Optimizing Pages – Extreme SEO Makeover
Here’s another installment of my recent “Extreme SEO Makeover” seminar into blog form project.
Last post we worked our keyword research list and matched them up with our web pages. Have you noticed that we haven’t yet made any changes to our website? Well, that’s about to change right now…
Optimizing our web pages is where we tie it all together, as we use all we’ve done so far to optimize our pages. This step involves two basic areas of effort – updating meta data and updating content.
Optimizing Pages via Meta Data
As I point out to my seminar attendees, if you remember nothing else from this series remember this one thing:
The single most impactful thing you can do to improve your page’s optimization is to have good page titles.
By page titles I don’t mean the content just below the masthead with the biggest font, I mean the meta title – that’s the stuff that shows up on the very top of your browser window, up there between the browser icon and “Mozilla Firefox” or “Internet Explorer” or whatever browser you use. A good meta title can provide a significant improvement in page ranking, even if you do nothing else. (You should do more, of course, but I’m just trying to strongly point out how important this is.)
The keys to good meta titles are to:
- include keywords
- don’t lead with your company name (unless it’s a keyword)
- have a different meta title on each page
The other two meta data elements to include are less impactful in a strictly SEO sense, but still important. While Google may not give much weight to meta keywords, some search engines still do so it’s probably a good idea to include it. The meta description is no longer used as a ranking factor, but many search engines display it along with your link on the results page. You should treat this description as you would a PPC ad, because getting to the first page of Google isn’t the goal – the point of SEO is to get the right people to visit your site. So, make sure your description serves two purposes – describe the page, and encourage searchers to become visitors.
Optimize and Repair your Web Pages
Optimizing Page Content
At the end of the day, good search engine optimization boils down to content. “Content is king,” as the saying goes. Well, here is where you need to go through your content and make sure you’ve done it right. Add alt tags to your images (and images too), so that search engines and sight-impaired visitors know what they’re about. If your design allows for it, be sure to use header tags – H1, H2, and so on – to visually break up your content and provide the search engines and human visitors with context. Be sure to cross link with other internal pages as appropriate, so that visitors can find what they need quickly (and so search engine spiders can too).
Remember last week when we identified pages that could optimize for a keyword if the content was better? Well, it’s time to fix that content or add new pages to cover all your keywords. Make sure your new pages follow the same approach as the old pages – meta data, tags, content, etc. – and you’ll be fine.
We’re in the home stretch now, and next time we’ll bring it on home.
Extreme SEO Makeover blog series
- Seminar Feedback
- Introduction to Extreme SEO Makeover
- Identify your Keywords
- Keyword Research
- Measuring your Status
- Aligning Keywords and Pages
- Optimizing Pages
- Trust but Verify
- Conclusions
