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Amazon Keyword Research Service

Keyword Research

You should optimize your website content for the right keywords because that will be the difference between your website being found or not.

Keyword research is a vitally important aspect of your search engine optimization campaign.

Whether you want to use keyword research for building a niche site, come up with article ideas for your business website or simply want to gain more insight into what your customers are thinking, it takes a lot of time to find a good keyphrase to target.

Keyword Research Tools – Free and Paid

The best free keyword research tool is Google AdWords provides a handy Keyword Tool that helps you discover new keyword variations and see the approximate search volume for each keyword.

Your website stats package -Google Analytics is also an essential source of information to monitor the keywords that are successfully driving traffic.

Summary of Keyword Research Techniques

In general, to do free keyword research you need to follow this process:

1. Create a seed list of starting terms-a seed list is your initial set of keyword ideas.
2. Expand your list using keyword research tools- it’s time to expand your list. Open your favorite keyword research tool and start entering your keywords.
3. Refine your list with competitive research

Now that you have a good list of keywords, it’s time to refine it and place it on the best keywords.

Consider creating a new, useful service that no other site offers.

You could also write an original piece of research, break an exciting news story, or leverage your unique user base. Other sites may lack the resources or expertise to do these things.

You should design your site around your visitor’s needs while making sure your site is easily accessible to search engines usually produces positive results.

Don’t use these bad practices:

1. Inserting numerous unnecessary keywords aimed at search engines that are annoying or nonsensical to users
2. Having blocks of text like “frequent misspellings used to reach this page” that add little value for users
3. Deceptively hiding text from users, but displaying it to search engines.

For SEO consulting services you can always write to us in an SEO consultation form and we will contact you ASAP!

Blogger SEO Tips – read these advanced Search Engine Optimization tips for Blogger users so that you can increase traffic to your blog.

Blogger is now considered one of the best regarding Search Engine Optimization.

Blogger is also one of the most used blogging platforms in the world, that offers a free blog with a Blogspot subdomain for everyone.

Blogs of Blogger now provide their users with the option to manage search engine preferences.

Search Engine Optimization helps increase traffic to your blog and connect your content with the intended audience.

Blogger SEO Plugin

These 16 basic Search Engine Optimization tips for Blogger will give you the most for starting SEO of your Blogspot Blogger Blog.

If you are an advanced blogger you may already do some (if not most) of these things, and you are well aware that these are only the basic tips for Search Engine Optimization for Blogspot bloggers.

Below are the tips and tricks that will be beneficial for you to optimize your blog for Google, and other search engines, but also, most important, how to blog for your blog readers.

1. Blog Privacy

Did you know you have to allow search engines to find your blog?

You actually need to give permission to search engines to crawl your site.

You can do this by going to Settings-Basic Settings under Blog Title and Blog Description.

2. Name your Blog

Create a Blog Title that correlates with the niche of your Blog.

Put the most important and relevant keywords in the title, and try not to repeat any word.

Ideally, the title should contain 10 to 70 characters, including spaces.

3. Swap your post titles

When we talk about Blogger Optimization, post title plays a major role.

The Blogger post title is usually followed by the homepage title.

But for Search Engine Optimization ranking, the title of your post is actually more important than your blog’s title.

You can change this by swapping your post title to be first.

Here is how to fix this. Go to Blogger edit HTML – find out code section:

<title><data:blog.pagetitle/></title>

and replace it with:

<b:if cond= ‘data:blog.pageType == “index”‘> <title><data:blog.title/></title> <b:else/> <title><data:blog.pageName/></title> </b:if>

Now the individual pages will have the post title itself.

4. Search Description

Blogger Description

To create your own search description, just go to Settings- Search Preferences and click Edit next to “Description” to reveal a text field.

Select Yes, write in your text, and click Save changes.

Enabling this feature will display a “Search Description” option in the Post Settings panel that allows you to enter a search description for individual posts.

5. Custom robots.txt

Custom robots.txt ( SEO Blogspot ) is a way for you to instruct the search engine that you don’t want it to crawl certain pages of your blog.

To exclude certain content from being searched, go to Settings – Search Preferences and click Edit next to “Custom robots.txt.”

Enter the content which you would like web robots to ignore.

For example:

User-agent: * Disallow: /about

I recommend using this robts.txt for blogger blogs:

User-agent: Mediapartners-Google Disallow: User-agent: * Disallow: /search Allow: / Sitemap: http://www.yoursite.com/sitemap.xml

6. Redirect a URL to your blog

You can redirect URLs from your blog to new pages.

This is helpful if you delete an old blog post but don’t want people to see an error message if they get to that page.

To do this follow these steps:

Sign in to blogger.com.

Pick the blog you want to update.

On the left side of the page, click Settings-Search preferences.

In the “Errors and redirections” section, find “Custom

redirects.”

Click Edit.

Add the deleted URL and the URL you want to point it to.

If the original article was deleted, check the box next to “Permanent.”

Click Save under the redirect you created.

Click Save changes.

• Redirect: www.yourblogdomain.com/index.html to www.yourblogdomain.com/
• Redirect: www.yourblogdomain.com/index.htm to www.yourblogdomain.com/

7. Custom Page Not Found

Bloggers often create customized 404 pages to provide a bit of comic relief to their readers and prevent them from experiencing generic, unfriendly error messages.

If you have a broken link on your blog, or, a reader navigates to a page that’s temporarily down, having a customized 404 page provides your readers with a better user experience.

You can find the option to create a customized 404 page by going to Settings – Search Preferences.

To enter your custom message, click Edit to open the text box.

Type the copy you’d like to appear on the page, then click Save changes.

If you’d like to get more creative than using standard text, you can use simple HTML.

8. Set Image Properties

Blogger Image Properties

Now you can easily add “alt” and “title” attributes to your images.

