Content SEO: Top SEO considerations for online writers and editors

Content SEOTop SEO considerations for online writers and editors

Presented by Rick DeJarnette — The SEO Ace (www.theseoace.com)

The World Wide WebAs of October 2013:

• Number of websites worldwide:

767 million• Number of URLs indexed in Google worldwide:

~39 billionHow will online readers find your content page?

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Source: http://www.worldwidewebsize.com/

http://www.worldwidewebsize.com/


Agenda

• Introduction to search engine optimization (SEO)

• How writers and editors can affect SEO

• Page title: the <title> tag

• Page description: the <meta> description tag

• Page headline: the <h1> tag

• Alternative text for images: the <img> tag’s alt text attribute

• Body content: Enough body text with inline links

• News keywords: <meta> news_keywords tag

• Social media promotion

• Google Authorship Markup

• Keyword research tools and techniques (if time allows)

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Quick Poll

• How many of you write or edit online content?

• How many of you can edit the page metadata or have access to the HTML code in those pages?

• How many of you write or edit original online news content?

• How many of you use social media to promote your work?

• How many of you get bylines with your writing?

• How many of you would like to be recognized as an authority in your subject area in Google?

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What is SEO?

Search engine optimization (SEO) is the process of improving the content and architecture of the pages on a website …

… so web search engines can optimally interpret the meaning of the content they contain, …

… and thus give those pages the optimum stack rank they deserve for keyword queries …

… compared to similar pages on competing websites.

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What is SEO?

Search engines:

• Are designed to emulate human readers, and thus strive to rank webpages in the order of what is most useful, informative and relevant to the search query

• Employ several hundred prioritized factors in their page ranking algorithm

• Update their algorithms many hundreds of times per year

• Are not humans, and thus benefit from a little spoon-feeding of information about the content on a page (in metadata HTML tags)

• Recognize that the spoon-feeding is a potential point of vulnerability, and thus are extremely vigilant about combating web spam & overly-aggressive, malicious, deceptive (black hat) SEO

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SEO Ranking Factors – Periodic Table

Source: http://searchengineland.com/seotable

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http://searchengineland.com/seotable


SEO: How Writers & Editors Have Impact

Best ways online writers and editors can affect SEO:

• Page title: <title> tag

• Page description: <meta> description tag

• Page headline: <h1> tag

• Alt text for images: <img> alt text

• Body text with inline links

• News keywords: <meta> news_keywords tag

• Social media promotion

Note: the old <meta> keywords tag has no keyword relevance value in modern SEO

Producing high content quality is the key!10/15/2013 8


Defining content quality

Questions to identify what counts as high-quality content

(YES is good!):

• Does the site avoid having duplicate, overlapping or repeat articles

on the same or very similar topics with slightly different keyword

variations?

• Do the articles provide original content or information, original

reporting, original research or original analysis?

• Do the articles contain insightful analysis or interesting information

that is beyond the obvious?

• Do the articles avoid being too short, unsubstantial or otherwise

lacking in helpful specifics?Source: http://googlewebmastercentral.blogspot.com/2011/05/more-guidance-on-building-high-quality.html by Amit Singhal, Google’s head of search

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http://googlewebmastercentral.blogspot.com/2011/05/more-guidance-on-building-high-quality.html


SEO Editorial Best Practices SummaryHTML metadata tag Length limits * Purpose

<title> 40 - 65 characters,including length of site branding (if used)

Blue hyperlink in search engine results pages (SERPs). The most important tag for keyword relevance.

<meta> description 120 - 160 characters Quick synopsis of what the searcher can expect to find on the page, written in compelling, descriptiveand actionable terms, seen only in SERPs.

<h1> 10 - 200 characters Visible, on-page headline defining the page content.

<img> alt text 25 - 150 characters A text description of the digital image relevant to the page content to enhance keyword relevance.

<meta>news_keywords

Up to 10 keywords or keyword phrases, parsed by commas

Identifies additional keywords as relevant to the content in the Google News index (only applicable tosites accepted into Google News).

Body text 125 non-linked words bare minimum; at least 250+ words is better

The body text, read by search engines, enables them to consume the content, interpret its topical theme, and establish relevance to keywords.

Inline links Strive for at least one relevant link in the first 150 words

Adds value to article by pointing to additional, related content for readers; use descriptive link text.

