On page SEO? (This is good! I promise)
-
I have been doing some research on onsite optimization and I hit a dead end, need some help with OnSite....
These three I get for the most part... (If you would like to add anything please do)
Title optimization - needs to be unique with keywords included under 90 words
Meta description - needs to be unique with keywords included under 150 words
Meta keywords – all keywords
Questions begin here...
H1 headings – Should this be the first thing the spider crawls? Should they be unique? Is there a penalty for having this content the same on every page? (H1s are under the logo at the top of every one of my sites pages)
H2-H6 headings – Should they be unique? Is there a penalty for having this content the same on every page?
Bold text – does this matter for SEO?
Italic text - does this matter for SEO?
Link anchor text – These are the same on most pages. However, most of these links are part of the navigation, does this matter for SEO? is this duplicate? how does the search engine analyze this data?
Image alt attributes – I have the share image buttons on my site (Facebook, Twitter, etc...) and they have the same alt attributes on each page. Does this matter for SEO?
Body text – I found a competitor site that’s ranking #1 for a key term. This competitor has 11,106 words in their body with the keyword mentioned 29 times (0.8%). They placed all this text in a small scroll down on the bottom of their page. Its strange how they included it. Please review attached image.
the competitor URL is http://www(dot)1804design(dot)com/
-
90% of your answers were discovered through SEOMOZ's On-page Analysis tool
Correction for Title Optimization:
1. The visible portion of the page title in the search results extends to 66 characters, after which the engines will often truncate with an ellipsis. In order to optimize for the best possible title (and provide the most compelling call to action for searchers) keeping the title tag under 66 characters in length is recommended.
Correction for Meta Description:
2. Since the meta description isn't used for rankings, and the snippet cuts off after 156 characters (in most instances), it's unwise to have a longer meta description tag. Words beyond this count won't be seen by anyone.
Correction for Keywords:
3. Search engines have, for years, ignored the meta keywords tag as a ranking signal. Although it technically does not harm rankings, it can be used by competitors as a method to extract your targeted terms and thus, we recommend against its use.
H1-H6 Tags:
4.
a. H1 tag above the fold is a bonus
b. Use your Main keyword in H1 tag preferably towards the front.
c. H2 tags is used break down the main topic and is effective
d. H3-H6 should be used as sub topics only if it going to be natural otherwise it may come off as spam.
Bold & Italics text:
5. In testing, search engines appeared to have a preference (albeit slight) for pages that employed a targeted keyphrase with one of these elements than those missing it. This may also be valuable to users who can more easily find references to their search query thanks to this highlighting.
Image Alt Attributes:
6. Keyword usage in the alt attribute of an image employed on a page is surprisingly positively correlated with good rankings. It also helps considerably with image search, a popular and oft-employed vertical/universal search system.
Body Text of Competitor:
7. Body Text: I wouldn't worry about competitors, work on your own strategy
-
Headers are not as important as they used to be since they can be easily manipulated so I wouldn't put in too much time and effort on that. That being said, it's a good practice to use them.
There is no penalty for using same headers but its better to use unique headers for each page so they are not competing with each other.
Meta keywords: it doesn't have value in Google and other major engines at least - it could work against you as competitors can refer to it and easily know what you are targeting.
Bold text: it used to matter - but it's very less now - most likely has negligible affect now.
Internal link anchors can be duplicate - if you have a site-wide text link menu, wouldn't technically those links be 'duplicate' throughout? No penalties/issues. My sugggestion though is to vary it occassionally even internally to get most of it.
Image alt attributes - no issue in have same of it for the Social buttons on all pages. In fact, you don't want to tweak them and try to rank for some keyword. They are just social buttons...
Competitor: They are using DIV Scroll - I would be very careful in how I use it. It doesn't seem user-friendly as the box is too small and there is lot of content in it. I am not too sure if Google can discount it algorithmically but if their staff see it manually, it could be an issue. There is no 100% sure way to know the outcome of using div scroll the way they are using - as of now they probably do get benefit by using lot of text but using lot of content in a little box like that is not a sound long term strategy considering the risk of manual review and also with G-bots getting smarter
-
I'm not sure where to begin here since there are many issues. I think you should start by looking at the Web Developer's SEO Cheat sheet. http://www.seomoz.org/blog/the-web-developers-seo-cheat-sheet
pdf - http://static.seomoz.org/user_files/SEO_Web_Developer_Cheat_Sheet.pdf
and The Beginners Guide to SEO http://www.seomoz.org/beginners-guide-to-seo
Title: Most Important, Main keyword in beginning
Meta-description - No SEO, but use for SERPs call to Action and attention.
Meta-keywords - No SEO, Remove.
H1 - Important, should be one of the first things a spider crawls.
H2 - Not as important
H3 - H6 - Not important
Bold or Italic - Important - Main keyword should be bold or italic
Link Anchor Text - Important, most important links near the top, and Google will only count the anchor text for the first link. (same link)
Image Alt - all images should have Alt
Content - Content is extremelly relevant. But this section would need a whole page of explanation.
