1. Always use page titles in an <H1> tag. This tag tells search engines that it is the best description of the web page. This should always be the largest, attention grabbing phrase which includes your primary keyword.
- Increase the size of the title’s font (bigger = more important)
- Position on the page (higher titles = more importance)
- Add titles using title text boxes rather than regular text boxes
- NEVER use more than 1 H1 tag per page. Doing so will confuse the search engine “spiders.”
2. Describe your images using the <alt> tag. You should write a description here for the search engine “robots”. When writing this, imagine you are describing your picture to someone who is blind.
- Limit the length to 120 characters. Be concise.
- Do not stuff keywords. Use a phrase once.
- Use the phrase in a natural way and not out of context. Bots may not know what a sentence means, but they can tell if you are trying to make dollars and not sense.
3. Write more. Gone are the days where 300 words are A-OK with Google.
- Try to write 1000 words if you want to rank a page in Google.
- Make sure you have a unique proposition in your landing page even if you are selling the same product or service as 100 other people. You need to sell yourself to Google, not just potential customers.
- Make sure the 1000 words are entirely your own.
4. Use the meta description wisely. The meta description is where you tell potential organic website visitors what your page is about and why they should click.
- The total length of your meta description should be ~156 characters.
- Write your description to maximize click through rate.
- Do not stuff keywords. This will decrease click through rates and cause a big Panda to stop eating bamboo and swing over to your page.
5. Don’t be dense. Keywords are important but being natural is more important. Focus on the quality of the content. If you picked the right keyword, it will flow naturally. Use the following best practices:
- For longer articles (over 1000 words) try to keep your keyword density between 1% and 2%. If it’s slightly higher or lower, but still sounds natural, don’t worry.
- For shorter articles (less than 500 words) keep the keyword density between .75% and 1.5%.
- Search engines may be blind, but they aren’t dense. Use synonyms to change things up so you’re not overusing words.