9. Header tags

Headings express the general idea of the content below them, and search engines use headings to get an idea of what your post is about.

To designate text as a header, just highlight the text in the Post Editor, and click on either “Heading” (<h2>), “Subheading” (<h3>), or “Minor heading” (<h4>) in the toolbar.

10. Use Custom robots header tags

Custom robots header tags allow you to tell web crawlers not to index certain sections of your site.

To enable these tags, go to Settings – Search Preferences, click Edit next to “Custom robots header tags,” and select Yes.

The three sections you’ll see below correspond to:

• Your blog’s home page
• Your archive and search pages
• Your posts and pages

Check the boxes to set the flags according to your preferences, then view the sections of your blog that you customized (homepage, archive and search pages, pages, and posts).

You should see an X-Robots-Tag header tag in the HTTP response with the selected flags.

I recommend checking these boxes:

• Homepage check All and noodp
• Archive and Search pages check noindex and noodp
• Posts and Pages check All and noodp.

If the feature is turned on, then you will see a similar interface in the “Post Settings” section of the Post Editor.

11. Use Custom permalinks when possible

When you write a post, Blogger automatically generates a permalink for your post from its title.

If you prefer to use a custom permalink, you can do so via the “Permalink” option in the Post Settings box.

Once you click Permalink, you’ll see that the option for automatic posting is selected as default.

To create your own URL for this specific post, simply select Custom, and type in your new URL.

I recommend using Custom Permalink when possible and don’t forget to not use Stop Words in your Permalinks.

12. Use Nofollow Tag

When you click Link in the Post Editor toolbar to hyperlink text, you’ll notice an option about adding a rel=’nofollow’ attribute.

Checking this box means that you don’t want this link to be considered when web crawlers are searching for information they’ll use to index your page.

You might want to check this box if you don’t fully trust the content you’re linking to, the link is a paid link, or simply to deprioritize this link so that web crawlers can focus on your blog’s other content.

I recommend using this Tag when you are linking to websites less authoritative than your site and when you are linking to a site and describing something negative about that site, like spamming for example.

13. Blogger proper Labels

Labels add to the keyword density of the post.

Labels also affect related posts widgets in Blogger so use them carefully.

Use at least one, and at max three labels for one blog post.

14. Format the comment section

The Comment section should be no-followed and moderated to avoid spam comments.

15. Reduce Blog Load Time

Website speed loading time is now a search engine ranking factor.

Also, the slower the blog loads, the more users tend to leave it before it’s done loading.

Use the Google Pagespeed Insight Tool to see which factors are increasing your Blog load time and try to reduce those factors.

16. Enable HTTPS

You can turn on HTTPS for your Blogger blog.

When you enable HTTPS, visitors can access the encrypted version of your blog by typing:

 https://yourblog.blogspot.com

Last year, Google made HTTPS an official search engine ranking factor.

To enable HTTPS:

Sign in to Blogger.

Select the blog to update.

On the left menu, click Settings > Basic > HTTPS Settings.

In HTTPS Availability, select Yes.

UPDATE: Now HTTPS is available even for blogger blogs with custom domains.

Warning: If you turn on HTTPS for your blog, you may have to change your blog content to make sure it works with HTTPS.

Don’t forget to redirect HTTP to HTTPS.

What you need to change is all your internal links on your blog that are written with HTTP you need to change them to https and also all image URLs that start with HTTP you need to change them to https.

If you don’t change HTTP to HTTPS then your blog will have mixed content issues and your change of blog URL will not have any effect on your blog security or SEO, even worse it will show on your browser bar that your site isn’t secure, and this may scare your blog readers.