* All character counts include space characters

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Where page metadata shows up

Page title (<title> tag)

Page headline (<h1> tag)

Page description snippet(<meta> description tag)

Body text

Inline link10/15/2013 11

Not visible:• <img> tag alt text attribute• <meta> news_keywords tag

<title> tagThe most important tag for creating keyword relevance


<title> tagPurpose

• Concisely describes the content theme of the page

• Most important tag for establishing keyword relevance for the page with search engines

• Used as blue link text in Search Engine Result Pages (SERPs)

Best Practices

• Write in natural English language for humans, but format the tag text for search engines

• Write tag text highly relevant to the content of the page; avoid metaphors and irony

• Use the most potent keywords found in the body text of the page (determine keyword potency in Google AdWords)

• Put the core keyword phrase toward the start and site branding, if used, at the end of the tag text

• Ensure text length is between 40-65 characters, including spaces

• Avoid using stop words (such as: the, is, while, then, of, we, etc.) when possible; they offer no keyword relevance

• Differentiate <title> text from the page headline (<h1>) text by being more concise, keyword-focused

• *If your CMS doesn’t encode special characters, omit the double quote (") – it’ll truncate tag text in the HTML code

• *If your CMS reuses <title> text for friendly URLs (fURLs), keep fURLs clean by not using the following in <title> text:

non-English letters (such as the accented é) or these special characters <>{}[]():;'"/\|&?@$#%,^+=!*

The following characters are OK -_.~ Also, don’t use Microsoft Word with Autocorrect enabled to write page

metadata – it substitutes special characters like curly quotes and dashes, which have to be percent-encoded in URLs

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http://norm.al/2009/04/14/list-of-english-stop-words/


<title> tag text: well-optimized example

How this will appear in a SERP:

<title> tag text

<title> tag text

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<title> tag text: room for improvement

How this will appear in a SERP: <title> tag text

<title> tag text

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<meta> description tagThe elevator pitch for your page in search


<meta> description tagPurpose

• Quick synopsis of what the searcher can expect to find on the page

• The primary intent is to convert a SERP impression into a click

• Not used for keyword relevance by search

• Query word(s) are automatically bolded within the SERPs for added visibility

Best Practices


• Add the description text to every content page of the site

• Write a unique description for each page – no boilerplate duplicates across a department

• Write the text for humans in compelling, descriptive and actionable language

• *If your CMS doesn’t encode special characters, don’t use the double quote character (")

in this text – use single quote (') if necessary – it’ll truncate the tag text in the HTML code

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<meta> description tag text: well-optimized example

How this will appear in a SERP:<meta> description text

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<meta> description tag text: room for improvement

How this will appear in a SERP:<meta> description text

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<h1> tagThe visible, on-page headline that describes the content


<h1> tagPurpose

• The visible, on-page headline defining the content of the page

• Similar to a newspaper article headline, this text provides significant keyword relevance

for the page to search engines

• Heading tags, such as <h1>, <h2>, and so on, were developed for formatting, but CSS has

replaced them for formatting, and search engines interpret them as data tags that provide

concise descriptions for pages, or sections of a page.

Best Practices

• Use relevant keywords found in the body text relating to the theme or subject of the page

content

• When possible, do not use an exact copy of the <title> tag text. Differentiate the headline

text by using a variant of the <title> tag text’s keyword phrase or use alternative, related

words taken from the body text

• Ensure text length is between 10-200 characters, including spaces10/15/2013 21


<h1> tag text: well-optimized example

<h1> tag text: love: friendship, dating, sex & marriage

<title> tag text: Relationship and Dating Advice for Women and Men - MSN Living

The well-optimized <h1> tag text includes related keywords from the <title> tag. This helps with categorizing and ranking for keywords.

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<h1> tag text: room for improvement

<h1> tag text: Plum crazy

<title> tag text: Plum crazy - MSN Living

The <h1> tag text is a direct duplicate of the <title> tag (with site branding added) and lacks any clear relevance to the content found on the page.

