The following points are regarded as sound basic SEO best practices. You will find most SEO companies and practitioners (including Google themselves) will recommend the following list of practices. When we undertake SEO maintenance on your website, we work from this list.
Technical SEO
Detect and correct broken links
Broken links on your website are undesirable. We will identify both internal and external links that no longer connect to a valid resource. We will look at how these can be removed, or better yet, pointed at a more relevant resource.
Meta title and descriptions
Every page of your site have both a <meta title> and <meta desc> tag. Together these two tags can help inform what’s shown in the SERP for that page. Sometimes the title and description are taken verbatim and displayed as is, sometimes Google may choose to manipulate them, or show something entirely different!
A long time the meta title and desc tags could make a direct and major difference on search results. This no longer applies. These days the content of the title and desc tags don’t directly relate to SEO ranking but they can impact CTR – Click Through Rate. CTR is the ratio of how many times your site appears in the SERP to how often a user clicks through to your website. A high CTR is a signal to Google that users like what they see in the SERP.
Detect and correct duplicate content
Content duplication of any form is generally less than ideal. Each page and your website should have a unique use case for the end user. Google will usually ignore duplicate content, or
Detect and correct duplicate meta data
The same applies to your meta tags we talked about earlier. Every page on your website should have unique meta data that describes the specific purpose of that page.
Use of header tags
Tags such as <h1> <h2> <h3> and so forth a a hierarchical way of describing the importance of the data on your webpage. They assist the reader and Google in understanding your webpage. There is typically only one <h1> per page, and this forms the page title, it should sum up the overall intent of the page; while <h2> might appear numerous times for each sub section of the page.
Internal linking
Your web pages should sensibly link to one another. For example: a page that talks about a product should in turn point to a pricing page for that product. Sensibly interlinking the pages on your website helps your website visitors find the information you need. We will look for opportunities to better employ internal links on your website.
External linking
Similarly, you might want to consider linking to other websites that your visitor might find useful – in the context of the page they’re currently reading. For example a car dealership might link to the manufacturer and product page of the tyre used on a vehicle.
XML sitemap
Your website should include a sitemap that Google can read. A sitemap is exactly what it sounds like, a simple list of directions to the content on your website. XML is a simple language that describes how that map should be written. An XML site map is Google’s preferred way of being told what content your website has, and where it can be found.
Google search console
Page crawlability
If Google can’t crawl your site, it can’t index your site!
Image size/usage
Use of SSL
Use of canonicals
UI / UX
Menu and navigation
The main menu on your website should be concise and link to the main areas of the website. This not only helps your users find the most important information quickly, but it also signposts to Google what you consider the most important areas of your site.
Site speed
The speed and performance of your site is critical. If Google sees that your website is slow and visitors act negatively as a result, your site’s SEO standings might suffer. We will take a look at the speed of your site and what can be done to improve performance.
Mobile site
Is your website mobile friendly?
Expertise, authority, trust
Also known as E-A-T, this is an essential item in modern SEO. when analyzing your site’s E-A-T we look at:
- Address, phone number, social media linked
- Does the business showcase its expertise, authority, trust
- Are reviews mentioned and linked
- Are awards and prizes mentioned and linked
- Suppliers/vendors
- Awards
- Industry associations
- Press releases
- Communities
Low quality content review
When Google reviews your website it creates a contextual picture of what you, your website and your business are about. With this in mind, it’s important to only provide high quality webpages. If you produce hundreds of pages, with limited relevance Google’s overall impression of your site can suffer. The same applies to your website readers. Why would you make them suffer through page after page of limited use content. We will look for ways to improve, or content to remove.
Google asks a website owner to consider these points about the content on their site:
- Does the content provide original information, reporting, research, or analysis?
- Does the content provide a substantial, complete, or comprehensive description of the topic?
- Does the content provide insightful analysis or interesting information that is beyond the obvious?
- If the content draws on other sources, does it avoid simply copying or rewriting those sources, and instead provide substantial additional value and originality?
- Does the main heading or page title provide a descriptive, helpful summary of the content?
- Does the main heading or page title avoid exaggerating or being shocking in nature?
- Is this the sort of page you’d want to bookmark, share with a friend, or recommend?
- Would you expect to see this content in or referenced by a printed magazine, encyclopedia, or book?
- Does the content provide substantial value when compared to other pages in search results?
SEO spam
Google take spam in the context of search very seriously. They talk about the various ways to deceive users and Googlebot here. We will make sire your site isn’t befalling items such as:
- Keyword stuffing
- Doorway pages
- Cloaking
- Hacked pages
- Hidden text and links
- Link spam
- Malware
- Misleading functionality
Glossary
CTR – Click Through Rate. This is the rate at which a link is displayed to an end user, and the frequency they ‘click through’ to the webpage. The higher CTR rate the better.
SERP – Search Engine Result Page. when you search for a keyword or phrase in Google, the SERP is what’s returned to you in the browser. The general goal of SEO is for your site to appear higher and higher in the SERPs.
Tag – A piece of HTML code used to describe information on the webpage.