Welcome to part 2 of my annual SEO playbook. (
Click here for part 1.) I have to thank Danny Sullivan and the Search Engine Land team for giving me the perfect outline for the 2014 playbook, the
Periodic Table of SEO Success Factors.
Part 2 will cover on-page factors, including content, HTML and
architecture. You’ll find more than enough food for thought and some
very actionable steps. This is not a step-by-step SEO guide, and it’s
pretty informal. Before embarking on a search engine optimization
campaign,
do your research or consult with an expert.
Content: Quality
Quality was a big discussion item during 2013, especially topics like word count and deep content.
After Panda, you’d think we would be well past the age of producing
short “fluff” articles. However, too many websites, especially business
sites that struggle to post fresh content, continue the practice.
Recently, I saw a corporate blog post listing 10 must-read books on a
topic — the article consisted of 10 thumbnail images and the names of
the books, linked to an online bookstore. You can’t afford to keep
putting out cut-rate articles like that; in bulk, they are perfect
Panda-penalty bait.
On the opposite end is deep content — pages or articles of around
1,500 words or more. Websites have seen success with this content, so it
may make sense to take the time spent creating lots of short, “fluffy”
posts and use it instead to produce a few longer, more meaningful
articles. Whatever you do, make sure content is well written, with
attention to grammar and spelling. Don’t just say something; back it up
with thoughtful opinion or researched facts. Put some meat on the bones.
Personally, when it comes to article content, if I cannot easily pass
450 words, I will combine it with other content or deem it not worth
writing about.
As for e-commerce descriptions, I used to deem 250 words as the sweet
spot. Nowadays, I am less concerned about word count and more focused
on creating a great list, matching features with benefits.
Content: Keywords
Keyword research is not going anywhere and is still the foundation of
all on-site SEO. The difference is, after the Hummingbird update, we
are discussing the role of entities, where topics take the place of
keywords in the result pages. Google has made great strides in synonym
identification and concept grouping — some have even called it the death
of the long-tail keyword. (But, as with all the supposed death knells
in our field, this, too, is probably an exaggeration.)
My advice is to make sure each page stands on its own as a
topic.
Do not create multiple pages about the same exact thing in order to
optimize for different keywords. Instead, stick to single, well-written,
citation-worthy, topic pages and optimize them for multiple keywords.
This can be another good reason to use long-form content.
Content: Engagement
Engagement is about whether visitors spend time reading your content
or bounce quickly away. Once again, meaningful content is key. It’s
amazing how it all comes back to quality. Are you publishing something
your audience or target personas will want to read, or are you just
filling holes in an editorial calendar — or perhaps publishing out of
guilt because you have not published anything recently?
Engagement isn’t just limited to text content, either; Web page
design is equally important. Words don’t just have to read well to be
engaging — they have to
look good. Readability includes
everything from page layout to font selection to letter and line
spacing. Additionally, pay attention to navigation and the presentation
of links to other content, as these elements can have a huge impact on
time, bounce rates and other visitor engagement metrics such as time on
page/time on site.
Content: Ads
Another part of layout is the placement of ads. Search engines will
not ding you for having advertisements. That would be hypercritical.
What they will penalize is
too many ads or inappropriate ad placements.
I do not foresee big changes in this area beyond the enhancement of
current search engine policies. In addition to display ads, be
especially wary of text link ads. Make certain they are
content-appropriate or matching, and that you nofollow them. If you
still use automated phrase link advertising inside your content, I
strongly suggest you consider removing this. If you use interstitial or
pop-up advertising, make sure it doesn’t interfere with the ability of
search engines to crawl your pages.
Content: Freshness
I am a big proponent of fresh content — this includes not just
posting about hot topics, but also ensuring that you are publishing new
content on a regular or frequent basis. Not only is new content
important to attract readership, it also improves crawl frequency and
depth. Earlier, I wrote that you should not create content
just
to check off your editorial calendar. Not to backtrack, but if you do
not have an editorial calendar in place, you probably should create one
and get to work creating content.
Think of your content as a tool to generate awareness and trust. This
means you must get beyond writing about just your company and its
products or services. Go broader and become a resource — a real, viable,
honest-to-goodness resource — for your target market and the people or
companies that your target market serves.
