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 .
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,
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
.
Everything in between
and
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).
The second factor (and even more important) 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
efforts 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.
Plus, it’s also a good idea to have your
webpages load with HTTPS:// by default as well. Google considers
whether sites load with HTTPS as one of hundreds of factors when determining
rankings.
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. Another site speed tool we use and recommend
is GTMetrix.
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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