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<img> alt textThe text content that describes a digital image


<img> alt textPurpose

• Describes content of digital images in text form for search engines to consume

• Provides significant keyword relevance for the page to search engines

Best Practices

• Write using natural language. The text need not be a complete sentence nor are ending

periods needed, but it shouldn’t be merely a list of keywords

• Write the image description in context to the content theme of the page

• Use relevant keywords found in the body text

• Put the core keyword phrase toward the start of the text for strongest relevance

• Put copyright and photographer/agency attribution information, if used, at the end


• If your CMS doesn’t encode special characters, don’t use the double quote character (") in

this text – use single quote (') if necessary – it’ll truncate the tag text in the HTML code

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<img> alt text: well-optimized example

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Alt text used: “Florida lizards: A young tegu lizard is held by Jake Edwards, a wildlife technician for the Florida Fish and Wildlife Conservation Commission.”


<img> alt text: room for improvement

“"Plum Crazy"\\ CLINIQUE”

Existing alt text:

“Clinique Chubby Stick Lip Colour Balm in Voluptuous Violet”

Better optimized alt text:

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Body text with inline linksThe meat of the story and links to more information


Body text with inline linksPurpose

• Body text, written in clear ASCII text, not displayed via JavaScript, AJAX, Flash, Silverlight, video or in images, is what

search engine crawlers read to determine the subject of the page

• An inline link used in body text further develops the concepts on the page by referring the reader to another, related

page (optimally within the site) using a relevant keyword phrase for the target page as link text

• Search engines see inline links as benefitting human readers and generally regard links as endorsements of the

target page

Best Practices

• Ensure there is a bare minimum 125 non-linked words in the body text section of an article page or on the first slide

of a single URL gallery. Optimally, 250+ non-linked words is a much better minimum to develop search engine

relevance

• In galleries that do not change the URL as they advance through the images, each subsequent slide also needs body

text, but a minimum of a couple descriptive sentences is usually sufficient. More is better, however

• Only link to pages that are relevant to the content of the page containing the link

• Ensure hyperlink text is relevant to the target page, as they are keyword(s) for that page. Do NOT use “click here” or

“more” as link text

• The most effective links for SEO purposes are those found within the first ~150 words of body text

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<meta> news_keywordsThe key to indexation in Google News


<meta> news_keywords tagPurpose

• Identifies additional keyword relevancy of page content to Google News

• Is supplemental to other important keyword relevance tags: <title>, <h1>, <img> alt text

• Helps Google understand the story’s theme when the headline is unclear or ambiguous

• Only applicable to sites accepted into and pages indexed in Google News, not Google web index or Bing

Best Practices

• Think about the keywords and phrases you would use in a query to search for the article in Google

• Develop a list of target keyword phrases for the content page

• Add up to maximum of 10 keyword phrases for a given page, optimally between 3-5 words long

• Think in terms of people, places and event names as good candidate keyword phrases

• Generally avoid single keywords, as they are usually too broad to specifically target the subject of a post

• Don’t repeat exact keyword phrases used in <title>, <h1> or <img> alt text; it is better to develop other keywords

• Use commas only to separate each keyword phrase (don’t use commas for any other reason, as in formatting large

numbers like “5,000”, or in adjective lists, as in “big, red dog”)

• Omit all other punctuation, such as periods (as in Dr. or Calif.), quotes, dashes, etc.

• All keyword phrases are given equal value; position in this tag doesn’t matter

• As case doesn’t matter, stick to using all lower-case letters in keyword phrases10/15/2013 31


<meta> news_keywords: well-optimized example

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<meta> news_keywords tag content:

Social media for contentThe rising gauge on how search measures popularity


Social media for contentPurpose

• Exposes content to users of other sites, such as Facebook, Twitter, Pinterest, Google+, etc.,

that then drives page views and links back to your site

• Social is the new link building audience-building methodology

Best Practices

• Use social media to announce and update breaking news stories

• Use social to link to evergreen stories that have become newsworthy and relevant again

• Republish social media posts later in the day for major feature stories or those that

remain highly relevant to daily events

• Retweet received messages that mention your content in a positive light

• Establish a consistent daily cadence of social posts

• Promote newly produced content and related evergreen content

• Consider using post scheduling automation and efficiency tools and services such as

HootSuite and Bit.ly10/15/2013 34


Social media & audience building

Share compelling content on social networks and blogs

The larger the audience for a piece of content = more links to your content

Google and Bing will see the links and add value to your content, giving a boost in the rankings for a page

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Influence of social media on search ranking

• Studies show that URLs receive a significant boost in Google rankings when they are shared on Twitter

• The benefits of this boost seem to level out at around 50 tweets, and the subsequent benefit of gaining additional tweets is minimal until around 5,000 tweets

• After 5,000 tweets, the average ranking of URLs improves considerably

• URLs receiving over 7,500 tweets almost always rank inside the top 5 results

• Average rankings are heavily correlated to the number of tweets about each URL

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Google Authorship MarkupHelp Google identify YOU as an expert on the topics you know best


What is Google Authorship Markup?

