SEARCH
GUIDE TO
ON-SITE SEO 2017
INTRODUCTION
<contents>
On-site SEO has come a long way since the
days of listing keywords at the bottom of
your web page, publishing white text on a
white background and cramming your meta
data until it was bursting at the seams!
<page3=”Google Panda”</page3>
<page4=”Mobilegeddon”</page4>
<page5=”Accelerated Mobile Pages (AMP)”</page5>
<page6=”Content”</page6>
<page7=”Low Quality Content”</page7>
While the industry has thankfully said a long overdue goodbye to many of
the old on-site SEO tactics, the sheer amount of articles available online
can be confusing and overwhelming.
<page8=”Duplicate Content”</page8>
So we’ve created this guide for you and packed it full of hints, tips and
relevant links to help you focus your SEO efforts in 2017.
<page16=”On-Page SEO: Interactivity”</page16>
<page9=”On-Page SEO: Fundamentals”</page9>
<page18=”Contact Us”</page18>
</contents>
<title>Introduction</title>
www.stills.co.uk
GOOGLE PANDA
If you work in Online Marketing you should be all too familiar with Google’s
Panda algorithm, however if you’re not then you’d probably assume it’s
simply a loveable mascot!
Your website should:
•
Be built using modern coding standards
In actuality it is Google’s algorithm which looks to demote and prevent what
it deems as ‘low quality’ websites from appearing highly in its organic search
results and in turn help users find websites of a ‘high quality’.
•
Have a logical structure and be easy to navigate
•
Be hosted on a reliable server and be quick to load
Back in 2011 Google published a superb post on their blog offering guidance
on how to build a high quality website. Despite the age of the post, the
information still holds up, so every business owner, website designer and
developer should really have a read of this.
•
Not be bursting at the seam with ads!
Without wanting to list all of the suggestions, here are a few elements that
you want to ensure are present on your website:
•
Your company name, registration number and all of your contact details
(i.e. physical address and telephone number)
•
A list of any accreditations or governing bodies that you belong to
<title>Google Panda</title>
www.stills.co.uk
MOBILEGEDDON
In April 2015, Google revealed that it would be looking to boost the rankings
in mobile search of webpages that were deemed “mobile friendly” i.e. those
that worked well on a mobile device.
Over a year has passed since then and still many businesses are being slow
to update, or to launch a new version of their website in order to cater for the
ever growing percentage of users who are attempting to access content on
their mobiles.
If you aren’t sure if your website is mobile friendly, Google has recently
launched a new version of its Mobile Friendly Test. Simply enter your URL and
you will find out if your website is mobile friendly or not.
There is no ‘nearly mobile friendly’ or different grades of ‘mobile friendliness’
– your url either is or isn’t. Also, the mobile friendly algorithm looks on a url
by url basis, meaning that some of your pages could be mobile friendly (and
therefore benefit from a ranking boost) while others are not.
In May 2016 Google announced a further update to the algorithm, further
enhancing the importance of having a mobile friendly website.
<title>Mobilegeddon</title>
www.stills.co.uk
ACCELERATED MOBILE PAGES (AMP)
Taking things one step further in mobile search, a new initiative
called Accelerated Mobile Pages has been launched, aiming to
give users the fastest possible experience when trying to access
content on their mobile device.
AMP are stripped down HTML pages of
their counterparts, with no clutter and
optimised imagery.
For more information visit the AMP Project website.
<title>Accelerated Mobile Pages (AMP)</title>
www.stills.co.uk
CONTENT
Content is a key component of the Google Panda algorithm, with
many of the bullet points in Google’s article on building a high
quality website focusing on it.
However, many business owners, agencies and content
creators are not heeding this advice and websites are suffering
because of it. The focus on creating content has also resulted
in half-completed, almost-useful content being published and
championed as ‘great’. We are fed up of hearing the term ‘great
content’, and believe that if anybody is serious about writing and
publishing, the aim should be for ‘exceptional’.
A study by SERPIQ suggested that
the lengthier the content, the higher
rankings it would tend to achieve in
Google’s results, with 2,000 words or
more being favoured.
<title>Content</title>
www.stills.co.uk
LOW QUALITY CONTENT
Because the Google Panda works on an algorithmic not manual
basis, detecting and attributing a decline in ranking can be
somewhat tricky. It is however possible to detect what pages
could be interpreted as low quality and therefore detrimental to
how your website is viewed by Google.
In Google Analytics, view your Organic Landing Page Report and
look at the bounce rate and time being spent on the pages. If
the bounce rate is high and the amount of time being spent on
the page low, our recommendation is to make changes to those
pages.
Another sign of low quality content is pages that have been
created specifically to target ranking for keywords and variants.
Quite often the content is very similar and doesn’t offer the user
anything of note. If you (or your agency) have used this tactic,
you should look to solidify the similar content into one URL and
redirect the others to it.