All-in-One SEO Plugin for Blogger 2022

Blogger SEO Plugin

<!– Blogger SEO Plugin 2018 v1.0 by SEOBASICS.INFO Start –><meta content=’IE=9; IE=8; IE=7; IE=EDGE; chrome=1′ http-equiv=’X-UA-Compatible’/> <b:include data=’blog’ name=’all-head-content’/> <!– SEO Meta Tag –> <meta charset=’utf-8’/><meta content=’data:blog.title’ =’name’/><link href=’http://www.blogger.com/openid-server.g’ rel=’openid.server’/><link expr:href=’data:blog.homepageUrl’ rel=’openid.delegate’/> <b:if cond=’data:blog.pageType == “index”‘> <b:if cond=’data:blog.searchLabel’> <meta content=’noindex,nofollow’ name=’robots’/> </b:if> </b:if> <b:if cond=’data:blog.pageType == “archive”‘> <meta content=’noindex,nofollow’ name=’robots’/> </b:if> <b:if cond=’data:blog.isMobile’> <meta content=’noindex,nofollow’ name=’robots’/> </b:if> <!– SEO Title Tag –> <b:if cond=’data:blog.url == data:blog.homepageUrl’> <title> <data:blog.title/> </title> </b:if> <b:if cond=’data:blog.pageType == “item”‘> <title> <data:blog.pageName/> </title> </b:if> <b:if cond=’data:blog.pageType == “archive”‘> <title> Archive for <data:blog.pageName/> </title> </b:if> <b:if cond=’data:blog.pageType == “static_page”‘> <title> <data:blog.pageName/> </title> </b:if> <b:if cond=’data:blog.pageType == “index”‘> <b:if cond=’data:blog.searchLabel’> <title> <data:blog.searchLabel/>-<data:blog.title/> </title> </b:if> </b:if> <b:if cond=’data:blog.pageType == “error_page”‘> <title> Page Not Found </title> </b:if> <b:if cond=’data:blog.pageType == “index”‘> <b:if cond=’data:blog.url != data:blog.homepageUrl’> <title> <data:blog.pageTitle/>-All Post </title> </b:if> </b:if> <b:if cond=’data:blog.homepageUrl != data:blog.url’><meta expr:content=’data:blog.pageName + “, ” + data:blog.pageTitle + “, ” + data:blog.title’ name=’news_keywords’/></b:if> <b:if cond=’data:blog.url == data:blog.homepageUrl’><meta content=’keyword 1,keyword 2,keyword 3,keyword 4,keyword 5,keyword 6,keyword 7,keyword 8,keyword 9,keyword 1o’ name=’news_keywords’/></b:if> <meta content=’Your Logo Image URL’ =’image’/><b:if cond=’data:blog.pageType == “item”‘><b:if cond=’data:blog.postImageThumbnailUrl’><link expr:href=’data:blog.postImageThumbnailUrl’ rel=’image_src’/></b:if></b:if><!– Google Authorship and Publisher Markup –><link href=’https://plus.google.com/——————/about’ rel=’author’/><link href=’https://plus.google.com/+—————–‘ rel=’publisher’/><link href=’https://plus.google.com/——————‘ rel=’me’/><!– Schema.org markup for Google+ –><meta expr:content=’data:blog.pageTitle’ =’name’/><meta content=’—————————————–‘ name=’google-site-verification’/><meta content=’—————————————–‘ name=’msvalidate.01’/><meta content=’—————————————–‘ name=’alexaVerifyID’/><meta content=’—————————————–‘ name=’yandex-verification’/><meta content=’—————————————–‘ name=’p:domain_verify’/><meta content=’—————————————–‘ name=’wot-verification’/><meta content=’—————————————–‘ name=’norton-safeweb-site-verification’/><meta content=’—————————————–‘ name=’propeller’/> <meta content=’—————————————-‘ name=’wikkiweb’/> <meta content=’—————————————‘ name=’majestic-site-verification’/><meta content=’United States’ name=’geo.placename’/><meta content=’Your Name and Surname’ name=’Author’/><meta content=’general’ name=’rating’/><b:if cond=’data:blog.url == data:blog.homepageUrl’><b:if cond=’data:blog.pageType == “item”‘> <b:if cond=’data:blog.pageType == “static_page”‘><b:if cond=’data:blog.url’><meta expr:content=’data:blog.url’ property=’og:url’/></b:if><meta expr:content=’data:blog.title’ property=’og:site_name’/><b:if cond=’data:blog.pageName’><meta expr:content=’data:blog.pageName’ property=’og:title’/></b:if></b:if> </b:if></b:if><meta expr:content=’data:blog.pageTitle’ property=’og:title’/><b:if cond=’data:blog.pageType == “item”‘><meta content=’article’ property=’og:type’/><b:else/><meta content=’website’ property=’og:type’/></b:if><meta expr:content=’data:blog.canonicalUrl’ property=’og:url’/><b:if cond=’data:blog.postImageUrl’><meta expr:content=’data:blog.postImageUrl’ property=’og:image’/><b:else/><b:if cond=’data:blog.postImageThumbnailUrl’><meta expr:content=’data:blog.postThumbnailUrl’ property=’og:image’/><b:else/><meta expr:content=’data:blog.blogspotFaviconUrl’ property=’og:image’/></b:if></b:if> <b:if cond=’data:blog.metaDescription’><meta expr:content=’data:blog.metaDescription’ property=’og:description’/><b:else/><meta content=’Write here your blog description.’ property=’og:description’/></b:if><!– Metadata Facebook –><meta expr:content=’data:blog.title’ property=’og:site_name’/><meta expr:content=’data:blog.pageTitle’ property=’og:title’/><meta content=’article’ property=’og:type’/><meta expr:content=’data:blog.url’ property=’og:url’/><meta content=’————-‘ property=’fb:app_id’/><meta content=’————-‘ property=’fb:admins’/><meta content=’en_US’ property=’og:locale’/><meta content=’en_GB’ property=’og:locale:alternate’/><meta content=’id_ID’ property=’og:locale:alternate’/><!– Schema.org Markup Tags for Google+ –> <b:if cond=’data:blog.pageType != “index”‘> <meta expr:content=’data:blog.pageName’ =’name’/> <meta expr:content=’data:blog.canonicalUrl’ =’url’/> <b:else/> <meta expr:content=’data:blog.title’ =’name’/> <meta expr:content=’data:blog.homepageUrl’ =’url’/> </b:if> <meta expr:content=’data:blog.metaDescription’ =’description’/> <b:if cond=’data:blog.postImageThumbnailUrl’> <meta expr:content=’data:blog.postImageThumbnailUrl’ =’image’/> <b:else/> <meta content=’Your Blogs Logo Image URL’ =’image’/> </b:if> <!– /Schema.org Markup Tags for Google+ –><!– Twitter Card Tags –><meta content=’summary’ name=’twitter:card’/><meta content=’@Blogs Twitter ID’ name=’twitter:site’/><meta content=’@Your Twitter ID’ name=’twitter:creator’/><meta expr:content=’data:blog.homepageUrl’ name=’twitter:domain’/><b:if cond=’data:blog.pageType == “item”‘><meta expr:content=’data:blog.canonicalUrl’ name=’twitter:url’/><meta expr:content=’data:blog.pageName’ name=’twitter:title’/><meta expr:content=’data:blog.postImageUrl’ name=’twitter:image:src’/><b:else/><meta expr:content=’data:blog.homepageUrl’ name=’twitter:url’/><meta expr:content=’data:blog.pageTitle’ name=’twitter:title’/><meta content=’Image URL’ name=’twitter:image:src’/></b:if><b:if cond=’data:blog.metaDescription’><meta expr:content=’data:blog.metaDescription’ name=’twitter:description’/></b:if><meta expr:content=’data:blog.canonicalUrl’ name=’twitter:url’/> <!– /Twitter Card Tags –> <!– Pinterest Rich Pins Tags –> <meta expr:content=’data:post.timestampISO8601′ property=’article:published_time’/> <meta content=’Technology’ property=’article:section’/> <b:loop values=’data:post.labels’ var=’label’> <meta expr:content=’data:label.name’ property=’article:tag’/> </b:loop> <!– /Pinterest Rich Pins Tags –><link href=’Your Blogs Logo Image URL on 144×144 dimensions’ rel=’apple-touch-icon’/><!– Dublin Core Schema –><link href=’http://purl.org/dc/terms/’ rel=’schema.dcterms’/><meta content=’“United States”‘ name=’DC.coverage’/> <b:if cond=’data:blog.metaDescription’> <meta expr:content=’data:blog.metaDescription’ name=’DC.description’/><b:else/><meta content=’Write here your blog description.’ name=’DC.description’/></b:if><meta content=’text/html’ name=’DC.format’/><meta content=’Your website URL’ name=’DC.identifier’/><meta content=’Your Full Name’ name=’DC.publisher’/> <b:if cond=’data:blog.url == data:blog.homepageUrl’> <meta expr:content=’data:blog.title’ name=’DC.title’/> </b:if><b:if cond=’data:blog.pageType == “item”‘> <meta expr:content=’data:blog.pageName’ name=’DC.title’/> </b:if><meta content=’Text’ name=’DC.type’/> <script type=’application/ld+json’>{ “@context” : “http://schema.org”, “@type” : “Organization”, “url” : “<data:blog.url/>”, “contactPoint” : [ { “@type” : “ContactPoint”, “telephone” : “Your Business Phone Number”, “contactType” : “customer service” } ] } </script> <script type=’application/ld+json’>{ “@context” : “http://schema.org”, “@type” : “Organization”, “name” : “<data:blog.title/>”, “url” : “<data:blog.url/>”, “sameAs” : [ “Your Facebook Page URL”, “Your Twitter Page URL”, “Your Google Plus Page URL”] } </script><!– Blogger SEO Plugin 2018 v2.0 by SEOBASICS.INFO End –>

