Chapter 3: Perfecting Keyword Targeting and On-Page Optimization
Editor's Note: Although SEO has changed a lot since this post was originally published August 17, 2009 on The Moz Blog, it's still important to cover the basics of on-page optimization. Critical, in fact, which is why we have updated this post for 2013.
“How do I build the perfectly optimized page?” If you're in SEO, you probably hear this question a lot. Sadly, there's no cut and dried answer, but there are sets of best practices we can draw from and sharpen to help get close. In this chapter, I share our top recommendations for achieving on-page, keyword-targeting “perfection”—or, at least, close to it. Some of these recommendations are backed by data points, correlation studies and extensive testing, while others are simply gut feelings based on experience. As with all things SEO, we recommend constant testing and refinement, though this knowledge can help you kick-start the process.
Best Practices for Optimizing Pages
The following sections list our best practices for optimizing the following on-page SEO elements: head tags, URLs, body tags, internal links, and page architecture.
HTML Head Tags
Here are our suggestions for using HTML head tags to help optimize your pages.
• Title—The most important of on-page keyword elements, the page title should employ the keyword term/phrase as the first word(s). In our correlation data studies, the following graph emerged:
Graph originally published August 2009
Clearly, using the keyword term/phrase as the very first word(s) in the page title has the highest correlation with high rankings, and subsequent positions correlate nearly flawlessly to lower rankings. Title tags should sound like a human being wrote them without the express intent to rank for phrase after phrase, and they should be clickable since they show up in the SERPs.
• Meta Description—Although not used for rankings by any of the major engines, the meta description is an important place to use the target term/phrase due to the bolding that occurs in the visual snippet of the search results. It's also important for boosting click-through rate, thus increasing the traffic derived from any ranking position. What's the point of showing up in the top of the SERPs if no one clicks on your listing, after all?
• Meta Keywords—For quite a while, Yahoo! was unique among the search engines in recording and utilizing the meta keyword tag for discovery, though not technically for rankings. However, Microsoft's Bing now powers Yahoo! search results, and when Bing recognizes a meta keyword tag, it can trigger a spam flag. That, combined with the danger of others using keywords there for competitive research means that at Moz, we never recommend employing the traditional meta keywords tag. (The news_keywords tag, however, should be used by Google News publishers.)
• Meta Robots—This optional tag should not contain any directives that could inadvertently disallow access to search engines.
• Rel=“Canonical”—The larger and more complex a site (and the larger/more complex the organization working on it), the more we advise employing the canonical URL tag to prevent any potential duplicates or unintentional, appended URL strings from creating a problem for the engines and splitting up potential link juice. See http://mz.cm/15oH3Hb for more details.
• Rich Snippets and Structured Data Markup—Embedding rich snippets into your pages and taking advantage of structured data markup can tell the search engines what they are about, as well as make them stand out in the SERPs. Examples of data that may benefit from structured data markup include author profiles, product ratings, and business reviews. Schema.org, a joint alliance of the major search engines, provides an exhaustive list of data that may benefit from structured markup.
• Other Meta Tags—Meta tags like those offered by the DCMI (http://dublincore.org) or FGDC (www.fgdc.gov/metadata) seem compelling, but currently provide no benefit for SEO with the major search engines and thus add unnecessary complexity and download time.
URLs
Keep the following recommendations in mind for optimizing your use of URLs.
• Length—Shorter URLs appear to perform better in the search results and are more likely to be copied/pasted by other sites, shared and linked to.
• Keyword Location—The closer the targeted keyword(s) are to the domain name, the better. Thus, site.com/keyword outperforms site.com/folder/subfolder/keyword and is the recommended method of optimization (though this is certainly not a massive rankings benefit). An exception to this recommended structure is product pages on ecommerce sites. In most cases, site.com/keyword-product-name is best.
• Subdomains versus Pages—Despite the slight URL benefit that subdomains keyword usage has over subfolders or pages, the engines' link popularity assignment algorithms tilt the balance in favor of subfolders/pages rather than subdomains. The exceptions are certain franchise situations and content that is exceptionally different than the rest of the site. See http://www.moz.com/blog/subdomains-subfolders-and-toplevel-domains for more info.
