Accurate Summary of Page Unique Keywords – bold, attract clicks
Bad: Unrelated or Generic Keyword stuffing – low click through rate
Twitter: @JasonHendricks @james_constable @VerticalMeasure #VMWebinar
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
Twitter: @JasonHendricks @james_constable @VerticalMeasure #VMWebinar
Best Practices and Tips
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
Twitter: @JasonHendricks @james_constable @VerticalMeasure #VMWebinar
Site Architecture
Twitter: @JasonHendricks @james_constable @VerticalMeasure #VMWebinar
Best Practices and Tips
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
Twitter: @JasonHendricks @james_constable @VerticalMeasure #VMWebinar
Heading Tags
Twitter: @JasonHendricks @james_constable @VerticalMeasure #VMWebinar
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
Best Practices and Tips
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
Twitter: @JasonHendricks @james_constable @VerticalMeasure #VMWebinar
Page Content
Twitter: @JasonHendricks @james_constable @VerticalMeasure #VMWebinar
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
Best Practices and Tips
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
Twitter: @JasonHendricks @james_constable @VerticalMeasure #VMWebinar
Canonicalization
Duplicate Content / Pagination
Only one version crawled Direct crawler to correct page E-Commerce – pagination, ‘View All’ many
ways to reach one page,
Twitter: @JasonHendricks @james_constable @VerticalMeasure #VMWebinar
Best Practices and Tips
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
Twitter: @JasonHendricks @james_constable @VerticalMeasure #VMWebinar
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)
Twitter: @JasonHendricks @james_constable @VerticalMeasure #VMWebinar
Optimizing Images
Search engines cant ‘see’ Images Alt Tags
File Name File Size – load quickly
Optimizing for Google Images E-Commerce Surrounding Text
Twitter: @JasonHendricks @james_constable @VerticalMeasure #VMWebinar
Best Practices and Tips
Optimizing Images
Good: Alt Tags whenever used Descriptive filenames Small File Size
Bad: Missing Alt tags Generic File Names Long or keyword stuffing
Twitter: @JasonHendricks @james_constable @VerticalMeasure #VMWebinar
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
Twitter: @JasonHendricks @james_constable @VerticalMeasure #VMWebinar
Best Practices and Tips
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
Twitter: @JasonHendricks @james_constable @VerticalMeasure #VMWebinar
301, 302 and 404s
Twitter: @JasonHendricks @james_constable @VerticalMeasure #VMWebinar
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
Best Practices and Tips
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
Twitter: @JasonHendricks @james_constable @VerticalMeasure #VMWebinar
Onsite SEO Tools
Twitter: @JasonHendricks @james_constable @VerticalMeasure #VMWebinar
Site Audits
SEO X-Ray – SEO For Firefox
Page Title and Description
Heading Tags
Onsite SEO Tools
Twitter: @JasonHendricks @james_constable @VerticalMeasure #VMWebinar
SEO Browser http://www.seo-browser.com/
What can a crawler actually ‘see’ Flash Image Alt tags
Onsite SEO Tools
Twitter: @JasonHendricks @james_constable @VerticalMeasure #VMWebinar
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/