<title>Low Quality Content</title>
www.stills.co.uk
DUPLICATE CONTENT
Duplicate content can come in many
forms – one of the main culprits
being if your website can be accessed
separately via http:// and www. (enter
your url and see if your browser
address changes at all), another being
multiple urls for the same content that
older CMS’ may generate.
If your ranking suddenly begins to drop the issue could be with
the way that your website has been developed. For example, if
your e-commerce store has lots of products available in different
colours, if each colour variant has its own unique url, but no
unique content specific to that colour, Google may interpret
them as duplicate pages. Fortunately this can be easily rectified
by implementing the “rel=canonical” meta tag into your page
code - your web developers should be able to assist with this.
<title>Duplicate Content</title>
www.stills.co.uk
ON-PAGE SEO: FUNDAMENTALS
In an attempt to try and put a bit of structure to the many on-page factors we have separated
them into what you can look at on your pages, and for factors that Google may consider when
interpreting how your visitors are interacting and responding to your content.
Page Titles and Descriptions
In May Google widened the main SERP column, showing more
characters (around 70) from the page title than previously
before displaying the ellipses. Your targeted keywords should
be as close to the beginning of your page title as possible. We
recommend that you try and make your title look appealing and
include your brand where possible.
Around 100 characters from your page description are shown
on the first line and currently around 50/60 on the second. The
page description isn’t considered to be a factor in the Ranking,
but can help convince the searcher to visit your website – so take
advantage of this.
<title>Targeted
keywords, brought
to you by your
brand here</title>
It’s worth mentioning that if your page description is 100
characters or less, you will only have a single line of description,
meaning that you may not be taking up as much SERP real estate
as your competitors – so make your short descriptions longer!
<title>On-Page SEO</title>
www.stills.co.uk
ON-PAGE SEO: FUNDAMENTALS
Keyword Usage
Make sure that your targeted keywords
are actually included in your content.
It may sound obvious but all too often people can’t figure out
why they aren’t ranking for x, y or z keywords when in reality
those words can’t even be found on the page!
Include your targeted keywords as close to the beginning of your
content as possible (i.e. within the first 100 words).
Ignore buzz terms like ‘Keyword Density’ (it’s not 2007 any
more…) and make sure your content actually makes sense when
you read it back. Also if you want a page to rank it needs text
content. We’ve seen something of a mini revival of the dreaded
Splash Page lately – don’t do it.
As for the meta keyword tag, Google hasn’t considered this as a
ranking factor since 2009!
<title>On-Page SEO: Fundamentals</title>
www.stills.co.uk
ON-PAGE SEO: FUNDAMENTALS
Headings
Each page should have one H1 tag which describes the content
of the page. It should not be empty or used to display a logo
(which appeared to be something of a trend a few years ago, so
check your source code!).
H2 and H3 tags should be used to separate content on the page
– like subheads. If you can include your targeted keywords in
these then great, if you can’t don’t worry about it.
<h1>Don’t ignore me</h1>
<h2>keyword subheading</h2>
<h3>keyword subheading</h3>
Hidden Text
In November 2014, Google’s John Mueller suggested that
Google won’t give the same weight to content that is not
instantly on a page, meaning that text in content sliders, tabs,
accordions or ‘click to reveal’ areas won’t be seen as important as
text that can be instantly read on a page. In July 2015, Google’s
Gary Illyes twice re-enforced this.
<title>On-Page SEO: Fundamentals</title>
www.stills.co.uk
ON-PAGE SEO: FUNDAMENTALS
Freshness
Latent Semantic Indexing (LSI)
Google will want to return pages to users that are up to date
and relevant to their query. If you have old content that could do
with updating, then do so. As you revisit your content, include
the timestamp of when the page was updated – your visitors will
appreciate this and it will help Google.
LSI looks for synonyms related to the title of your page, adding
context to what your content is about. For example, if the title
of your page was ‘Classic Cars’, the search engine would expect
to find words relating to that subject in the content of the page
as well, i.e. ‘collectors’, ‘automobile’, ‘Bentley’, ‘Austin’ and ‘car
auctions’.
As well as updating your content,
you could also encourage users to
provide content in order to keep the
page fresh. User reviews are incredibly
popular on e-commerce websites,
where testimonials are for service
based websites.
<title>On-Page SEO: Fundamentals</title>
If your page contains synonyms, Google will understand that
your page is actually about the subject title and will place greater
importance on the page.
To find synonyms perform a search in Google and have a look at
the suggestions at the bottom of the first page of the results, or
use an LSI tool.
www.stills.co.uk
ON-PAGE SEO: FUNDAMENTALS
Flesch Reading Ease
The Flesch Reading Ease test gives us an understanding of how
easy or difficult a piece of text is to read. The higher the score,
the easier your text is to read, with a score of around 60-70
considered ideal and is easily understood by 13-15-year-olds.
