SEO Best Practices: metatags, keywords, URLs and backlinks

I decided to write a longer article on SEO best practices and to incorporate more information that I hope you’ll find useful. Keeping all things together I think it’s better than forcing you to search through multiple articles and open different pages to find all the information you need. I also have the first article from this series that you can read it here: SEO best practices when developing new content.

Metatags best practices

The most important thing you have to know about metatags is that it doesn’t help with your rankings. This is something you have to keep in mind all the time. The second most important thing to know about metatags is that the only metatag that is worth spending time on it is description metatags. That’s it!

Even though the description metatags will not improve your rankings it might increase the click rate. This piece of information is shown by search engines right under the title of the page: if the information presented in the description metatag is interesting enough it might increase the click rate.

Also, consider using your keywords in the description metatag. The reason is because if a search engine finds it in there it will highlight it in bold: a reader might react to it. Google said that if they consider a piece of text from your page, other than the description metatag, more relevant to a particular search they’ll use that instead.

So, as a conclusion it’s best to have unique description metatags to each of your pages but if you don’t create them, then Google will generate one for you from the text present on the page.

There are some people that have a fixation with the keyword metatags. The keyword metatag is dead. It doesn’t matter to Google or other search engines. And even if other search engines (other than Google) didn’t exclude it entirely this is such a low factor that I suggest you to don’t think about it. Just like Matt Cutts said: I would not spend even a few seconds on the keyword metatags.

SEO best practices on internal linking architecture

Internal linking architecture is extremely important not only for search engines but also for visitors. Proper link architecture can offer search engines good crawling paths. In terms of SEO here is how internal links might help your rankings.

As you all know links are the way search engines crawl the web. And the more trust worthy links you have to your website the better you’ll rank. Although internal links don’t have the same weight as links coming from other websites it’s still a good practice to improve rankings: especially on keywords that have lower competition.

If you wonder how or what keywords to use to link internally, the answer is simple: search on Google for your desired keyword. Then scroll down and look at related searches for your term. Those terms are a best starting point to use in your anchor texts.

Another advice would be to link in a logical way. What I mean by that is to link only between related articles. Develop group of related articles and link them together. Keep in mind that once you place a link on a page that link will carry some weight from that page to the page that is linked. The weight is divided between the links from a page.

This technique will be useful when you want to increase rankings on terms that have lower competition and also are more like long tail keywords where a lot of weight in rankings is played by how well the keyword is used on the page.

Best practices on selecting keywords

The entire SEO is revolving around keywords and techniques to improve rankings on the keywords you selected. So, having a strategy on selecting keywords and using them on your pages makes sense. You don’t want to go after the big terms right from the start because you’ll have no results.

Good rankings that are there to stay come in time. My approach is first to dominate long tail keywords. This way I can still generate traffic and target the high competitive term without the pressure of ranking well for that keyword.

There are lots of keyword tools out there but I like to use the tools provided for free by Google. I think these tools are some of the best on the market, work well on every language and are free. A good place to start is to ask others to search for what you’re after: ask people that don’t know anything about that market and people that have a certain degree of knowledge about your subject.

You’ll find out that people that don’t know too much about the market you’re trying to dominate search in a very different way than those that are involved in it. Learn from the way these two categories search and build content that takes that into account. For example if you target a term that is used only by people that know the market well it might be a good thing to be more technical in your article and offer more detailed information.

On the other hand you might consider using a more relaxed vocabulary when it comes to keywords searched by people that don’t know anything or too few about your market. Sometimes this is also the first mistake people do when selecting keywords: they know the market too well and hence they select technical keywords that a regular person would not think about it.

Also, follow the refining path. People that don’t know too much about your market will start with a very broad search and then refine it by adding more terms to the search. On the other hand a specialist will search for exactly what he wants to know, by using a long tail keyword.

Best practices on How to use keywords in content

The SEO techniques to target keywords are very simple to use by anyone. When it comes to targeting keywords on a page here are some simple guidelines:

-          Use your keyword in the title of the page: this is the most important thing

-          Use your keyword in the description metatag

-          Use your keyword in the first subtitle, the first paragraph, content, anchor text, ALT property, bold text, H tag, image/file names, URL, last paragraph

Don’t expect to apply these rules and wait for a miracle to happen. You have to realize what you’re doing with these techniques and what you’re not:

-          You’re telling search engines that a page is targeting a keyword

-          You’re not telling anything about how relevant and important is your content to your targeted keyword

That is why you need consistency in what types of keywords you target on your entire website, how well you link related articles and of course the most important thing how good your backlinks are.

ALT property best practices

The ALT property of the img HTML tag is important for SEO because it can influence your rankings on image searches. If your image will show then a click on that image will get you a visitor. So, along with the file name the ALT property must be used to target the keywords of that page.

URL form best practices for SEO

The simple advice for URL form is to include the keyword targeted on that page in the structure of the URL. Don’t use complicate URLs that don’t mean anything. Instead use descriptive URLs that let people relate and understand what that page is about just by looking at it.

Getting backlinks SEO best practices

Backlinks are the most important aspect of SEO. It’s like in real life when other people speak good things about you. When a person recommends you to their friends then your trust level is higher than it would be if you would offer your services directly. That’s why marketing to friends is more effective than trying to convince a total stranger how good you are.

When it comes to SEO best practices about Backlinks it comes to four major things:

1. Diversity: it’s better to have 100 links from 10 websites than 10000 links from one website
2. Anchor text: the actual text of the links is also very important because it tells to search engines what your page/site is about. That is why, as a word of advice: don’t link externally with your keywords
3. Link juice (PR): links coming from websites with higher PR have more value than links coming from lower PR. That is why higher PR usually means more requests to link exchange
4. Trust and Authority: this refers to the aspect of links coming from authority websites (big websites – just to keep it simple)

Exchanging links with other websites it’s not a healthy thing to do. Many link exchange requests are fake and those websites once they get enough links are switching to spam mode. Be very careful to whom you link. It doesn’t matter who links to you but if you link to penalized websites there is a strong chance you’ll get penalized also. The link exchange process is against Google’s guidelines because you are trying to interfere with the natural process of selecting quality content.

Getting quality Backlinks that will help your website is an ongoing process. Here are some do’s and don’ts:

-          Don’t list your website in hundreds or thousands of low quality web directories

-          Don’t create link schemes where you develop more websites linking between them

-          Try to get involved in activities related to your market: usually people that talk about those activities or the official websites will offer a quality link

So, here are some SEO best practices guidelines. I hope you find it useful and if you did maybe you want to let others know about it. Also you’re invited to place a comment bellow with your ideas, thoughts, suggestions or questions.