SEO Basics: On-Page Essentials Revisited
Every now and again it is easy to be distracted from the basics of on-page SEO when you are looking further into issues on a website. Sometimes you could be overlooking something that seems obvious – but only when you consider the basics. Below is a list of on-page basics that we know are important to SEO rankings.
The Page Title Tag
The title tag plays one of the most important factors in SEO and although it is fairly common knowledge, it’s often overlooked or done incorrectly. It is the title that defines the page and tells the search engines what the page is about. Within the source code the title is defined inside the <title></title> tags which reside between the <head></head> tags.
Within the browser, the title is displayed to the top left of the screen or in the tab, depending on which browser you are using. In the search results pages it shows as the main heading and clickable link; the search term if present, will display in bold.
As each page on a site is different, the title for every page should be too. Aim for unique keywords or phrases targeted towards each page and use no more than 70 characters in total. Going over this will have no benefit whatsoever and won’t have any impact in terms of SEO. It is recommended to add the most important keywords at the start of the title and minimise the use of stop words like ‘a’, ‘of’ and ‘the’.
The Keywords Meta Tag
The keywords Meta tag basically lists the words and phrases that describe the contents of the web page. Every page on your website should have unique keyword tags. In years gone by, the keyword tag was used as part of a search engine’s ranking algorithm but not anymore. Frequent attempts by webmasters to abuse the keyword tag meant that it is now generally ignored. Only Inktomi currently uses the keywords Meta tag.
There is a limit to the number of characters within this tag – it is best to use between 3 and 8 keywords/phrases which are separated by commas. As with your title and Meta description, all keywords used in the keyword Meta tag should be used at least once in the content of your webpage. Even though many search engines do not use this tag any longer, it is still good practise to do so, but do not overuse keywords in the tag, and be sure to place your most important keywords first in the list.
Description Meta Tag
The Meta description tag is used to provide the description of a web page, the description Meta tag should clearly describe the purpose of the page, for both the user and the search engines.
The importance of the description tag in the major search engine as an element of the ranking algorithm has decreased over recent years. However, we are all aware that some of the smaller search engines may still support this tag, and so it may be worthwhile doing this correctly. The search engines display the description along with the title in the SERPS (search engine results pages).
Keep your description between 50 and 200 characters, including spaces, whenever possible. Google will display around 154 characters, but other search engines display less. Description Meta tags should be written to attract the user and convert them to a buyer, so it is important that your description is relevant and has a unique selling point.
Heading Tags (H1-H6)
The header tag is seen by all users of your website and comes in a hierarchical system. The h1 tag should appear first on your page including your most important phrase/service/product and this should be followed by the h2, h3 etc. all the way to h6. It is encouraged and not bad practise to have multiple headlines appearing on a page, like h2, h3 etc., provided they follow a hierarchical order.
Each page should have a clearly defined h1 tag, to identify the main topic of the page to both the user and the search engine. The best way to approach the heading tag is by not stuffing it with too many keywords, or words that are not relevant to the content in the body. Having multiple h1 tags on the same page may cause you to be subjected to a penalty by the search engines.
Phrase elements
The use of <strong></strong> and <em></em> tags can help highlight the keywords of key phrases, both visually and for the search engines. It’s argued that the former tags are preferable to <b></b> and <i></i> tags which are used for visual emphasis and have no impact with search engines. What is true however, is that the latter tags are used for presentation purposes while the <strong> and <em> are in fact semantic tags which would seem to hold more weight in terms of SEO.
Alt Attributes
It is still very common to see sites that keyword stuff their Alt tags, but try and resist the temptation to do this as it many do more harm than good. This was originally done to help improve keyword density. However, with this no longer being as important as it once was, doing so could subject you to penalties such as a drop in rankings to even being filtered out of the search results.
Authors: Rob Bromilow, Kenneth Berkley and Julie Cheung.