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On-Page SEO Factors

What is SEO and How it Works?
Page Titles – Write Better, Attention-Grabbing Headlines
What is the meta description? Create for Better CTR
Are Meta Tag Keywords Important and Should We Still Use Them?
How to Use Meta Tags for Successful On-Page SEO?
Optimize Images for SEO – Best Practices
Website Navigation Best Practices for SEO
SEO Friendly URLs
Write Anchor Text for SEO
Heading Tags: Best SEO Practices

Standing high in the search engines and getting traffic, as a consequence, is a somewhat complicated and time-consuming method.

It will need remarkable work and commitment, but the ending outcome can be satisfying.

Search engine optimization is often about doing little changes to elements of your website.You should base your optimization choices first and foremost on what’s best for the visitors to your site.

Your website is created first to be read by humans, not search engines.

Search Engine Optimization is a continuous process, a way of analyzing your website, planning and producing its content, and observing its progress over the long term.

Search engine optimization-SEO involves the selection of keywords applied in the text sections and the induction of those words on the page.

Can we help you with On-Page SEO Services?

What is SERP?

The minor recognized but evenly important term “SERP” or Search Engine Results Page represents the present listing or ranking position that an end-user is shown after a search.

At this stage, you should understand that creating high-quality content by researching keywords and promoting correctly is the basis of SEO.

How Do Search Engines Work?

• The search engine visits a website and takes the content of the website.
• The search engine examines the content and indexes it.
• Someone places in his query and searches.
• The search engine defines the search and retrieves related content from its records.
• The search engine ranks all those pages and presents them to the user.
• A user sees the returned results.

In this video from Google, engineer Matt Cutts explains how the most popular search engine in the world crawls and indexes the 60 trillion web pages that make up the World Wide Web.

What is SEM – Search Engine Marketing?

Search engine marketing is the method of marketing business using paid advertisements that appear on search engine results pages – SERPs.

What is the difference between SEO and SEM?

The main difference is that SEO is a group of techniques that help to rank pages on search engines’ organic results.Search Engine Marketing is a marketing method using paid advertisements that appear on SERPs, pages of websites, social media, videos, etc…

Search engines use various guidelines for ranking pages, and those guidelines are periodically altered to keep Web page designers from incorrectly describing their pages and getting a permanent, high ranking.

This is why a whole industry exists to help Web site owners achieve high results in page ranking.

On-Page SEO Checklist and Techniques

Now we will start to explain the parts of the website where you can improve the On-Page SEO and how to modify these parts.

Continue reading this post on how to implement On-Page SEO techniques.

Page titles and SEO – Write Better, Attention-Grabbing Headlines

Page titles – Headlines are an important aspect of search engine optimization.

Write headlines that offer a solution, give emotion, and show authority!

What is the title of the page?

Title tags are short descriptions of our blog/website.

These are the first factors that search engines and visitors look into. So, you must make these tags more effective.

What is an On SEO page title?

A title tag tells both users and search engines what the topic of a particular page is.

photo credit: How to Search Engine Optimization via
photopin (license)

The title tag should be placed within the head tag of the HTML document.

Ideally, you should create a unique title for each page on your site (An important part of the On-Page SEO).

The contents of the title tag will usually appear in the first line of the results.

The title for your homepage can list the name of your website and could include other bits of important information.

Your page title is used as a suggestion for the title in the search results. Describe your business in a concise, informative phrase.

• Accurately describe the page’s content put the most important and relevant keywords in the title, and try not to repeat any word. Make sure your title tag is explicit and contains your most important keywords.
• Create unique title tags for each page.
• Use brief, but descriptive titles.
• Place the focus keyword at the beginning of the title.

The title will be displayed in search engine results in the form of a direct link to the site.Ideally, the title should contain 10 to 70 characters, including spaces, and a maximum of 12 words. So the title should contain 1-12 words, and should be within 10-70 characters!

If you are using the Blogger platform for blogging read this guide about optimizing blogger page titles and other SEO factors for Blogger.