Taking this broad approach will give you more to write about,
allowing you to focus on topics of interest to your target market. This
is the kind of content you can build an audience with. In my opinion, if
you are not trying to build an audience at the top of the marketing
funnel, you are probably doing it wrong. Obviously, there are exceptions
to this; though, I think a lot more companies fail here than don’t need
to worry about it.
HTML: Titles & Headers
Title tags are interesting right now. The usual rules for writing
optimized title tags and headers have not changed. I do foresee search
engines (Google especially) rewriting more title tags algorithmically.
If you see Google rewriting your title tags, test changing your HTML to
the same text Google presents in the SERPs. By test, I mean change a
judicious few, then observe what happens to performance indicators. If
you see improvement, a broader title tag optimization program could
prove worthwhile.
Going back to entity search and optimizing for multiple keywords…
when you are doing topic optimization, you must be cognizant of which
keywords you use in the title and H1 tags. I wish I could give you a
surefire formula, but one does not exist. As you look at synonyms, pay
attention to which words or phrases received the most exact match
searches and trust your intuition when it comes to popular language use.
HTML: Description
I don’t see anything changing with Meta description tag optimization.
Write unique descriptions for every page. They will not change your
rankings; but, well-written descriptions can increase click-through
rate.
I always pay attention to length, around 150 words. In reality, the
actual length depends on the combined pixel width of all characters, but
from a practical standpoint just make sure your descriptions are not
getting cut off when they appear in the results.
For pages that appear in site links, be sure that the portion of the
description that appears beneath each link forms a coherent thought.
This is a place where many enterprise sites and brands can improve.
HTML: Structured Data Markup
Each year, it seems structured data markup is always a big topic.
First is the question of whether or not you should use it for organic
search engine optimization. Some long-time experts do not like
structured markup or machine-readable language because they do not want
to help the search engines present information in a format that does not
generate visits.
For example, if you type in the name of your favorite NFL team,
Google will show you information about that team, including their next
scheduled game, right on the SERP. Here’s an example I fondly remember:
someone once asked, if you ran a zoo website, would you want Google to
show your business hours at the top of the search results, or do you
want people to visit the website, where they will learn more about
current exhibits and events? This is a fair question — to which I think
the fair answer is, whatever will get the most bodies through the door.
Google, Bing and Yahoo are going to show the data they want and in
the format they desire regardless of how you or I feel. Personally, I’d
much rather be a trusted source, even if it means my website information
is made available in the SERPs. For this reason, I am a huge proponent
of structured data markup like schema.org and RDFa.
Other forms of structured markup, like the author and publisher tags,
are not controversial and have entered the realm of best practices. Use
them.
HTML: Keyword Stuffing & Hidden Elements
Negative ranking factors like keyword stuffing and hidden text are so
old that many of us practitioners brush them off as search engine
optimization 101. Unfortunately nothing is ever so easy.
Stuffing is definitely a factor in e-commerce shopping cart
optimization. It can be tricky not to use the same word or phrase over
and over again when they are used as categories or descriptions for
products. Different shopping carts have different levels of control.
Some are more easily optimized than others. On category pages, it may be
as simple as limiting the number of products you display on each page.
Without going into an entire lesson on shopping cart optimization, what I
will tell you is: if you have not done a shopping cart review in the
last two years, it is time. Make certain your e-commerce platform is
keeping up.
It still surprises me how often I see unintentional cloaking.
Usually, it’s a result of the template writer getting around a quirk of
the content management system. But I have also seen static links in a
template that are cloaked using display: none on some pages while they
appear on others, depending on something such as the category. The
bottom line is this: if it appears on the page, it should be in the
HTML. If it does not appear on the page, it should not appear in the
HTML.
Architecture: Crawl
Not enough search engine optimizers pay attention to crawl. I realize
this is a pretty broad statement, but too many of us get so caught up
in everything else that this becomes one of the first things we ignore
unless there are red, flashing error messages. Obviously, you want to
make sure that search engines can crawl your website and all your pages
(at least the ones you want crawled). Keep in mind that if you do not
want to botch the flow of PageRank through your site, use the meta
noindex, follow tag to exclude pages, not robots.txt.
