July 2019

Website Optimization, Quality Content & Credibility

What is on-page optimization and how will it help my business?

On-page optimization (which falls under the broader category of website optimization), communicates the most important keywords your content reflects to search engines. It falls under the umbrella of SEO services for a consultant to optimize the content of your site and emphasize the most important elements through metadata. By highlighting keywords and giving search engines specific instructions we can influence how search engines see your website in order to make it appear more frequently in keyword-related searches.

Do meta tags still affect website optimization?

Meta tags are used to highlight the most important information on a web page. The most commonly used meta tags are the title and description tags because they are what people will see in a search engine result page. There are other uses for meta tags that search engines read as well such as site verification or instructions for how to crawl the site (robots.txt). When we optimize your site your meta tags are one of the first areas we assess to see how you’re website is currently optimized and how we can enhance its performance. 

Is structured data important for my website?

The fastest form method of communication (the preferred method) is through structured data markup. Google recommends JSON-LD in which we are able to summarize the contents of your site and provide an identity using schema. This markup categorizes your site and informs search engines of all of the details that will help your website appear in searches that can be linked and associated with your business.

Is it necessary to have my company categorized with Schema markup?

Schema is a system for categorizing websites into groups in order to more readily be linked to related searches. Schema markup will indicate to a search engine what type of entity your website represents (store, organization, non-profit, etc). The schema you implement will associate your site to services and products you provide which will trigger the appearance of your site in related searches.

What impact does contextual meaning have on my site’s optimization?

Search engines have become extremely efficient at assessing written content and determining the contextual meaning of a page. We help our clients by making sure your content is written for the right audience so that your website is found by customers who are looking for what you offer.

There is a difference between content that is written to convert and convince a reader about your company versus content that is meant to inform a reader about a topic. In the preliminary stages of optimizing your website, we establish a content strategy that defines the purpose the pages of your site have within your overall SEO campaign.

How is the content of my website optimized?

Although the exact algorithm that the search engines use is unknown, there is a long list of ranking factors that are well known to enhance website optimization and improve ranking. The largest factor that determines what your site is about and how it is optimized is your content. We optimize your website through content published on on-site and by building authority and credibility to that content from off-site sources.

Search engines assess how well your site is optimized by determining the contextual meaning of the content you’ve published. Historically, there were specific ratios to follow for how many times to repeat keywords in order to enhance the optimization of your page but that method of optimizing no longer exists. 

On-page optimization still includes placing keywords in the expected places such as in titles, URL’s and within the body of text, however, content is considered optimized by providing complete solutions to the search intent behind a keyword search.

We publish complete solutions on your company website

Website optimization requires a full commitment to developing an idea in order to see the performance in your website’s ranking. As a result, the quality of content being published has dramatically increased and we are witnessing many more in-depth articles that create a stand-alone experience and are educating readers about a topic.

Keeping up with the trend of producing high-quality content has meant additional planning and research before publishing posts or pages on-site. Today quality is outranking quantity. It is for this very reason why we are forced to research keywords for a broader understanding of what users are looking for when they type in a keyword. Without knowing all of the potential issues and related searches that are attached to a keyword we can’t produce quality content to effectively cover the potential demands a user might have.

We improve the quality of content on your website

There is an expected set of subtopics that a given keyword presents. When a website is able to provide the expected set of subtopics it demonstrates a comprehensive solution to that search. Google looks for the best answers to searches that would leave a user completely satisfied with no need to click any further. This is why overall quality is getting better and the average level of detail provided by highly-ranked websites continues to increase. 

By covering more topics and providing more solutions within the content produced on a page a website is able to meet a wider range of needs a user may have within their search. Search engines reward website’s with the ability to satisfy search intent as this is a large part of its criteria in determining the ranking of your site.

What is off-page optimization?

Due to the billions of websites that exist, it’s necessary that search engines determine the credibility of your site. Anyone can write a lot of words and publish them online, but who’s to say whether your content is meaningful or just straight jibberish? You may have published amazing content but if your site is brand new it will still have to accrue engagement metrics to prove its credibility. If your site doesn’t rank, you won’t receive the traffic necessary to get these results. In order to rank, we optimize your site with quality backlinks that count as “votes of confidence” from other credible websites.

How does off-page optimization help my business?

If another site is linking to yours they are pointing to your content to enhance the user experience of their own visitors. This is the underlying reason Google regards the backlink profile of your website as a major contributing factor to possessing authority and credibility in your respective niche. Backlinks represent a vote of confidence in your content. When the backlink is from a site in your niche and from a page with content relevant to your page, it enhances the optimization of your keyword topic.

