Taking a look over the essentials
When It comes to SEO, there are fundamental basics that are essential to any website to help search engines read and prioritise your pages. These are the basics, however so many websites (even this one) sometimes miss these steps, so it’s always handy to keep them as a quick reference guide.
Title Tag
This is what the title tag will look like when you inspect your page:
<head>
<title>Page title</title>
</head>
Don’t worry too much about the code, what’s important is that firstly you have one, every CMS (such as WordPress) will typically take your page titles and use that as the title tag. Secondly, it ideally needs to follow these rules:
- It should be between 45-60 characters, which is typically around 7-8 words.
- Important keywords (the ones you want to rank for) should be towards the beginning of the title
- Actually read your title, does it make you want to make you click through?
Spend 5-10 minutes writing multiple titles and read them out loud, yes this may sound crazy, but why spend hours writing a great article if nobody clicks through to read it? Ask a friend or family member which one is best or most engaging.
How important is a title tag? Did you know, Buzzfeed used to write 30 titles and go through a process until they found the best one. They used to prioritise titles as much as the content itself.
Meta description
<head>
<meta name=”description” content=”This is your description.”>
</head>
Best practise:
- Ideally around 150-170 characters – be mindful, your description will be cut off at different stages depending on if the users is using a desk, tablet or mobile.
- Your description should be unique and supplement your title tag.
- Any secondary keywords that you are targeting should be towards the start of your description.
Images
<img scr=”this-is-your-image.jpg” alt=”description of your image” width=”400px” height=”300px”>
- Your image should be unique (duplicate contact can negatively affect your page ranking).
- Your images should be named correctly, ideally 6-7 words long and descriptive. E.g. Girl-writitng-email-on-apple-laptop.jpg
- Image descriptions can be longer, ideally around 10 words in length, a good tip is to think of how you would describe the image to a visually impaired person.
Hyperlinks
Regular hyperlink
<a href=”http://www.example-link.com”> Anchor text </a>
Above is what a typical hyperlink will look like, use this format for any link that you actively want to endorse.
NoFollowed hyperlink
<a href=”http://www.example-link.com” rel=”nofollow”> Anchor text </a>
Use the nofollow tag for any paid links or content that you want to link too but would not normally associate yourself with. Using a nofollow is considered a safe option. Most content systems will allow you to choose the link type.
Sponsored hyperlink
<a href=”http://www.example-link.com” rel=”sponsored”> Anchor text </a>
A sponsored link is used whenever the content you are writing is being paid for or you are being gifted something in return for the exposure.
And that's all folks
A quick whistle-stop tour of the essentials, Hopefully, this gives you a little more insight into what people who perform on-site SEO do on a daily basis.