The other concern you should have is whether or not search engines
crawl and capture updates to existing pages in a timely manner. If not,
it could be an overall domain authority issue or that PageRank is not
flowing deep enough in sufficient quantities.
There are tricks to resolve this, such as linking to updated pages
from your homepage or a level-one page until the updated deep page gets
reached. The more wholesome approach is to make sure that the content
which gets updated is naturally close to content or sections of content
with higher authority, or to build legitimate internal links from
related content that has its own off-site PageRank.
I am not telling you all your content should be crawled all the time.
Search engines budget crawl frequency and depth for good reasons. What I
am saying is manage your website crawl budget and use it well; don’t
just leave everything up to chance.
Architecture: Duplicate Content
Earlier this year, Matt Cutts stunned the search engine optimization community by
telling us not to worry about duplicate content.
He assured us that Google will recognize this duplicate content,
combine the disbursed authority, and present one URL in the SERPs.
This is really not a big surprise, as Google has been working toward
this for quite some time. Webmaster tools has had automated parameter
identification and Google spokespersons have discussed duplicate content
consolidation for some time.
To repeat what I have written before, Google is not the only search
engine out there and reality does not always work the way Google says it
does. The bottom line is: keep managing your duplicate content by
preventing or eliminating as much as possible, and as for the rest, put
your canonical tags in place.
Speaking of canonical tags, I know a popular hack has been to use one
canonical URL, improperly, on all the pages of multipage articles.
There are other canonical hacks out there, as well. I’d be wary of
these. If you’re using canonical tags, machine-readable content or
advanced meta-tags, you’re basically waving a big red flag telling
search engines that your website is technically savvy and using search
engine optimization. In other words, you’re begging for additional
scrutiny.
It would not surprise me if Google becomes more fierce in penalizing
websites for this type of technical misdirection. Search engines tend to
use a soft touch on levying penalties algorithmically for fear they
will burn innocent websites. But as we have seen with Panda and Penguin,
as they become more confident, they also become more aggressive. If you
are optimizing for an employer, keep it clean.
Architecture: Speed
Most websites are not going to see an SEO benefit from increasing the
speed of their website. Google has always said only a small fraction of
sites are affected by this part of the ranking algorithm. This view
seems to be borne out by correlation studies. Honestly, the best test of
speed is to take your laptop to the local café and surf around your
website. If you are not waiting for pages to load up, then you are
probably okay.
The exceptions (sites that
should be concerned about speed)
are large enterprise and e-commerce websites. If you optimize for one of
these, shaving a few milliseconds from load time may lower bounce rates
and increase conversions or sales.
Architecture: URLs
The current best practices for URLs should hold true throughout 2014.
Simple and easily readable URLs are not just about search engine
optimization. With today’s multi-tabbed browsers, people are more likely
to see your URLs than they are your title tags.
I will also add that, when seen in the search engine results pages,
readable URLs are more likely to get clicked on than nonsensical ones.
If your content management system cannot create readable URLs based on
your title tags or will not let you customize URLs, it is probably time
for a CMS review. This is now a basic search engine optimization
feature, so if your CMS cannot handle it, I wonder about the rest of
your CMS’s SEO efficacy.
Architecture: Mobile
2013 was an interesting year for
mobile SEO.
Google and Bing agree that the ideal configuration is for websites to
have a single set of URLs for all devices and to use responsive Web
design to present them accordingly. In reality, not all content
management systems can handle this, and Web designers have presented
case studies of situations where the search engine standard is neither
practical nor desirable.
If you can execute what Google and Bing recommend, do so. However, if
you cannot or have a good reason not to, be sure to use canonical tags
that point to the most complete version of each page, probably your
desktop version, and employ redirects based on browser platform for
screen size.
You will not risk a penalty from the search engines as long as your
website treats all visitors equally and doesn’t make exceptions for
search engine spiders. Basically, this is similar to automatic
redirection of visitors based on their geographic location for language
preference.
That about wraps it up for on-page SEO factors in 2014. Be on the
lookout for Part 3 of my 2014 SEO Playbook, which will cover off-page
SEO factors relating to link building, local search and social media.
