Basic Site Optimization

You know that the text in your landing pages, tags, and titles is one of the most important and long-standing SEO factors. This week you’re going to optimize them, with the goal of creating a better environment for your target audiences, not to mention positively influencing how search engines view and rank your website. You’ll also tackle basic site-linking strategy to ensure that search engine robots have easy access to your landing pages. With these improvements in place, your site will have a basic level of optimization: nothing tricky or fancy, and no time wasted on tiny technicalities, just common-sense, best-practices solutions. Remember, there is no single silver bullet in SEO.

Pearl of Wisdom: Site optimization usually includes many little efforts, which in combination bring better presence on search engines.

You’ll keep track of all your changes in one document as you go, you’ll deliver this document to the folks in charge of making edits to your website. If you’re the code-slinger on the project.

Page Titles

You know that HTML page titles show up as the first line of clickable text in most search engine results. That fact, along with their considerable influence in search engine ranking algorithms, makes HTML page titles one of the most important optimization spots on your website.

Today, you’re going to take a stab at writing unique and compelling page titles for each of your landing pages. We’ve created a document where you can keep track of these edits, called the Site Optimization Worksheet.

Full-Speed Ahead

SEO is a long-term maintenance activity, comprising both productive spells and waiting periods. Your SEO Plan is designed so that your waiting time (waiting for site owners to get back to you, waiting for your team to implement your recommendations,waiting for the search engines to notice what you’ve done, and so on) isn’t spent idly. Rather, you’ll use this time to take on new activities. And even though you’ll constantly move into new SEO territory as the plan progresses, you’ll periodically come back to revisit and continue the work you started in earlier weeks.

The one exception is paid search management, which requires frequent quick checks. So after your pay-per-click account gets rolling next month,we’ll ask you to incorporate these quick checks into days that are designated for other tasks. No fair trying to sneak in and start the Plan without getting organization-wide buy-in for your top keyword choices! If you haven’t done so, do it now.Your time is too valuable to waste on the wrong terms or to swing and miss with your conversion goals.

You’ll want the Quick Reference sheet you created last month handy to keep you in tune with your goals and keywords as you write. We’ve compiled some do’s and don’ts to keep you on the right track:

DO keep it short. Like those old telephone answering machines that cut you off before you finish talking, most search engines display only 40 to 60 or so characters in the listing title. So to get your message across, include important keywords toward the beginning of the title, and make sure that the first 40 to 60 or so characters of your title form a complete thought.

DO include your keywords… Your HTML page title is important in the ranking algorithm, so it must include your target keywords! Since your space is limited, focus on the two to three keyterms that you previously matched with your landing page. Feeling a bit squeezed by the 40-to-60-character cutoff? Remember that you can combine keywords to save space.

…but DON’T overdo it! First and foremost, you want to connect with your intended audience. Excessive keyword repetition is a shortsighted strategy. Is this a marketing message or a synonym sandwich?

Remember to think of the big picture! Your approach to site optimization will affect more than just ranks… it will also affect your visitors’ decision to part with their time and money.

DO include your name. Your organization’s name will not only differentiate your listing from your competitors’, it may also earn you more clicks. Maybe your name carries a good reputation with it, or maybe it provides important context, making your listing more attractive or relevant. Notice how the company names in the following listings provide crucial context for the search term “bass articles.”

Since each of your landing pages is already targeting a unique subset of your top-priority keywords, you can always find a different angle for each page title. Give each of your landing pages the chance to shine on its own merits.

DON’T duplicate site navigation in the title. Whether generated automatically or written by hand, page titles are often used as a place to mirror the navigational structure of a site. We won’t say “Never” for this because, if your site sections are named well, it can be an effective way to display keywords. For example, a furniture store might have a landing page titled “Frank’s Furniture – Patio Furniture – Wicker.” This works the navigation text is very brief and includes target keywords. But most sites aren’t built this way, and you don’t want words like “Index,” “Main Page,” or “Our Products” to take up space that’s best reserved for your targeted marketing message.

DO think of formulas for larger sites or blogs. If your site contains a larger number of landing pages, you’ll do well to write out a couple of formulas. Patterns like “Joe’s Sauces: {Sauce Name}” can translate into zesty titles for large swaths of your website. Bloggers, a simpler formula for your titles could be: “{Blog Name} – {Post Title}.” DO use title case. In our experience, Titles With the First Letters Capitalized get clicked more.