Establishing the link building strategies for your website requires careful planning and research. Search engines will read, assess and categorize the sites that are linking to yours so it’s necessary to plan the content that will be published on a network of websites that will benefit yours the most. 

A quality backlink is a link from another site in your niche that links to you from content that has a direct relationship to yours. When there is no relationship between two websites that are linked there is no benefit to either website. The most authoritative site on health foods will not be a great match for a high-end car dealership. In some cases linking two unrelated sites will have a negative impact on the authority and ranking of both sites.

Quality content that provides complete solutions to searches is ranking in the top positions. If your site isn’t publishing good content it will take much more effort in obtaining links to get your site on the first page of Google-and even then, it may not stay near the top of the results if users react negatively to the content.

Complete optimization of your website requires proving credibility and producing comprehensive, engaging material that users are looking for at the end of a keyword search.

Gain Valuable Insight From An SEO Site Audit

An SEO site audit is a standard procedure used to assess a website for performance issues, search engine optimization and conversion elements. An audit typically takes place before the start of a marketing campaign to identify any technical deficiencies on your site as well as point to where the most work needs to be done. The goal of a site audit is to identify the issues that will assist in the optimization of your website to perform more competitively in the search results.

How does an SEO site audit help my business?

Website audits will address optimization and technical issues that are all interrelated with performance and user experience. Listed on this page are some of the most common issues identified and corrected in order to enhance the performance and optimization of your website.

Implement the proper use of meta tags

Meta tags signal to search engines what the most important items are on your page which will also indicate what the major keywords are on your site. The absence of meta tags can lead to an inaccurate assessment of the content on your site and potentially less potent ranking for the keywords in which your site is optimized. 

The misuse of meta tags can take the form of keyword stuffing, excessively long titles, or inaccurate descriptions of the content on the page. Correcting these types of errors will enhance optimization and reverse penalties (if a site penalty was triggered).

Use up to date XML sitemaps

Your sitemap is the equivalent of your website’s blueprints. It shows exactly what pages are on your site as well as how your site is structured. The most important pages will appear obvious to search engines because of their proximity to the homepage as well as the number of links from internal and external pages. Submitting a sitemap to Google is a form of ensuring that the structure of your site is up to date in the index and will assist with the pages of your site being indexed. Your sitemap should be posted to your robots.txt file in order to make sure search engines are being notified of any changes to the pages of your website.

Fix broken links

A website audit will report the number of broken links and list the pages that are missing from your site as well as any links that are pointing to pages that don’t exist off-site. Broken links on a website are considered to contribute to poor user experience because they lead the user to a dead-end which wastes their time and demonstrates low-quality maintenance. Too many broken links on a website will lead to reduced ranking in the search results.

Increase the speed of your website

Improving page speed is a continuous effort because it directly affects ranking. If your site takes too long to load its pages you are losing visitors and potential clients-not only from the user backing out of your site, but from reduced traffic from reduced ranking. Google has made it clear that the load time for websites is a direct ranking factor because of the impact it has on user experience. When sites take longer to load, users back out in search of a faster loading result. There are many issues that can cause your site from slowing down and an audit will identify the major causes that will have the most impact.

Completing a content audit

It’s absolutely necessary to audit the content on your entire website to assess how much content has been published that contributes to optimizing for your selected keywords. A content gap analysis is often required to compare the content on your site with the content that is published on the top-performing pages in the search results. The information gathered is used to develop an effective content strategy that will indicate what needs to be published on and off-site to enhance optimization.

Eliminate duplicate content with canonical URL’s

One of the major penalties that are quite clear in Googles guidelines is a zero-tolerance for duplicate content. It’s common practice, however, to post content published on one URL of your website on the homepage or in other sections of your site. If your site is not using canonical URL’s then the content you post on multiple URL’s may be flagged as a duplicate content. The effects of a penalty can be drastic and send your site back pages in the search results.

Screen your backlink profile

The number and quality of referring domains your site has will play a significant role in the ranking it receives for keyword topics. Search engines will consider on-site optimization as well as the number of links that support your content. This means that the backlink profile of your website should ideally be from other websites in your niche that can serve as a vote of credibility to the content you publish.

If your website is linked to low-quality websites or sites that don’t have any relationship to your industry Google won’t count the links-or even worse, they could reduce your search visibility. Links that seem like they were built in an attempt to manipulate ranking will trigger a penalty on your site and will have negative consequences to your ranking.

An SEO site audit provides site owners with the data necessary to improve the optimization of their website. By identifying and correcting technical issues you are able to build your site on a stable foundation that is streamlined to perform in the search results.

Schedule an assessment of your website and see how an SEO professional can help you grow your business.