6 SEO Best Practices For Web Pages
When building out the pages of your new website or adding new pages to your current website, it’s a good idea to think about how to make them SEO friendly. Here are 6 SEO best practices to keep in mind:
URL structure
This one is so important and often missed. Once the URL is established and indexed by Google, linked in social media posts and included in your emails, you most likely do not want to change it. You could have broken links all over the internet. Oh the horror! Search engines do not like broken links and they are not good for the user experience.
So let’s get it right the first time! Structure your URL (or slug) to be SEO friendly. Include words that are relevant to the content on the page. Use dashes between keywords and remove irrelevant words (the, to, and). Make the URL simple, accurate and compelling. Most importantly, the URL should provide an easy-to-understand indication of what the page will be about.
Images
Optimize! For all images, you’ll want to find the balance between the lowest file size and an acceptable quality. Give all images SEO friendly titles and make sure they each have alt text.
H1 header tag
There is much controversy out there about the H1 header tags: Do you have to use one? Can you use multiple on a page? According to Google, it really comes down to what is going to provide the best user experience. H1s are helpful for communicating page structure to users and search engines, and they support usability. So make sure the header tag describes the topic of the page or a particular section of the page. Make the H1s stand out and noticeable, this helps with usability and adds to the user experience.
Focus keyphrase
The focus keyphrase is the search term that you want your page to rank for most. This can be a single word, but usually consists of a few words. Short, generic keyphrases get a lot of search traffic, but also have a great deal of competition. Long tail keyphrases typically get less search traffic, but will usually have a higher conversion value. Yoast SEO recommends a maximum of four relevant content words for your focus keyphrase.
Meta description
The meta description is the snippet of up to about 155 characters that summarizes a page’s content. The purpose of the meta description is to generate click-throughs from search engines. When constructing your meta description, be sure to match the content on the page, include a call to action and include the focus keyphrase (above).
Mobile optimization
Mobile optimization is the process of ensuring that visitors who access your site from mobile devices have an experience optimized for the device. In the 4th quarter for 2019, for the first time, mobile devices generated over half of the global website traffic, which had been consistently hovering at about 50%. This number is only going to rise as mobile devices continue to gain popularity and accessibility, which makes it so important to ensure that every aspect of the page translates over to mobile.
Also, Google is now conducting mobile-first indexing which means they predominantly use the mobile version of the content for indexing and ranking. Indexing used to be done via the desktop version of a page’s content, but since the majority of users now access Google Search with a mobile device, Google is indexing the mobile version first.
TEST, TEST, TEST! Always test your web pages before taking them live to make sure they look and function the way they are supposed to on a mobile device.
If you are building a new website or just looking to improve the SEO optimization of your current site, the team at Luminary Digital can help with all your website SEO needs. Contact us today for a free consult!
About the Author
Keri Stafford is Director of Marketing & Operations at Luminary Digital. She can find a reason to use a spreadsheet for just about anything and is so obsessed with content marketing that she won’t stop talking about it. Tweet to Keri: @keristafford.
