How to optimize your web pages and keep Google happy

Optimizing your website properly is crucial to getting your site seen, searched and approved by the search engines and the public. This article shows just how you can do that using Wordtracker's updated Keywords tool.

The Mad Hatter Is Definitely              Rather Loony

The Mad Hatter Is Definitely Rather Loony is a memorable little acronym to help remember the basics of what needs to be done to help Google and your potential viewers find your site, and improve your search engine rankings into the bargain.

T: Title tag
M: Meta description and keywords tag
H: Header tags: H1, H2, H3
I: Image file names and alt tags
D: Diverse keywords
R: Relevancy
L: Reputable links

Let's go through those topics and discover how Wordtracker is in an even better position (with recent improvements to the Keywords tool) to help you do it.

First things first you need the keywords with which to optimize your site:

First choose your keywords

The new, improved Keywords tool helps you find the keywords that will get traffic to your site and beat your competitors.

The aim of this article isn't to tell you how to do your keyword research, however. You'll find a lot more information on that in Finding keywords and Keyword mapping.

Let's assume you have your keywords.

How do you use them on your web page?

Let's go back to The Mad Hatter Is Definitely Rather Loony

Title tag

<title>My Page Title</title>

The title tag for the first item in the search engine results in the picture below is"Burlesque London | Wam Bam Club | Comedy, Magic, Music and Burlesque".

This tag, as well as being of great interest to Google, appears at the top of your browser and acts in much the same way as the title of a book to your prospective customers. Have you ever bought a book largely based on how the cover looks? Yes? (Good for you if you haven't ...)

Title tag key points

·            Make your title compelling to increase clickthroughs.

·           Focus on a primary keyword and if you can work one in, use a second or third keyword. Place the primary keyword right at the beginning. But don't stuff with keywords - a long list of keywords looks suspicious to both Google and your human visitors.

·      Make sure your primary keyword is relevant to the content on your page. You'll lose ranking if there's no relevance and people won't stay on your site.

·      Restrict your title tags to 69 characters - anything over this Google will cut off and you'll lose a whole word even if you're only one character over.

·         Use a unique title tag for every page so that Google doesn't see you as duplicate content.

·        Use the | symbol or dash - anything else detracts from your message.

Meta description tag

<meta name="description" content="My description" />

Below you'll see the description tag used on Wordtracker's Scout page (circled in red):

The description should serve as a short and to the point summary of what your web page is about, with a bit more detail about what the content will be than can be gleaned from your title. Try including a strong call to action to spur your prospective customers into action: "Click here to learn more," for example.

Meta description tag key points

·         The description should make sense to your reader.

·         It should reinforce your title tag - confusion will reign if your description is saying something that has nothing to do with your title tag, and the searcher will pass you over.

·         Again, place your primary keyword near the beginning and don't use too many keywords. Try combining keywords (there are some great examples of that in Rand Fishkin's article on Tactical SEO)

·         The character limit for your description tag is 160.

·         Include your brand to increase brand awareness and help show trustworthiness.

Meta keywords tag

Meta keywords aren't as important these days as they used to be. Google, for instance, has said that they don't use them at all in web rankings these days.

So don't worry about them.

H: Header tags: H1, H2, H3

<h1>, <h2>, <h3> etc (up to 6)

You should only have one H1 tag per page and this is your headline: it's the text that should make your readers want to read on. So concentrate on making it hook in your visitors.

Do try to use your target keywords in your header tags if you can, and although these carry less ranking weight than previously, they are still assessed, and Google places more weight on the H1 tag than the others. They can help increase your ranking simply by way of making your text easier to read, thereby increasing clickthroughs, and hopefully improving your bounce rate (the rate at which your visitors leave your site.) 

I: Image file names and alt tags

<img src="my-lovely-pic.gif" alt="My lovely picture" />

Always give your images an alt tag (alternative text tag). As well as helping to inform the search engines what your page is about, they're essential for accessibility. Specialist software used by people with visual impairment reads them out, so you should have them describe what the image is about. They also appear in place of a picture if a reader has images switched off.

Of course, also make the image alt tags and file names keyword rich so that the search engines see them as another piece of keyword rich content on your site.

D: Diversity

Do use your primary and secondary keywords in your text, but also use lots of other on-topic words so that it does not appear that your text is stuffed full of keywords. Make your content readable, interesting, knowledgeable and make it long - the more you know and can advise on any given subject, the more authoritative and trustworthy you will look to to the search engines and your audience.

How can Wordtracker help?

Use our new Keywords tool to find relevant and popular search terms, but above all write great content (or pay someone to write great content for you!).

R: Relevancy

The search engines expect to see relevant content on a page, and visitors will also: they'll bounce straight off if they arrive at a page about cats when they expected it to be about home improvements, for example.

And as Google is looking ever closer at customer engagement, the bounce rate is become increasingly important.

L: Reputable links

At the moment, linking is still the biggest ranking factor, and everything you've done above will help to make your site more linkworthy.

Good quality, relevant, keyword rich content is imperative if you're to get noticed and get linked to by reputable sites, and these sites will be able to find you that much more easily if you follow these guidelines. If they see that you are a trustworthy, authoritative brand, links will follow.