In the following post i want to highlight the main features which make a Web Page optimized efficiently. Firts of all i want to mention the most inspiring sources i have come across in my readings and made me able to collect the useful informations to publish now. I hope you enjoy reading the article. Don’t hesitate to leave your comment.
The top 10 SEO myths
How Do I Build the Perfectly Optimized Page?
Designing Websites with SEO and Conversions in Mind
Basic Tips About SEO and Website Usability
7 Key Secrets of a Successful Website
How To UP YOUR GAME as a Web Designer
Experiments on Google+ and Twitter Influencing Search Rankings
SEO Beyond Your Site
Straightforward SEO for Webdesigners
SEO Elements Every Web Designer Should Know About
Perfecting Keyword Targeting & On-Page Optimization
10 Ways To Use Online Video To Benefit Your Search Engine Optimization
How To Optimise a Webpage
Social SEO – Facebook & Twitter Best Practices
Google Keywords
The notion that keywords that every page needs a certain percentage of time to outrank the competition is a fallacy. There’s no perfect number: it’s not that if you mention the keyword seven times on this page I’m automatically going to rank well. It doesn’t work that way: there are so many other factors and a page that gets a lot of inbound links with the right anchor text can rank for terms that don’t even appear on the page. The notion that there’s a perfect percentage for keywords simply isn’t true. “Furthermore, your copy should be persuasive, informative and punchy: you’ll only serve to limit your copy’s punch by simply clawing keywords into the text. Be verbose, create opportunities to talk about your company, products and niche verticals, but never, repetitive. It is important to include keywords on your pages but there is NO ‘magic number’ of times to use a keyword. Write your text for humans!”
Meta Keywords
Yahoo! is unique among the search engines in recording and utilizing the meta keyword tag for discovery, though not technically for rankings. However, with Microsoft’s Bing set to take over Yahoo! Search, the last remaining reason to employ the tag is now gone. That, combined with the danger of using keywords there for competitive research means that at SEOmoz, we never recommend employing the tag.
A perennial favourite myth is probably the keywords meta tag. Google’s head of Webspam and all-round search sage, Matt Cutts, says: “Google doesn’t use the keywords meta tag in our scoring at all. It’s just a waste of time to throw a lot of phrases into the keywords meta tag. It would be a better use of your effort to do things like speed up your website, because that can directly improve the usability of your site even independently of SEO.” Meta tag descriptions, and certainly titles matter, but it’s true the keyword tag is generally completely redundant across the board.
Google, which rarely discloses ANYTHING important about its algorithm, formally declared it does not use meta keywords via its search quality guru Matt Cutts nearly two years ago. The two ‘metas’ that site owners should still worry about are including keywords in the “title” tag (extremely important for optimisation), and the meta description, which, although it does not seem to affect ranking, can be used to increase clickthrough rates from the search result pages.
Keyword stuffing
Keywords are at the heart of any successful SEO campaign. Once you’ve selected a great batch of keywords and key phrases, make sure to use them properly. Don’t stuff your content too full of keywords, because that will get you in trouble with the major search engines. Instead, use your keywords as naturally and relevantly as you can throughout the content on your site. Don’t forget to use keywords and key phrases in your anchor text, which is the text that makes up a hyperlink. Sprinkle keywords into titles and headers, too, to keep your site well organized and easy to scan.
As you become more adept at SEO, you will be able to use it to improve your site’s conversion rate, too. For example, you can play around with a variety of different widgets to attract a more targeted audience. Title tags are also important; like so many aspects of SEO, however, that importance is changing. Instead of stuffing them full of keywords, for instance, more people are using them to bolster their branding to great effect.
Social Networks
If your site is just starting out and hasn’t garnered a large base of fans yet, it will be an uphill battle to rank well with virality. However, creating and actively maintaining a presence in social media has proven to increase the authority of your website in the eyes of search engines.
You don’t have to produce viral content on a regular basis, but if your Facebook Page gets comments and your Twitter account gets mentions, then it’s good for your site. If you’ve neglected social media as part of your site-growing strategy, SEO is a reason for you to start paying attention to it.
Google looks at specific elements from Twitter and Facebook to use as ranking signals, as discussed by Google’s head of webspam team, Matt Cutts, in this video.
The more a Twitter account is mentioned, the more authority Google will give it. Thus, a Twitter account with more authority tweeting about a web page on your site could have a bigger impact on your search engine rankings than one that doesn’t have as much authority. Another important ranking factor is the keywords that surround a link contained in a tweet.
For instance, SEOmoz, a highly-regarded SEO blog, reported an unexpected Twitter case study
Facebook optimization is very similar to optimizing a regular website. Content should have SEO-friendly titles and text when being posted to a Facebook Page.
In terms of Bing, which has some different SEO requirements, the number of Facebook Likes and Facebook shares help organic rankings, as highlighted in a post on TechCrunch by Erick Schonfeld.