Since a title tag is the first factor that most search engine algorithms look into, it is advisable to take great care while creating it.

Your suggestions for improving the title tags are welcome.

What is the meta description? How to Create for Better CTR (2023 Update)

What is metadata in SEO?

Meta Tags have been one of the most basic elements of On-Page SEO. It is an absolute necessity to know for each SEO practitioner.

The meta description on Google SERP
photo credit: GoogleLongmontWeatherSERP 
via photopin (license)

The <meta> tag provides metadata about the HTML document. Metadata will not be displayed on the page but will be machine parsable.

Meta elements are typically used to specify page description, keywords, author of the document, last modified, and other metadata.

What is a meta tag description?

So, what does this code do with my blog?

To keep it very simple, assume that a person searches your blog on any search engine, say Google, then he/she would see a description written by you beneath the title of your blog.

Meta Descriptions provide concise explanations of the contents of web pages, that are commonly used by search engines on search result pages to display preview snippets for a given page.

Like the title tag, the description meta tag is placed within the head tag of your HTML document.

<meta name=”description” content=”This is where you put your site’s summary”/>

Meta descriptions are on-page SEO elements that represent page summaries often used by Google and other search engines on the search results page

Write unique descriptions for each page in 320 characters or less.

A page’s description meta tag gives Google and other search engines a summary of what the page is about.

Meta descriptions allow you to influence how your web pages are described and displayed in search results.

Generally, for most of us, a great meta description is directly associated with our question/need/problem—and we can decipher that quickly.

Description meta tags are important because Google and other search engines might use them as snippets for your pages.

Adding description meta tags to each of your pages is always a good practice in case Google cannot find a good selection of text to use in the snippet.

Write a description that would both inform and interest users if they saw your description meta tag as a snippet in a search result.

Don’t use these On-Page SEO techniques:

1. Writing a description meta tag that has no relation to the content on the page
2. using generic descriptions
3. Copying and pasting the entire content of the document into the description meta tag
4. Using a single description meta tag across all of your site’s pages or a large group of pages.

Tips:

1. Use unique descriptions for each page.
2. It is best to keep meta descriptions of 70-160 characters.
3. A readable, compelling description using important keywords can draw a much higher click-through rate of searchers to the given web page.
4. Avoid keyword stuffing, and ensure each page has its own unique description.
5. Check your Google™ Webmaster Tools account (Click ‘Search Appearance’, then ‘HTML Improvements’) to identify any issues with your meta descriptions, for example, they are too short/long, or duplicated across more than one page.

Are Meta Tag Keywords Important and Should We Still Use Them?

Meta Keywords – What are we, Should we use ?!

Meta elements are typically used to specify page description, keywords, author of the document, last modified, and other metadata.

Are Meta keywords important for SEO?

Meta Keywords in Head of HTML Document

Meta keywords should not be ignored, though they are not a major ranking factor for most search engines nowadays.

Update: Using keywords meta tags now is pointless, it is not a ranking signal anymore for major search engines.

But, if you still insist on having them on your website then continue reading on how to implement them.

A Meta keywords tag is supposed to be a brief and concise list of the most important themes of your page.

Keep your list of keywords or keyword phrases down to 10 – 20 unique words or phrases.

Separate the words or phrases using a comma (you do not need to leave a space between words separated by commas).

Do not repeat words or phrases.

Put your most important words or phrases at the beginning of your list.

Differences Between HTML and XHTML
In HTML the <meta> tag has no end tag.
In XHTML the <meta> tag must be properly closed.

Meta Keywords Example

<meta name=”keywords” content=”HTML, CSS XML, XHTML, JavaScript”>

The keywords attribute was utilized by search engines to provide more accurate search results. Due to the usage and spamming the keywords attribute has been phased out and is no longer relevant.

Google doesn’t use the “keywords” meta tag in web search ranking.

The keywords attribute was popularized by search engines such as Infoseek and AltaVista in 1995, and its popularity quickly grew until it became one of the most commonly used meta elements.

In September 2009 Matt Cutts of Google announced that they were no longer taking keywords into account whatsoever.

However, Yahoo! still, makes use of the keywords meta tag in some of its rankings.

Yahoo! itself claims support for the keywords meta tag in conjunction with other factors for improving search rankings.

How to Use Meta Tags for Successful On-Page SEO

It’s pretty obvious that everyone who blogs would love to receive more visitors, therefore they want to improve the SEO of their sites.

SEO Basics-Meta Tags
photo credit: Seo via photopin (license)

Meta Tags although very important, are just the first step of Search Engine Optimization. SEO is more than just Meta Tags.

Meta elements are typically used to specify page description, keywords, author of the document, last modified, and other metadata.

Here are the common and most used meta-tags-important meta tags for On-Page SEO (search engine optimization):

1. Titles – Blog Title, Page Titles

Title tags are short descriptions of our blog/website. These are the first factors that search engines and visitors look into.

SEO title examples:

<title>The Title of the Page</title>

While technically not a meta tag, this tag is often used together with the “description”.

2. Meta Description Tags

SEO Meta Description or Meta Descriptions provide concise explanations of the contents of web pages, that are commonly used by search engines on search result pages to display preview snippets for a given page.

Example: Define a description of your web page:

<meta name=”description” content=”It’s pretty obvious that every one who blogs would love to receive more visitors.”>

3. Keywords Meta Tag

What is a meta keyword?

Meta keywords should not be ignored, though they are not a significant ranking factor for most search engines nowadays.

<meta name=”keywords” content=”HTML, CSS, XML, XHTML, JavaScript”>

Other Meta Tags

There are many other meta tags, but none are really considered useful nowadays.

4. Robots Meta Tag

The “robots” tag is still one of the most important tags.

These meta tags can control the behavior of search engine crawling and indexing.

The default values are “index, follow” and do not need to be specified.