• Word Separators—Hyphens are still the king of keyword separators in URLs, and despite promises that underscores will be given equal credit, the inconsistency with other methods make the hyphen a clear choice. NOTE: This should not apply to root domain names, where separating words with hyphens is almost never recommended (for example, pinkgrapefruit.com is a far better choice than pink-grapefruit.com).
Body Tags
How should you use body tags to optimize your page? Here are our best strategies.
• Number of Keyword Repetitions—It's impossible to pinpoint the exact, optimal number of times to employ a keyword term/phrase on the page, but a general guideline is to use the exact match keyword a few times in the body of the copy. The same goes for partial match keywords. The most important thing, folks, is to write for the reader. If you do that, keyword repetition will come naturally. Panda has taught us that it is unwise to ever be aggressive with this metric.
• Keyword Density—While it's true that more usage of a keyword term/phrase can potentially improve targeting/ranking, it's also true that over-usage of a keyword/phrase can potentially incur an over-optimization penalty. So what's an SEO to do? Write good, relevant content about a subject that includes your keyword/phrase—content that will actually help someone and help your conversion rates. We've all seen those spammy blocks of text that look like they were written with the sole intent to get keyword rankings. Don't go there.
• Keyword Usage Variations—It's long been suspected that keyword usage variation can influence search engine rankings, though this has never been studied in a depth of detail that's convincing to me. The theory that varied keyword usage throughout a page can help with content optimization and optimization nevertheless is worth consideration. We recommend employing at least one or two variations of a term and potentially splitting up keyword phrases, and using them in body copy as well or instead. Don't be spammy, though. Write for people, not rankings. I keep saying this because it matters.
• H1 Headline—The H1 tag has long been thought to have great importance in on-page optimization. Recent correlation data from our studies, however, has shown that it has a very low correlation with high rankings (close to zero, in fact). While this is compelling evidence, correlation is not causation and for semantic and SEO reasons, we still advise proper use of the H1 tag as the headline of the page and, preferably, employment of the targeted keyword term/phrase.
• H2/H3/H4/Hx—Subheading tags appear to carry little to no SEO value in terms of keyword rankings, but are useful for telling search bots how pages are structured. With increased usage of responsive design and HTML5, this has become more important. Screen readers also rely on header tags and other HTML markup attributes to help visually impaired users navigate the Internet.
• Alt Attribute—Surprisingly, the alt attribute, long thought to carry little SEO weight, was shown to have quite a robust correlation with high rankings in our studies as long as you don't overdo it. Thus, we strongly advise the use of a graphic image/photo/illustration on important keyword-targeted pages with the term/phrase employed in the alt attribute of the img tag where it makes sense. Surrounding the image with relative, descriptive keywords can also improve rankings in image search
• Image Filename—Because image traffic can be a substantive source of visits, and image filenames appear to be valuable for this as well as natural web search, we suggest using the keyword term/phrase as the name of the image file employed on the page.
• Internal Link Anchor Text—Anchor text signals search engines what a page is about, which is useful for rankings, but if we use the same exact keyword match text over and over to link to the same page it makes our sites look really manipulative. A significant portion of the Penguin update deals with over-optimized anchor text. Don't get penalized, folks. Instead, go with logical, useful anchor text, and change it up when you're linking to your pages.
• HTML Comments—Apply the nofollow attribute to comments.
Internal Links and Location in Site Architecture
Here are a few recommendations for handling internal links to optimize your page.
• Click-Depth—Our general recommendation is that the more competitive and challenging a keyword term/phrase is to rank for, the higher it should be in a site's internal architecture (and thus, the fewer clicks from the home page it should take to reach that URL).
• Number/Percentage of Internal Links—More linked-to pages tend to result in higher rankings and thus, for competitive terms, it may help to link to these pages from a greater number/percentage of pages on a site. Linking repeatedly to the same page with the same anchor text, though, is not helpful for SEO, and makes your sites look really spammy. So vary your anchor text, folks.
