Website SEO: Implementation, step 3

Now that you have all your pages in the SEO implementation sheet, let’s look at a few critical implementation components. This article is for you if you plan to implement things on your own. If you have a developer that can do it for you, it’s enough to just pass him / her the implementation sheet.

SEO friendly URLs

A few notes here. It’s been popular to keyword stuff your site folders, sub-folders and page names. As with all popular things, Google recognizes that site URLs get abused and may not like keyword stuffing. So, stay away from deep pages (more than 3 levels deep), because 2-3 levels are more than enough for most small business websites.

• Bad example: domain.com/search-engine-optimization-calgary/seo-services/link-building-calgary/link-building.html
• Good example: domain.com/services/seo.html
• Often ideal: domain.com/seo.html

As of recently, I’ve become a fan of shorter, but more specific page names, titles, URLs.

SEO optimized titles

Although a generally accepted length of titles is around 64 to 75 characters (including spaces), it’s not always ideal. Shorter titles mean that each word inside the title has more weight. Here’s an example that I hope helps illustrate the point.

• Bad example: Web Design Los Angeles, SEO, Internet Marketing, Calgary, Canada, Advertising Agency “company name”, Award Winning (because runs over length limit, cuts at “Canada”).
• Better example: Search Engine Optimization | Social Media Consulting Calgary SEO (because right at the length limit, but still appears a bit stuffed, and a bit confusing to search engine (“is the page about SEO or SMM?”)).
• Best example: SEO Services Calgary by “your company name” (because this makes it clear to a search engine that the company offers SEO services in Calgary region) .

Disclaimer: These example are taken from real searches. I do not intent to pick on these. I used these titles to illustrate the point. Also, my best example is a bit idealistic because sites with shorter titles are not in top 3 results. However, I honestly believe that things are  going that way.

Update: as I keep seeing sites with only a homepage title (the rest is missing), I wanted to once again remind that you need to have titles for all your pages. This helps Google and other engines do the right thing when ranking your site. Also, make sure your titles are not identical across the whole site. Each page should have its own title.

Meta Descriptions

Meta descriptions, that is, are n0t there for keyword stuffing. The role of a description tag inside meta is to be descriptive to a human. The reason is that, if you have content inside description tag, Google picks it to display in the search snippet. Here’s more on Google search snippets from Matt Cutts. As a result, make your descriptions:

• between 120 to 150 characters (including spaces)
• ensure that your description is understood by a human
• ensure that it’s descriptive enough that a person understands what to expect on the page
• feel free to mention your focus keyword once

Headings (h1, h2, h3, etc.)

H1 is the second most important element of the on-page optimization (after the title). Here’s a few rules I follow and it’s been working for me and my clients:

• make sure it contains your focus key phrase
• make sure it’s written in a human language (not for search engines)
• in terms of formatting, make sure the font stands out, so people know what the page is about at a first glance
• avoid long running H1′s, 4-5 words is enough most of the time

Internal / external links

Links are super important for two reasons: proper external links increase the authority of your pages, and well developed internal links help Google crawl your pages. Good links make life more beautiful for both people and search engine spiders. Here’s a few recommendations on links:

• Don’t even bother with “nofollow” tags. It used to help manage “Google juice” flowing to and away from your site, but not any more. Creating proper “anchors” and giving a link a destination URL is more than enough. Read more on SEO and Nofollow tag in one of my past posts.
• Anchors are super important. “SEO and Nofollow” in the previous point is an anchor, it’s a text that links out to another page. Make sure your anchors contain your focus keywords, especially for internal pages. For example, if you have a page explaining your SEO Services, the anchor should be “SEO Services”. Just call things their real names, don’t keyword-stuff, and you’ll be fine.
• A bit on external links. It’s ok to links out to external sites. Do not worry, you will not loose Google juice. In fact, linking out to relevant websites with proper anchor tags makes life simpler for both people and search engine crawlers.

Alts for your images

As you’ve probably noticed, I don’t have a lot of imagery on my site. There’s a couple of reasons for it: 1) images make site slower to load (as opposed to no images), 2) it’s an art to select the right image for the right things, and I believe that irrelevant images just eat up space. Having said that, I’m not against pictures on websites. If done right, images can significantly increase the appeal, conversions and revenues.
So, go ahead and use images you like but just make sure your images are size-optimized (the lighter the weight the better, but make sure the quality is still there too), and ensure that alt attributes are:

• descriptive of the image (so that blind people or those with blocked images can see what the picture is about)
• contain one mention of your focus key phrase (a 2-3 word key phrase that you use to optimize this particular page)
• not keyword-stuffed (4-5 words to explain the image is usually enough)

I hope this all makes sense. If not, please write a comment. Feel free to bookmark and share the article so that you can use it as reference when  you’re working on your pages. Here’s a little bonus, an article I enjoyed, that will give you a bit more ideas on quicker time to top 10 results in Google.

Take a look at other SEO steps when launching a new sites. And stay tuned for articles on the next steps: search engine submissions.