Visible On-Page Factors
The visible on-page factors covered here are the following:
- Page Title
- Page Headings
- Page Copy
- Outbound Links
- Keywords in URLs and Domain Name
- Internal Link Structure and Anchors
- Overall Site Topicality
Page Title
The page title is a string of text, defined by contents of the <title> element in the <head> section of the HTML document. The title is visible both in the title bar of a browser window, as well as the headline of a search engine result. It is arguably one of the most important factors in search engine optimization because it is both an important factor in search engine rankings, as well as a critical call to action that can enhance the click-through rate (CTR). Vanessa Fox of Google states, “Make sure each page has a descriptive <title> tag and headings. The title of a page isn’t all that useful if every page has the same one.”
One of the biggest mistakes web developers make is to set the title for all pages on a web site to the same generic text. Frequently, this text is the company name and/or a slogan. In this case, at best your pages will be indexed poorly. At worst, the site could receive a penalty if the search engines see the pages as duplicate content. Be sure all pages on a dynamic site have unique and relevant titles.
When writing titles, it is also wise to insert some targeted keywords. You should not lose sight, however, that a title is also a call to action. Even if a title successfully influences a search engine to rank a page highly, that ranking effectiveness is then multiplied by your CTR. Keyword stuffed titles are not always effective for CTR, though they may rank well. As a reminder, these keywords should also appear in the document’s copy.
People will also frequently use a page title for the anchor text of an inbound link. Anchor text is an important off-page factor, and its beneficial effect is discussed later.
Page Headings
Page headings are sections of text set off from web page copy to indicate overall context and meaning. They are usually larger in size than the other copy within the document. They are typically created using
Page Copy
It is intuitively clear that a page that contains the keywords that a user is looking for should be relevant to his or her search query. Search engine algorithms take this into account as well. Keyword insertion, however, should not be done in the excess. Mentioning the keywords in various inflections (plural, singular, past, present, and so on) is likely beneficial, as well as varying word order (“SEO University” versus “University of SEO”). Excessive and contrived keyword repetition — “keyword stuffing” — however, could actually be perceived as spam.
Because the search engine algorithms are unknown, “excessive” is an unfortunately vague qualifier. This is one of the times we will reference something requisitely in an imprecise manner.
SEO copywriting aims to produce content on a web site in such a way that it reads well for the surfer, but also targets specific search terms in search engines. It is a process that legitimately, without the use of spamming techniques, seeks to achieve high rankings in the search engines. SEO copywriting is an art, and it takes time to master. There is no magic solution that will make it easy to create copy that is persuasive, contains relevant keywords a few times, and sounds like it is not contrived specifically to do so. There are a few tricks, and a few useful hints, however.
One of our favorite tricks is to use the end and beginning of a sentence to repeat a keyword subtly. Example: “Biography Database provides the latest biographies and autobiographies, as well as articles and features about biography and autobiography.” (Biography Database)
The copy should also contain words that are related, but not necessarily inflections of your targeted key phrase. For example, a search engine algorithm would likely see a page on biography that also contains the words “bio” or “biographies” as relevant. This tends to happen naturally with well-written prose, but it is worth mentioning.
Outbound Links
Search engines will evaluate the links that a document contains. A related link on a web page is valuable content in and of itself, and is treated as such by search engines. However, links to totally irrelevant or spam content can potentially hurt the rankings of a page. Linking to a “bad neighborhood” of spam sites or even lots of irrelevant sites can hurt a site’s rankings.
Keywords in URLs and Domain Name
It is likely that keywords contained by a URL, both in the domain name or in the file name, do have a minor but apparently positive effect on ranking. It also likely has an effect on CTR because keywords in the URL may make a user more likely to click a link due to an increase in perceived relevance. The URL, like the page title, is also often selected as the anchor text for a link. This may have the same previously mentioned beneficial effect.
Internal Link Structure and Anchors
Search engines may make the assumption that pages not linked to, or buried within a web site’s internal link structure, are less important, just as they assume that pages that are not linked well from external sources are less important than those that are. Linking from the home page to content that you would like to rank can improve that page’s rankings, as well as linking to it from a sitemap and from various related content within the site. This models real-world human behavior as well. Popular products are often prominently featured in the front of a store.
One horrible way to push pages down the link hierarchy is to implement pagination using “< prev” and “next >” links, without linking directly to the individual pages. Consider the example of the fourth page of an article that is split into four parts. It is reached like this:
Home Page » Article Part 1 » Article Part 2 » Article Part 3 » Article Part 4
This fourth page is harder to reach not only by humans (who need to click at least four times), but also by search engines, which would probably consider the content in that page as less important. We call the effect of this link structure “death by pagination,” and we suggest two possible approaches for mitigating the problem:
1) Don’t use simple pagination. Page with “< prev” and “next >” links, but also add links to the individual pages, that is, “< prev 1 2 3 4 next >.” This creates a better navigation scheme to all pages.
2) Add a sitemap with links to all the pages.
Overall Site Topicality
The fact that a web page is semantically related to other pages within a web site may boost the rankings of that particular page. This means other related pages linked within a site may be used to boost the rankings of the web site as a whole. This tends to happen naturally when writing quality content for a web site regardless.