• Links in Content versus Permanent Navigation—It appears that Google and other search engines recognize location on the page as an element of link consideration. Thus, placing links to pages in the body content Wikipedia-style, rather than in permanent navigation, may potentially provide some benefit (if you do this in a way that is naturally useful to the reader). Don't forget, however, that Google only counts the first anchor text link to a page that they see in the HTML. Read http://mz.cm/15oHaCB for details.
• Link Location in Sidebars and Footers—Patent applications, search papers, and experience from inside Moz and many practitioners externally suggests that Google may be strongly discounting links placed in the footer, and, to a lesser degree, in the sidebar(s) of pages. Thus, if you're employing a link in permanent navigation, it may pay to use the top navigation (above the content) for SEO purposes. Use the footer and sidebar to link to things that people expect to find there, not to get exact-match, site-wide anchor text.
Page Architecture
Which page architecture factors are likely to influence rankings?
• Keyword Location—We advise that important keywords should be featured in the first paragraph of a page's text content. The engines do appear to have some preference for pages that employ keywords sooner, rather than later, in the text.
• Content Structure—Some practitioners swear by the use of particular content formats (introduction, body, examples, conclusion OR the journalistic style of narrative, data, conclusion, parable) for SEO, but we haven't seen any formal data suggesting these are valuable for higher rankings and thus feel that whatever works best for the content and the visitors is likely ideal.
Why Don't We Always Obey These Rules?
The answer to this question is relatively easy. The truth is that in the process of producing great web content, we sometimes forget, sometimes ignore, and sometimes intentionally disobey the best practices laid out earlier. On-page optimization, while certainly important, is only one piece of a larger rankings puzzle, as illustrated in the following chart.
Graph originally published Aug. 2009
It most certainly pays to get the on-page, keyword-targeting pieces right, but on-page SEO, in my opinion, follows the 80/20 rule very closely. If you get the top 20 percent of the most important pieces (titles, URLs, internal links) from the list above right, you'll get 80 percent (maybe more) of the value possible in the on-page equation.
Best Practices for Ranking #1
Curiously, though perhaps not entirely surprisingly to experienced SEOs, the truth is that on-page optimization doesn't necessarily rank first in the quest for top rankings. In fact, a list that walks through the process of actually getting that first position would look something more like:
• Accessibility—What content engines can't see or access cannot even be indexed; thus crawl-ability is foremost on this list.
• Page Load Time—This is part of Google's ranking algorithm, so write clean code that loads fast and isn't loaded down with lots of slow-loading images and scripts. More importantly, perhaps, users expect pages to load fast. If they have to wait more than a couple of seconds for your page to load, you've already lost them.
• Content—You need to have compelling, high-quality material that not only attracts interest, but compels visitors to share the information. Virality of content is possibly the most important/valuable factor in the ranking equation because it will produce the highest link conversion rate (the ratio of those who visit to those who link after viewing).
• Social Sharing—Social signals are important to ranking well in all of the major search engines. So create great content that people want to share, and make it easy to share. Social sharing will also naturally build great inbound links for you.
• Basic On-Page Elements—Getting the keyword targeting right in the most important elements (titles, URLs, internal links) provides a big boost in the potential ability of a page to perform well.
• User Experience—The usability, user interface, and overall experience provided by a website strongly influences the links and citations it earns as well as the conversion rate and browse rate of the traffic that visits. Make it easy for users to find what they want when they visit your site, and tell them what you want to do by using clear calls-to-action.
• Marketing—I like to say that “great content is no substitute for great marketing.” A terrific marketing machine or powerful campaign has the power to attract far more links than content may “deserve,” and though this might seem unfair, it's a principle on which all of capitalism has functioned for the last few hundred years. Spreading the word is often just as important (or more so) than being right, being honest, or being valuable (just look at the political spectrum).
• Advanced/Thorough On-Page Optimization—Applying all of the practices listed in the chapter with careful attention to detail certainly isn't useless, but it is, for better or worse, at the bottom of this list for a reason; in our experience, it doesn't add as much value as the other techniques described.