Best Practices for Title Tag
- Limit the length of the titles between 70 – 90 characters including spaces
- Focus on keywords that most closely relate to the purpose of the page
- Repeat the primary keyword at least twice
- Use a secondary keyword within the title
- Create custom titles for top categories and locations on the site
- Be careful with “Templated” titles – They tend to be discounted as they are easy to be detected as database generated, ensure they are differentiated, even if this is just adding ‘Page2′ or similar!
Best Practices for Meta Description Tag
- Meta descriptions should be crafted as marketing messages since they can significantly impact the Click-through rates from search result pages, there is no point being on page one if you are not going to get the attention of the user.
- The meta description should be no more than 155 characters including spaces
- Avoid using templated meta descriptions – Customize the descriptions for the top areas of the site, if you are on a big site, be creative with database variable and output tags.
- Repeat the keywords used in title within the meta description
- Use variations of the main terms in different orders and tenses
Best Practices for Meta Keywords Tag
- Meta keywords tag should be limited to keywords most closely related to the concept of the page – Avoid using keywords that do not directly relate to the content on the page
- Limit to about 12-15 keyword phrases (2 – 3 words each)
- Alternatively, limit the length of the keywords field to 255 characters at the very maximum (including spaces) – If the recommendation of closely related keywords is followed, you should find this limit extremely difficult to hit
- Separate with “, “ (comma followed by space and then next keyword)
Best Practice for Page Elements
- Use H1 tags
- Repeat the Top Keyword related to the page at least twice and use 2nd best keyword at least once
- Use H2 tags
- The H2 tag can (and should) be slightly longer than the H1 tag, make it a true sub headline
- Focus on slightly different variations of the Top 2 keywords
- Depending on length try working in a 3rd keyword - SEO Content
- Keyword rich content is essential to gaining high rankings, make sure you use genuinely useful content, which just happens to have exact seo keywords in it!
Read is aloud, if you have to ask if it sounds bad – it probably is.
Have fun.
If you have any other top tips – let me know and I will add them in.
p.s. This is always work in progress !