Got a burning SEO question?
Subscribe to Moz Pro to gain full access to Q&A, answer questions, and ask your own.
Browse Questions
Explore more categories
-
Moz Tools
Chat with the community about the Moz tools.
-
SEO Tactics
Discuss the SEO process with fellow marketers
-
Community
Discuss industry events, jobs, and news!
-
Digital Marketing
Chat about tactics outside of SEO
-
Research & Trends
Dive into research and trends in the search industry.
-
Support
Connect on product support and feature requests.
Related Questions
-
Are links on sites that require PAD files good or bad for SEO?
I want to list our product on a number of sites that require PAD files such as Software Informer and Softpedia. Is this a good idea from an SEO perspective to have links on these pages?
White Hat / Black Hat SEO | | SnapComms0 -
Backlinks in Footer - The good, the bad, the ugly.
I tried adding onto a question already listed, however that question stayed where it was and didn't go anywhere close to somewhere others would see it, since it was from 2012. I have a competitor who is completely new, just popped onto the SERPs in December 2015. Now I've wondered how they jumped up so fast without really much in the way of user content. Upon researching them, I saw they have 200 backlinks but 160 of them are from their parent company, and of all places coming from the footer of their parent company. So they get all of the pages of that domain, as backlinks. Everything I've read has told me not to do this, it's going to harm the site bad if anything will discount the links. I'm in no way interested in doing what they did, even if it resulted in page 1 ( which it has done for them ), since I believe that it's only a matter of time, and once that time comes, it won't be a 3 month recovery, it might be worse. What do you all think? My question or discussion is why hasn't this site been penalized yet, will they be penalized and if not, why wouldn't they be? **What is the good, bad and ugly of backlinks in the footer: ** Good Bad Ugly
White Hat / Black Hat SEO | | Deacyde0 -
Submitting a page to Google Search Console or Bing Webmaster Tools with nofollow tags
Hello, I was hoping someone could help me understand if there is any point to submit a domain or subdomain to Google Search Console (Webmaster Tools) and Bing Webmaster Tools if the pages (on the subdomain for example) all have nofollow/noindex tags ... or the pages are being blocked by the robots.txt file). There are some pages on a data feed onto a subdomain which I manage that have these above characteristics ... which I cannot change ... but I am wondering if it is better to simply exclude from submitting those from GWT and BWT (above) thereby eliminating generating errors or warnings ... or is it better to tell Google and Bing about them anyway then perhaps there is a chance those nofollow pages may be indexed/contextualised in some way, making it worth the effort? Many thanks!
White Hat / Black Hat SEO | | uworlds
Mark0 -
Looking for recent bad SEO / black hat example such as JC Penney example from 2011
I am giving a presentation in a few weeks and looking for a "what not to do" larger brand example that made poor SEO choices to try and game Google with black hat tactics. Any examples you can point me to?
White Hat / Black Hat SEO | | jfeitlinger0 -
New sub-domain launches thousands of local pages - is it hurting the main domain?
Would greatly appreciate some opinions on this scenario. Domain cruising along for years, top 1-3 rankings for nearly all top non-branded terms and a stronghold for branded searches. Sitelinks prominently shown with branded searches and always ranked #1 for most variations of brand name. Then, sub-domain launches that was over 80,000 local pages - these pages are 90-95% similar with only city and/or state changing to make them appear like unique local pages. Not an uncommon technique but worrisome in a post Panda/Penguin world. These pages are surprisingly NOT captured as duplicate content by the SEOMoz crawler in my campaigns. Additionally about that same time a very aggressive, almost entirely branded paid search campaign was launched that took 20% of the clicks previously going to the main domain in organic to ppc. My concern is this, shortly after this launch of over 80k "local" pages on the sub-domain and the cannibalization of organic clicks through ppc we saw the consistency of sitelinks 6 packs drop to 3 sitelinks if showing at all, including some sub-domains in sitelinks (including the newly launched one) that had never been there before. There's not a clear answer here I'm sure but what are the experts thoughts on this - did a massive launch of highly duplicate pages coupled with a significant decrease in organic CTR for branded terms harm the authority of the main domain (which is only a few dozen pages) causing less sitelinks and less strength as a domain or is all this a coincidence? Or caused by something else we aren't seeing? Thanks for thoughts!
White Hat / Black Hat SEO | | VMLYRDiscoverability0 -
Banner Ads help seo?
I see in OSE banner ads counting ads as incoming links - My question is has anyone done a study showing a non tagged banner ad link and its effects on seo? Does google counting it as organic since it has no tagging or since its in a ad spot its ignored?
White Hat / Black Hat SEO | | DavidKonigsberg0 -
What are the best methods of White Hat SEO?
What are the best methods of White Hat SEO? How can you create good quality White Hat links? For example, how do you convince someone to link to your site?
White Hat / Black Hat SEO | | harrygardiner0