Google and most of the other search engines understand the following values:

1. noindex: prevents the page from being indexed
2. nofollow: prevents the Googlebot from following links from this page
3. nosnippet: prevents a snippet from being shown in the search results
4. noarchive: prevents Google from showing the Cached link for a page.
5. unavailable_after:[date]: lets you specify the exact time and date you want to stop crawling and indexing this page.
6. noimageindex: lets you specify that you do not want your page to appear as the referring page for an image that appears in Google search results.
7. noodp: prevents the alternative description from the ODP/DMOZ from being used, for example:

<meta name=”robots” content=”noodp” >
<meta name=”googlebot” content=”noodp” >
<meta name=”Slurp” content=”noodp” >
<meta name=”bingbot” content=”noodp” >
<meta name=”robots” content=”noydir” >
<meta name=”Slurp” content=”noydir” >

You can now also specify this information in the header of your pages using the “X-Robots-Tag” HTTP header directive.

Here are some implementations of the Robots Meta Tag:

<META NAME=”ROBOTS” CONTENT=”NOINDEX, NOFOLLOW”>
<META NAME=”ROBOTS” CONTENT=”NOINDEX, FOLLOW”>
<META NAME=”ROBOTS” CONTENT=”INDEX, NOFOLLOW”>
<META NAME=”ROBOTS” CONTENT=”INDEX, FOLLOW”>

5.The Charset Tag

This defines the page’s content type and character set.

For example:

<meta http-equiv=”Content-Type” content=”…; charset=…” />
<meta charset=”…” >

Google and other search engines recommend using Unicode/UTF-8 where possible.

6.The Meta Refresh Tag

<meta http-equiv=”refresh” content=”…;url=…” />

This meta tag sends the user to a new URL after a certain amount of time and is sometimes used as a simple form of redirection.

It is not recommended to use this form of redirection.

Search Engines recommend using a server-side 301 redirect instead.

You can use this meta tag also to refresh the page of your website after a certain period, for example:

Refresh document every 30 seconds:

<meta http-equiv=”refresh” content=”30″>

7.The Author Meta Tag

Define the author of a page:

<meta name=”author” content=”Name Surname”>

8.Verification Meta Tags

You can use this tag on the top-level page of your site to verify ownership of your site, for various tools and apps such as Google Webmaster Tools, Bing Webmaster Tools, to claim a site at Alexa, etc.

Here is an example of the verification meta tag:

<meta name=”google-site-verification” content=”…” />

9.Yahoo’s nocontent

Yahoo! also introduced in May 2007 the attribute value: class=”robots-nocontent”.

This is not a meta tag, but an attribute and value, which can be used throughout Web page tags where needed.

The content of the page where this attribute is being used will be ignored by the Yahoo! crawler and not included in the search engine’s index.

For example:

<div class=”robots-nocontent”>excluded content</div>
<span class=”robots-nocontent”>excluded content</span>
<p class=”robots-nocontent”>excluded content</p>

These are some of the most important and most used meta tags on the web.

How to Optimize Images for SEO – Learn Best Practices

Optimize Images for On-Page SEO
Photo credit: SEOPlanter / Foter / CC BY

We have sufficiently talked about title tags and meta tags in this post.

Now, we will only focus on how to optimize images on our blogs for better SEO.

Do images help with SEO?

Follow these simple steps every time you post an image on your blog and I’m sure your blog will rank better than it did before.

Moreover, you will drive traffic through your images by doing this.

Add the Title Tag

Title tags basically display the text when the mouse hovers over the image.

Always tag images with Titles and always use relevant keywords.

Add the ALT Tag – What is an image alt tag in SEO?

Search engines cannot `see` images, proper Alt content will help them to better understand and index images.

The alt tags are basically that text which appears instead of the image, that is, when the images do not upload faster either due to a slow connection, this text will be replaced in place of the image.

So, every image on your blog must have an alt tag.

The  “alt”  attribute allows you to specify alternative text for the image if it cannot be displayed for some reason.

The “alt” attribute describes the image.

Words used within an image`s Alt attribute should be its text equivalent and convey the same information.

This helps Search Engines understand what’s in the image.

Always add alt attributes to images.

Alt is mandatory for accessibility and for valid XHTML.

Optimize Images for Google

Proper Image Name

Give your images short, descriptive file names.

Make sure you include the keywords when you name your image and let it be relevant to the image.

You must avoid spaces because these are generally replaced by %20 and will have no value when it comes to SEO.

So, the general idea would be to use the ‘-‘   sign for blank spaces.

Optimizing your image filenames and alt text makes it easier for image search projects like  Google Image Search to better understand your images.

Consider consolidating your images into a  single directory.

This simplifies the path to your images.

Use commonly supported filetypes  –  Most browsers support  JPEG, GIF,  PNG,  and  BMP  image formats.

Write a Short Caption On The Page Below Each Image

Use a human-readable caption and descriptive text around the image.This is important because this way you will put important information in the text rather than images.

Some useful On-Page image optimization tips:

1. Use brief, but descriptive filenames and alt text.
2. Avoid using generic filenames like “image1.jpg”, “1.jpg” when possible
3. Avoid writing extremely lengthy filenames and stuffing keywords into alt text.
4. Supply alt text when using images as links
5. Avoid writing excessively long alt text that would be considered spammy
6. Also, avoid using only image links for your site’s navigation
7. Supply an Image Sitemap file.
8. Optimize images before uploading so they load as fast as possible on your site, you can use the Online Converter tool, Optimizilla, etc…

I hope these tips would be handy for newbies to optimize their blog.

Website Navigation Best Practices for SEO (2023)

As the title suggests, in this post I will explain how website navigation can affect SEO and how to improve it.

The navigation of a website is important in helping visitors quickly find the content they want.

Website Navigation-Sitemap of Google
Photo credit: Transferred from en. Wikipedia; transferred to Commons by User: Shizhao using CommonsHelper.

