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Step 1: Review Webpage
Title Tags
One of the most important
webpage elements for SEO purposes is your Title tag. In case you’re not
familiar with HTML, the webpage Title tag is everything in between the HTML
code <title> and </title>.
This can be a bit confusing
because your Title tag does not actually display on the webpage!
That’s right, you can’t see the
Title tag by looking at your website. Most web browsers will display the Title
tag as the name of the browser tab, or window. Plus, you can view the source
code to find your Title tags (on a PC right click, and then select “View page
source”).
What should you review?
Since we’re limiting ourselves
to a couple of minutes, just make sure the keyword phrase you want to rank for
in Google is mentioned in the Title tag. If your keyword is not in the Title
tag, then adding your keyword is one of the lowest hanging fruit opportunities
to improve your rankings.
The first page to check is your
homepage and then continue to review the other main product or service pages on
your website.
Step 2: Review Meta
Descriptions
The next webpage element is the
Meta Description. Again, this is not visible when you look at the webpage!
You have to view the source
code to review your meta descriptions. When you view the source, search for,
<meta name=”description“, and you’ll find the Meta Description for any given
page.
What should you review?
First, make sure you have a
Meta Description and second, make sure it’s compelling. It’s possible you don’t
have a Meta Description, and when that’s the case Google will make one up for
you. Google uses your Meta Description in the search results as the description
for your webpage.
The more compelling your Meta
Description, the more clicks you’ll get when you do show up in Google. And
those clicks to your website are a key factor in your rankings.
Step 3: Review H1 Tags
We’re finally to an element
that actually shows up on the webpage.
The H1, or main header, of your
webpage is similar to your Title tag in that it tells Google what your webpage
is about. If your H1 includes a target keyword phrase, then Google knows your
webpage is relevant for that keyword and should be considered in the search
results.
So what do you think you should
review?
That’s right, make sure a
variation of your target keyword is in the H1 of your webpage. To find the H1,
view the page source and search for <h1>. Everything in between
<h1> and </h1> is your main header.
Step 4: Review Webpage
Copy
Next, you need to take a minute
to review your webpage copy. There’s nothing technical here and no need to view
the source code. Simply read the copy on your page.
What should you review?
First, the length of the copy.
Generally speaking, you want to shoot for at least 500 words of text on a page
that you want to rank in Google (and we recommend shooting for 1,000+ words
since Google tends to give preference to more in-depth content).
Second is quality. Google’s
mission is to show the best information in their search results and that means
weeding out low-quality webpages. If you don’t think it’s great content, then
chances are Google doesn’t either and that will hurt your rankings.
Remember, that ranking in
Google is all relative. You need to have better content than all the other
webpages trying to rank for your target keywords.
Step 5: Check Domain
Canonicalization
This sounds extremely
technical, but it’s actually quite simple. (And don’t worry if you can’t
pronounce “canonicalization” :)
Go to “mainstreetroi.com” and
see where you end up. You’ll automatically go to www.mainstreetroi.com. That means there
is no way to access any webpage on our site without including “www”.
The reason that’s important is
that technically speaking, mainstreetroi.com and www.mainstreetroi.com are different
websites!
If you allow access to both
versions then that can negatively impact your SEO because you’ll be spreading
out your SEO effort across two websites. To avoid this problem you need to make
sure you specify your canonical URL with or without the “www”.
How do you check this?
Simply try to access your
website with and then without the www. If one automatically forwards you to the
other, then you’re all set. If you can access both, then you have a problem
that needs to be fixed by an experienced web developer.
Step 6: Check for Broken
Links
The remaining steps require the
use of some tools to do the dirty work for us.
In this step, we’re going to
check for broken links on your website, which provide a bad user experience.
Google hates broken links because that can be frustrating for their users when
they are trying to navigate your website. So if you have broken links, you’re
hurting your rankings.
To check for broken links I
recommend the tool, Screaming Frog. It’ll
take some time to download the tool and get familiar, but once that’s done then
using this tool will only take a couple of minutes and you’ll see right away if
broken links are an issue on your website.
Step 7: Check for
Duplicate Content
Next, we need to check for
duplicate content.
If your webpage is a duplicate
of another webpage either on your website or on another website, then that’s
going to make it nearly impossible for you to get ranked in Google.
Why? Because Google will only
rank one version of the duplicate content. There’s no reason for Google to rank
a duplicate page because that provides no additional value to their users.
Again, we need to use a tool
here. If you want a free resource, then use Siteliner.com. For more
accuracy, use Copyscape.com ($5
minimum).
Step 8: Check Website
Load Speed
The final step is to check your
website load speed.
In other words, how fast (or
slow) does your website load? Google uses page load speed as a factor in their
ranking algorithm because let’s face it, no one wants to sit around a wait for
a webpage to load up. That means the faster your load speeds, the better.
Google provides a free and easy
tool to analyze your page speed and even get information about how to improve
your speeds. It’s called PageSpeed Insights and
all you have to do is copy and paste your webpage URL into the tool and click
Analyze. Or better yet, ask your developer to use this tool and go through the
recommended steps to improve your site speed.
That’s it! By going through the
8 steps above and fixing any problems, you’ll quickly get your website ranking
higher in Google.
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