Another great way to increase your website’s popularity is to add social networking buttons to it. Addthis is a quick and easy way to add buttons. Sharing buttons make it easy for your visitors to share information – people are more likely to share your links if the option is available!
Title and Headings
Make them different for every page. Really, it’s worth the effort. Having the same title and meta description site wide is like wearing the same outfit to every singles event or date you go on. Google finds it just as appealing as the person you are trying to date. Also, don’t put the name of the website at the front of the page title; instead, put it at the end. It’s a very simple thing that really improves rankings. The title tag and meta description are what usually appears in a search engine listing, so try to make them interesting and click enticing.
Put an H1 tag on every page. I know it’s ugly by default, but use CSS to make it look any way you like. Your H1 can match your page title but it doesn’t have to. It can be slightly different or completely different if it needs to be. Use H2, H3, or other Hx tags in your pages and navigation when it makes sense.
You should also try to put your brand name at the end of the title tag to help build your brand. This is a great thing to do if you have a well-known brand. For example, if you’re trying to optimise a page for shoes ideal for elf costumes, you’d put something like “Elf Shoes | Brand Name.”
The heading is basically the headline of the webpage. Even though the significance of the headline isn’t really thought to have a big impact in search engines, it usually has some impact. So, you should use the same keywords you used in the page title for the heading tags. The meta tags are also considered less important in the search engine equation, but things like the description increase the likelihood that someone clicks on the link, so you want to make sure it’s clear and concise.
Images and Video
Images Optimization
The Images are also an easy way to affect the page’s ranking. Placing the targeted keyword in the title of the image file and alt tag help clarify to readers and search engines what they’re looking at. There’s still debate as to whether the alt tag on images is really effective, but it’s worth taking a few seconds to add it.
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Keywords in alt text, text around the image, image name, page title;
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Preferred image formatting – jpg;
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Separate SE accessible image folder;
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Image freshness. (SEW suggests re-uploading your images to keep them fresh);
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Enabled image search option at Google webmaster tool.
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Reasonable image file size (see the discussion at WW)
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Limited number of images per page;
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Popular and reliable photo sharing hosting (e.g. Flickr is reported to help in Yahoo! image optimization).
Number of Images and Image Size – Images may look nice, but never use an image where text will do. Search engines can’t actually tell what an image is. They use the surrounding text and filename to make a best guess. Size images properly. Don’t have a 1000px image and size it down to 200px using CSS. If you have a page with lots of images, use thumbnails and link to larger images.
File Size – File size has recently become a factor in search engine rankings. The faster you can make files the better. Remove superflous images whenever possible, use image reduction tools, and limit third party scripts, widgets, or tracking tools whenever possible.
Videos Optimization
Keyword Titles
Just like if you were creating a landing page for a website or writing an article, your online videos need to have keyword specific titles. Having your content correctly titled will make the search engine Gods smile fondly upon it. The last thing you want is to create content that can’t be found because of a poor title. Ensure every online video you upload is titled appropriately to give it a strong chance of popping up in both Google and YouTube Page 1 searches.
Video Descriptions
Descriptions are an essential piece of the online video SEO puzzle that must be optimized. Always put your website URL on the first line of your videos descriptions. This will help to improve conversion rates and give your web page a little bit of link juice. Use the text space available in your descriptions to tie in your keywords and phrases to your videos content. By doing so, you can make your online videos as search friendly as possible.
Web Content
Website content should only exist on one page or URL. If it exists in more than one place, you are leaving it up to Google to figure out which one they think is best.You can help Google by using the rel=canonical tag, but don’t rely on that to solve problems you shouldn’t be creating in the first place.
Quality content is also essential. All your content should have a unique and consistent tone. Your content must also be credible, logical and emotionally appealing. Content should appeal to the right level of depth. Have a look to this interesting Toward Content Quality which go very deep to the topic.
Navigation structure
Before you start or re-do your website, work out your navigation in advance. Customers should be able to glance at your home page and see exactly where they need to go. Try to keep the navigation as easy to understand and clutter free as possible.
The content on your site should always be rounded out by clear calls to action. After explaining a product or service, include something like “click here to place your order now” or “learn more about this service here.” Links within the calls to action will lead people to the next step in the process, which should be simple and streamlined.
The issue with using div elements is that the element is meaningless. It doesn’t add semantic value or give context to what’s inside it. With new elements such as header, article, aside and footer, the segmentation of the web page becomes more meaningful. The benefit of this is that it will allow search engines to easily crawl the website, possibly skipping sections such as footer or header or using them for different indexing purposes (such as identifying copyright information or finding the site’s name or logo). Search engine indexing will thus be more efficient, meaningful and possibly more advanced. Please consider to read What Potential Impact Can HTML5 Have on SEO? which explain very carefully the functions of these elements.
Download the Search engine-optimization starter guide.