Links pointing internally from the home page and globally on your website play a large role in your SEO success.

UX Navigation Best Practices

You should think about how visitors will go from a  general page to a  page containing more specific content.

Refinement of your navigation benefits several pages Google and other search engines can locate on your site, allows you to increase your rankings, enhances the usability of your site, and improves your bottom-line.

A breadcrumb is a row of internal links at the top or bottom of the page that allows visitors to quickly navigate back to a previous section or the root page.

Consider what happens when instead of using the breadcrumb links on the page, a user might drop off a part of the URL in the hopes of finding more general content.

A sitemap is a simple page on your site that displays the structure of your website, and usually, consists of a hierarchical listing of the pages on your site.

Visitors may visit this page if they are having problems finding pages on your site.

A  simple sitemap page with links to all of the pages or the most important pages on your site can be useful.

Avoid letting your HTML site map page become out of date with broken links.

An  XML  Sitemap is a file,  which you can submit through Webmaster  Tools, which makes it easier for  Search Engines to discover the pages on your site.

Add navigation pages when it makes sense and effectively works these into your internal link structure.

Avoid creating complex webs of navigation links, e.g. linking every page on your site to every other page.

Controlling most of the navigation from page to page on your site through text links makes it easier for search engines to crawl and understand your site.

The navigation menu should be descriptively labeled to minimize the amount of work your visitors have to do to find the information most relevant to them on your website.

Optimize the navigation keywords for your users as well as for SEO.

Ideally, the links pointing to each page of your site will reflect the keyword target chosen for that page.

Avoid having a navigation based entirely on drop-down menus, images, or animations.

The navigation menu should also be visible on every page of your site in the same location so that users can easily click around and find their place.

Users will occasionally come to a  page that doesn’t exist on your site, either by following a  broken link or typing in the wrong  URL.

Having a  custom  404  page that kindly guides users back to a  working page on your site can greatly improve a user’s experience.

Avoid allowing your  404  pages to be indexed by search engines and providing only a vague message like “Not found”, “404”, or no 404 pages at all.

Summary:

1. Navigation is very important for search engines,
2. Plan out your navigation based on your homepage,
3. Ensure more convenience for users by using ‘breadcrumb lists’,
4. Allow for the possibility of a part of the URL being removed,
5. Prepare two sitemaps: one for users, one for search engines,
6. Create a naturally flowing hierarchy,
7. Use mostly text for navigation,
8. Put an HTML sitemap page on your site, and use an XML Sitemap file,
9. Have a useful 404 page.

SEO Friendly URLs: Read Some Essential Tips and Best Practices

What are SEO Friendly URLs and what is URL Structure?

The users need to know the structure of the URL.

By the structure, I mean, even if the user cuts keywords on the URL and enters it on the address bar, it should return to the page where it is meant to be.

SEO Friendly URLs
photo credit: Sitemap via photopin (license)

A site’s URL structure should be as simple as possible.

Sub-pages should also be easy to read.

For example, useseogrow.co/quick-tips-help-find-best-domain-your-site/

instead of

seogrow.co/quicktipshelpfindbestdomainyoursite/

A poor site structure doesn’t only send your visitors away, it also confuses the wits out of the spiders that crawl your website to index different pages.

SEO URL Best Practices with Tips about URL Length and Rewrite – Search Engine Friendly URLs

URLs should be SEO friendly. You may use URL rewrite techniques to make URLs to be SEO friendly.

SEO URL Dash or Underscore ?!

As an SEO standard, only the below two symbols are accepted from search engines.

1. Colon – :
2. Forward slash – /

Tip: Underscore – _ (Do not use this character in your URLs because it’s not SEO friendly),
Search Engines treat hyphen as a word separator, they do not treat underscore as a word separator.

1. Help search engines to better understand your URL, which eventually will benefit your page`s ranking.
2. Use hyphen “-” instead of underscore “_” to optimize your page URL.

Clean, Short, and Relevant URLs are favored by users and search engine

Creating descriptive categories and filenames for the documents on your website can not only help you keep your site better organized, but it could also lead to better crawling of your documents by search engines.

Also, it can create easier, SEO Friendly URLs for those that want to link to your content.

Choose a URL that will be easy for users and search engines to understand!

Some users might link to your page using the URL of that page as the anchor text.

If your URL contains relevant words, this provides users and search engines with more information about the page than an ID or oddly named parameter would.

Use words in URLs

1. Don’t use lengthy URLs with unnecessary parameters and session IDs
2. Don’t choose generic page names like “page1.html”
3. Don’t use excessive keywords like”improve-structure-URLs-improve-URLs-improveurls.html”

Create a simple directory structure

1. Avoid having deep nesting of subdirectories like “…/dir1/dir/dir/dir4/dir5/dir6/page.html”
2. Don’t use directory names that have no relation to the content in them

Provide one version of a URL to reach a document

1. Avoid having pages from subdomains and the root directory access the same content – e.g. “domain.com/page.htm” and “sub.domain.com/page.htm”
2. Don’t use odd capitalization of URLs – many users expect lower-case URLs and remember them better.

You can search for your perfect domain name here.

A reasonable number of links (below 100) per page will give a better user experience.

Search engines may not follow all the links if you have too many of them on a single page.

Consider using punctuation in your URLs

Search Engines recommend that you use hyphens (-) instead of underscores (_) in your URLs.

Overly complex URLs, especially those containing multiple parameters, can cause problems for crawlers by creating unnecessarily high numbers of URLs that point to identical or similar content on your site.

Other symbols than these used by us are not suitable for better click rates, the sites will be avoided by the search engines. And even Space and ASCII characters are not accepted.

