2. Let’s start with a few SEO best practices
everyone should have in the bag. These won’t
directly improve rankings, but they’re
important in setting yourself up to rank higher
in Google.
3. Title
Meta Description
URL Optimization
Anchor Tag Optimization
Image Optimization
Header Tag Optimization
Robots.tag
Robots.txt
Set up Google Search Console
4. Keep them short. Under 70 characters is best to
avoid truncation.
Match search intent. Tell searchers you have
what they want.
Be descriptive. Don’t be vague or generic.
Don’t clickbait. Make sure they align with your
content.
Include the keyword. Use a close variation if it
makes more sense.
Include the year. For topics that demand
freshness.
5. Keep them short. Under 160 characters is best
to avoid truncation.
Expand on the title tag. Include USPs that you
couldn’t fit there.
Match search intent. Double down on what
searchers want.
Use an active voice. Address the searcher
directly.
Include your keyword. Google often bolds these
in the results.
6. If you’ve set up your website for SEO success,
your URL structure should be sound. But you still
need a descriptive slug for each page. Google
says to use words that are relevant to your
content.[8] Often the easiest way to do that is to
use your target keyword.
7. Anchor text should indicate to users what kind of page they’ll
be taken to if they click the link. A few tips are as follows:
Make Sure Anchor Words Are Relevant: Relevant anchor
text helps Google understand your site structure. Which
means it could help your website rank higher.
Don’t Over-Optimize Your Anchor Text: There’s no set
length guidelines for anchor text, but it’s best to keep it as
succinct as possible. We recommend keeping anchor text to five
words or less.
Pay Attention to Surrounding Text: The text surrounding
your anchor text can help readers better understand the context
of what you’re linking to.
Fix Alt Text Issues: To check for missing alt text on your site,
head to the Issues tab in the Site Audit tool.
8. Images from your pages can rank in Google image search and
send more traffic your way. You need to do three things to
optimize them.
Use descriptive filenames
Google says that filenames give them clues about the
image’s subject matter.[9] So dog.jpg is better
than IMG_859045.jpg.
Use descriptive alt text
Google also uses alt text (alternative text) to understand
the subject matter of an image.[9] This is an HTML
attribute used on <img> tags to describe the image.
Compress them
Compressing images makes file sizes smaller, leading to faster
load times. Plenty of tools exist for doing this. ShortPixel is a
good option.
9. Always include an H1 tag.
Use only one per page.
Include the primary keyword for your
content.
Avoid populating the tag with too many
keywords.
Ensure that your target audience can easily
read the H1 tag.
Use up to 70 characters in the tag length.
Make the tag unique.
10. 1) Do not use Meta Robots and x-robots on the same page as one of them
will become redundant.
2) In case you don’t want to get the pages indexed but want to pass on
the link equity to linked pages, you can use Meta Robots tag with
directives as noindex, follow. This is the best technique to control
indexing instead of blocking using robots.txt.
3) You don’t need to add index or follow directives on each page of your
website to get it indexed. It is considered by default.
4) In case your pages are indexed, do not block in them in robots.txt and
use Meta Robots simultaneously. Because, in order to consider the Meta
Robots tag, crawlers need to crawl the page and robots.txt blocking
won’t allow them to do so. In short, your Meta Robots tag will become
redundant.
In such cases, deploy the robots meta tag first on your pages and wait for
Google to de-index them. Once de-indexed, you can block them through
robots.txt to save your crawl budget. However, this should be avoided as
they can be used to pass link equity to your important pages. You should
block de-indexed pages via robots.txt only if they serve no purpose at all.
5) Use X-robots tag to control crawling of non-HTML files like images,
PDF’s, flash or video, and so on.
11. First and foremost, please research and understand which areas of the website you don’t want to
be crawled. Do not simply copy or reuse someone else’s robots.txt file.
Always place your robots.txt file in the root directory of your website so that search engine
crawlers can easily find it.
Do not name your file anything apart from “robots.txt” since it is case-sensitive.
Always specify your sitemap URL in robots.txt as it helps search engine bots to find your website
pages more easily.
Do not hide private information or future event pages in robots.txt. Because it is a public file, any
user can access your robots.txt file by simply adding /robots.txt after your domain name. Anyone
can see which pages you want to hide; hence it is suggested to not use robots.txt for hiding
sensitive pages
Create a dedicated and customised robots.txt file for each and every sub-domain that belongs to
your root domain.
Before going live, be triply sure that you are not blocking anything that you don’t wish to.
Always test and validate your robots.txt file using Google’s robots.txt testing tool to find any
errors and check if your directives are actually working.
Googlebot won’t follow any links on pages blocked through robots.txt. Hence, ensure that the
important links present on blocked pages are linked to other pages of your website as well.
While setting up robots.txt file, do keep in that the blocked pages won’t pass any link equity to
the pages they are linking to.
Do not link pages blocked in robots.txt file from any other pages of your website. If linked, Google
will end up crawling those pages through internal links.
12. To optimize your website for organic search, you
probably use Google Search Console to learn which
pages receive the most impressions and clicks, and
which queries drive them. To get the information you
need, you may need to visit several areas within GSC
and view multiple reports.
Now you can quickly assess your overall SEO
performance in a single dashboard that monitors
fundamental metrics, such as:
Impressions. See how many impressions and clicks your
website pages receive in Google.
Average position. Track your average search position
and monitor daily, weekly, or monthly fluctuations.
Position by pages. Learn the search results page
position of any page on your website.
Position by queries. See how many search queries each
position group receives.
13. To learn more on how to optimize ‘on page
SEO’, subscribe to Digital Pundit’s SEO
course. Digital Pundit is one of the best
institute to offer Digital Marketing Course in
Ahmedabad, Gujarat