Featured Snippets
Featured Snippet
You may have noticed a relatively new featured item in Google’s
Search Results known as Featured Snippets, which is an answer
box of sorts appearing above the Organic Search Results.
If you want to be included in this type of result, when producing
your content you should consider the intent of the searcher and
look to answer their questions.
For the best chance of earning a featured snippet, format your
page heading in the style of how a user may ask a question.
Then write clear and concise step-by-step instructions using
formatting such as bullet points.
If you can gain some links from relevant websites to this page,
you have a fighting chance of earning the spot.
<title>On-Page SEO: Fundamentals</title>
www.stills.co.uk
ON-PAGE SEO: FUNDAMENTALS
Images
All images should have a descriptive file name and ALT text. To
increase the chances of your image appearing highly in image
search, place the image on a page surrounded by text containing
the targeted keywords. Adding a caption beneath that image is
also recommended.
Linking
When it comes to linking to your pages on your website, ensure
that your priority pages are included in the main navigation
menu. If it would be useful to your readers to incorporate links
within your content to your other pages like Wikipedia, do so. Be
as descriptive as possible with your anchor text when linking to
your pages, but don’t over do it to the point that it becomes an
example of keyword stuffing.
As for linking to other websites, don’t be afraid to do so. For years
many have been petrified about doing so in case it harms their
rankings. Earlier this month during a webcast, Google’s Gary
Illyes said he hates it when news publications do not link out and
went as far to call that practice, ‘stupid.’ He said it makes him,
‘angry’ that they do not link out through a likely fear that the link
may hurt them for some reason.
<title>On-Page SEO: Fundamentals</title>
www.stills.co.uk
ON-PAGE SEO: FUNDAMENTALS
Structured Data and Rich Snippets
Time and time again Google representatives had categorically
denied that this type of mark-up was considered as a ranking
factor. However back in September 2015 during a Google
hangout, Google’s John Mueller suggested that in time Google
may start to consider this if they believe that it’s beneficial to
the searcher. He also suggested that Google would look at the
relevancy and usefulness instead of how technically well it was
implemented.
- Rating: 5 - 13 Reviews - I am a rich snippet
Based on this, if your website could use this type of mark-up to
help your users then we’d suggest implementing it now ready for
if and when it is considered as a ranking factor. In the meantime
you may get a nice boost of traffic from search due to the
increase in the size of your website’s appearance in the search
engine results.
<title>On-Page SEO: Fundamentals</title>
www.stills.co.uk
ON-PAGE SEO: INTERACTIVITY
Click-Through Rate (CTR)
This is the percentage of impressions to clicks that your website
receives from appearing in the search results. While you must
incorporate your keywords for SEO purposes, you don’t want
to have an ugly looking page title that deters users from visiting
your website and instead opt to visit that of your competitors.
Including your brand name is a proven way of increasing the
likelihood of clicks, so look to incorporate that on all of your
pages.
Bounce Rate
This is the percentage of users who visit your website and leave
without viewing any more of your pages. A bounce could be an
indication that a user wasn’t satisfied with what your website had
to offer them, so you should look to make it as easy as possible
for users to navigate around your website and view more of your
content.
<title>On-Page SEO: Interactivity</title>
www.stills.co.uk
ON-PAGE SEO: INTERACTIVITY
Time Spent On Page and Dwell Time
A long amount of time on a page could suggest that the user was
engaged with your in-depth, exceptional content. To keep users
on a page you could try and incorporate different types of media
such as video and audio.
Dwell time is a measure of how long a user stayed on the page
before leaving. This could work in your favour if a user spent
a long time on a particular page but then left without visiting
another page. A lengthy stay on a page could well indicate that
your content provided the answers or solutions they were
looking for and they left your website satisfied.
Comments
Comments
Thanks to spammy SEO tactics of leaving keyword rich anchor
text links to websites, many websites tend to be wary of allowing
users to comment on posts. Well constructed, legitimate
comments on a post though would suggest that users are
reading and enjoying your content to the point that they
want to engage with you. This can only be a good thing from
Google’s perspective. If you’re fearful of spam, hold comments
in moderation before approving them and amend them if
necessary.
<title>On-Page SEO: Interactivity</title>
www.stills.co.uk
M E E T T H E AU T H O R
Jon Walker heads up the Online team at Stills and has over 10 years of experience
in-house, agency side and freelance.
Jon has worked with over 100 companies to improve their online strategy and has
a proven track record of delivering ROI on online campaigns.
Google certified in:
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Search
Display
Shopping
Mobile
Video
Analytics
IF YOU NEED ANY HELP WITH YOUR ONLINE CAMPAIGNS
CONTACT US:
02920 353940 | [email protected] | www.stills.co.uk