Steps to resolve these problems:

1. Check your site for broken relative links.
2. If your site has an infinite calendar, add a nofollow attribute to links to dynamically created future calendar pages.
3. Whenever possible, shorten URLs by trimming unnecessary parameters.
4. Wherever possible, avoid the use of session IDs in URLs. Consider using cookies instead.
5. Consider using a robots.txt file to block the Search Engine bot’s access to problematic URLs. Typically, you should consider blocking dynamic URLs, such as URLs that generate search results, or URLs that can create infinite spaces, such as calendars. Using regular expressions in your robots.txt file can allow you to easily block large numbers of URLs and allow only SEO Friendly URLs.

Summary of what you should remember:

1. Use URL rewrite to turn dynamic pages with query parameters into SEO friendly static pages.
2. Good URLs are not only user-friendly but also SEO friendly URLs.
3. Put your important keywords in the URL.
4. Avoid using STOP WORDS in your URLs.
5. Keep the number of links per page below 100.

Make sure you always choose a small and good URL with some keywords (don’t overdo it!) related to your post, to get clicks to your site.

Learn to Write Anchor Text and How to Benefit from Modern SEO (2023)

When optimizing your site for SEO, one important technique is the use of anchor text, the word or phrase you use the link.

The words contained in the anchor text can determine the ranking that the page will receive from search engines.

Use Anchor Text for Better SEO

Suitable anchor text makes it easy to convey the contents linked.

With appropriate anchor text, users and search engines can easily understand what the linked pages contain.

What is Anchor Text?

Anchor text is an On-Page SEO (can be also Off-Page SEO from links pointing to your site) element that usually gives the user relevant descriptive or contextual information about the content of the link’s destination.

Consider the anchor text, the actual text of your links, carefully when making internal links on your site.

For spiders to notice your site, relevant keywords should be incorporated into anchor text.

The anchor text you use for a link should provide at least a basic idea of what the page linked to is about.

Avoid writing generic anchor text like “page”, “article”, or “click here” and using text that is off-topic or has no relation to the content of the page linked to.

Also, avoid using the page’s URL as the anchor text in most cases.

Aim for short but descriptive text-usually a few words or a short phrase.

Make it easy for users to distinguish between regular text and the links.

You may usually think about linking in terms of pointing to outside websites, but paying more attention to the text used for internal links can help users and Search Engines navigate your site better.

Importance of Anchor Text on the Backlinks Pointing to Your Site

When it comes to backlinks to your site, since the Google Penguin update, it pays to avoid having too many links with highly optimized exact match anchor text.

Ideally, the links to your website should be earned naturally because you have great content.

Think about this: How many people would naturally link to your company with the phrase “good marketing agency”? The answer is very few if any.

So pay much more attention to use anchor text with internal links and navigate your visitors and search engines through your site.

Think this way when optimizing your site, internal linking through your site is just as important as external backlinks are for your site.

Anchor text is an important part of your SEO strategy, use them judiciously and you’ll reap great benefits.

Heading Tags: Best SEO Practices on How to Use H1-H6

How to Use Heading Tags for Better On-Page SEO ?!

HTML headings and emphasis tags are the most basic forms to indicate important content for users and SEO purposes.

Heading Tags for On-Page SEO

HTML Heading tags can help improve your listings in the search engines but also the usability of your site or blog.

The <h1> to <h6> tags are used to define HTML Headings.

These tags are also known as HTML header tags, head tags, and On-Page SEO header tags.

Heading Tags should not be confused with the <head> HTML tag or HTTP headers.

Heading tags are used to present structure on the page to users.

There are six sizes of heading tags, beginning with <h1>, the most important, and ending with <h6>, the least important.

What is an H1 tag?

Usually, H1 will be the heading of the page or website. Common H1 tags could be your website name, the name of the page, or an article name.

Use your keywords in these tags and make sure the first level heading (H1) includes the most important keywords.

Since headings typically make text contained in them larger than normal text on the page, this is a visual cue to users that this text is important and could help them understand something about the type of content underneath the heading text.

Create multiple heading sizes and use them to create a hierarchical structure for your content, making it easier for users to navigate through your document.

For more effective On-Page SEO, use only one H1 tag per page.

The h1 tag should hold the title describing the content of a specific page therefore only one h1 tag is needed per page.

How many H2 tags per page ?!

There can be any number of h2 – h6 tags but they should be added in order of importance.

Use heading tags where it makes sense.

Too many heading tags on a page can make it hard for users to scan the content and determine where one topic ends and another begins.

Each page should have a single h1 tag that summarizes the contents of the page.

If the page contains a significant amount of text, it should be organized with h2 through h6 subheadings that summarize and categorize the text that they precede.

Search engines rely on correctly used headings to determine the organization and contents of a site.

For more effective On-Page SEO, use only one H1 tag per page.

Keep away from:

1. Placing text in heading tags that wouldn’t help define the structure of the page
2. Using heading tags where other tags like <em> (Italic) and <strong> (Bold) may be more appropriate
3. Erratically moving from one tag size to another
4. Excessively using them throughout the page
5. Putting all of the page’s text into a heading tag
6. Using only for styling text and not presenting structure.

Some Other Tips for On-Page SEO and UX

1. In addition to properly laying out your heading tags, making them unique is another must-do.
2. Making these tags as targeted as possible is key. Describing exactly what is on your page is the best way to get visitors from search engines. Try to include your most important keyword phrases in heading tags on your page if you can.
3. Consider rethinking your page content. It is often very easy to take an existing page full of copy and find ways to break it up into separate sections with headings.
4. It has been said that search engines actually only analyze h1 & h2 tags in that same order of priority.

For users that use WordPress as the CMS for their sites usually, these tags are optimized (not always), but for those in Blogger, these tags should be optimized manually and for this.

I recommend this amazing tutorial from My Blogger Tricks.

So don’t forget, these tags are an important website component for SEO and catching the user’s eye, so be careful how you use them!

For SEO consulting services you can always write to us and we will contact you ASAP!

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