Best practice with Meta descriptions

1. Create a unique meta description for every page where practical or have meta description automatically generated to include the product keyword name plus a summary of the value proposition of the site.

2. Create a powerful meta description that combines a call-to-action and encourages click-through on SERPs.

3. Try to keep within 15-20 words (160 characters) which is what is visible within the SERPS of Google.

4. Limit to 2-4 keyphrases per page.

5. Do not use too many keywords or use too many irrelevant filler words within this meta tag since this will reduce keyword density.

6. Avoid undue repetition – 2 to 3 times maximum, otherwise may be assessed as spamming.

7. Incorporate phrase variants and synonyms within copy.

8. Vary words on all pages within site.

9. Make different from <title> tag since this may be a sign of keyword stuffing.

Content

Best practice for page content is:

• Have 200-400 words with a keyword density of 5-10%.

• Include a range of synonyms and Latent Semantic Indexing (LSI) as well as identical keyphrases and Vary use of keywords in target keyphrases- i.e.  They don’t have to be in a consecutive phrase.

• Good practice is to include the phrase towards the top of the document and then regularly through the document and again towards end of the document with possible hyperlinks of where to go for more information.

The robots.txt file is used to exclude pages from being indexed and to reduce bandwidth of crawlers. Example pages to exclude are outdated pages, shopping cart and broken links.

Amendments Audit Trail & Monitoring

It is useful to have an audit trail and approval process of on-page amendments alongside monitoring to make sure the desired effect has taken place in ranking the site.

The bst method I have found is to set up a spreadsheet with a different sheet for each page to be amended as follows:

1)    Create a list of pages that need amending and agree which web pages it is worth spending time on- i.e. they are not discontinued product pages.

2)    Create a separate excel page for each website page that needs to be amended showing current content and new content to be uploaded as per below.

3)    Get sign off for amendments to be done and note date page amended.

4)    Add amended page to keywords watch list so that effects can be tracked

On-Page optimization consists of following SEO guidelines for the these key elements:

1) Optimizing page titles, meta description tags, met keyword tags and page content.
2) Internal linking to pass on link juice to new or poorly ranked web pages.
3) Optimizing site structure for SEO.

Before beginning optimization it is good to agree on SEO objectives and  how they can be achieved and measured. An example of each is in the table below:

301 and 302 redirects are used in website optimization to make search engine friendly redirects.

Permanent 301 redirect is as the name suggests a permanent redirect of a URL to a new one.

The 301 redirect simply tells the search engines that the page should be removed from their index and replace with the new address.

So 301 redirects are a way to inform the search engines and human visitors of the new permanent address for a page.

Permanent 301 redirect examples

Deleted Page

If you deleted a page (e.g. because you have stopped selling a particular products page) then you can do a 301 redirect to stop browsers throwing up a 404 error. Similarly if you move a page to another location you could use a 301 redirect to the new page location so that page rank is maintained and past visitors (who may have bookmarked the page) can find it.

New Domain

One might use a 301 redirect if you are doing a page by page migration from an old website to a new one and you want to maintain SEO ranking. The importance 301 is that it passes page rank to the new site so that you do not lose SEO benefit.

WWW or no WWW

If you have links pointing to both www domain and non WWW domain then using a 301 redirect can help stop rank split and prop up affected pages.

Duplicate Pages

A problem can occur when several defences refer to the same page creating duplicate content. For instance the home page can have www.site.com and www.site.com/index.html references.

This is one of the most common uses of a 301 redirect. Old Domains Making pretty links from ugly urls Many CMS produce urls with an ugly long string of numbers and letters that is not human or search engine friendly such as www.yoursite.com/prodref4656$%$66. Using a 301 redirect you can create pretty links that are memorable and better for search engine ranking such as www.yoursite/widgets

Temporary 302 Redirect

On the other hand 302 redirects are temporary redirects.

In 302 you are telling the search engines the page the URL refers to has temporarily changed to another location.

Temporary 302 redirect Examples

Special offers page

You could create a landing for special offer and send a 302 redirect from the offer products page to the special offers page so that visitors who land on the product page take advantage of the special offer. Once the special offer is over you can remove the 302.

Soup of The Day menu Page

You would use a 302 redirect if you want to temporarily redirect a page.

For example if you are an online restaurant you might use 302 to redirect “/todays-soup.html” to current day’s soup page depending on the day of the week e.g.
•    /mondays-soup.html
•    /tuesdays-soup.html
•    /wednesdays-soup.html
•    /thursdays-soup.html
•    /fridays-soup.html
•    /saturdays-soup.html
•    /sundays-soup.html

Impact on SEO is that you do not get any particular days soup be associated with the search for the restaurant’s menu listing.