It’s Google’s method to attribute author credit to original, expert content.

With GAM enabled, the Google web SERPs use rich snippets to show additional author info, including a head shot photo and a link to more content by the author.

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Requirements & methods• A verified digital identify, owned by Google (a personal

Google+ profile), that links out to your published content

• Your published content needs to reference you as the sole author in a byline (multiple-author content is not yet supported) and link back to your verified Google+ profile (make sure your byline name exactly matches your name used in your Google+ profile)

• Google supports 4 methods of verifying that trust:

a 3-link method

a 2-link method

<link> tag in source code

an email verification method (Google’s preferred method)

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Email verification method

The email verification method can be used when the author can’t edit the content page author bio content.

1. The author byline links to an email address using the same root domain name as the content page.

2. That email address is registered and verified in the author’s Google+ profile.

Note: This scenario can be used anytime an email address link is used in the author byline.

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Set up your personal Google+ profileIf you have a Gmail account, you have a Google+ profile. Otherwise, create one at plus.google.com.

First, edit your profile and select a head shot photo to add.

No animals, cartoons, art or abstract designs.

Just a facial photo of you.

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Set up your personal Google+ profile

Enable +1s:

Add links to your other online profiles:

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Set up your personal Google+ profile

• Consider adding information about your occupation, employment, and other pertinent professional information related to your areas of expertise. These are not required for authorship markup, but they can often contribute an added degree of authority to an author.

• When you finish editing and saving the profile updates, copy the 21-digit number of the Google+ profile URL.

• Leave the browser tab open. You’re not done yet.

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Set up email verification sites

Browse to the Google+ page titled, Link your Google+ profile to the content you create.

1. Sign in to Google (if not already so)

2. Add the email address used in your content’s byline link

3. Click Signup for Authorship

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https://plus.google.com/authorship


Set up email verification sites

Click the link in the Google verification email you’ll receive.

Once verified, the email address will then be automatically added to your Google+ profile.

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WordPress challenges

• WordPress strips out all anchor tag attributes. There are workarounds, but be wary of the plug-in suggested by Google. It’s universally applicable (easy for Google), but it’s potentially unsafe(bad for the site owner).

• For most users, if the email method is not usable, the next best approach in WordPress is to use the 2-link method with a link to the author’s Google+ profile in the author bio snippet using ?rel=author.

<a href="https://plus.google.com/

123456789012345678901?rel=author">Google+</a>

• For more details on setting up Google Authorship Markup in WordPress, see The Definitive Guide to Google Authorship Markuparticle in Search Engine Land.

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http://wordpress.org/extend/plugins/allow-rel-and-html-in-author-bios/

http://www.searchengineland.com/the-definitive-guide-to-google-authorship-markup-123218


Validate the markup code

If you didn’t use the email verification method but instead used markup code, you need to validate the code with Google to be sure everything was done right.

Browse to the Structured Data Testing Tool (www.google.com/webmasters/tools/richsnippets), then have Google validate the markup code on your content page URLs (as well as your author bio page URL, if used)

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http://www.google.com/webmasters/tools/richsnippets


Validate the markup code

For 3-link and 2-link methods, you should see test results similar to this (the email method was verified by the submission form):

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Google Authorship Markup wrap up

• TIP: If your site also uses Google’s <link> rel=publisher code, it apparently interferes with rel=author functionality in the SERPs, so only use rel=publisher code on the site’s home page.

• Authorship markup helps Google identify the original source of published content. If Google judges the content as high quality, the author of that topic can also earn “author rank,” which may positively influence the ranking of future posts by the same author on the same topic.

• The author identification in the SERP will likely positively influence click-through rates for that listing, which is especially important for results ranked lower that #1.

• Employing Google Authorship Markup can only benefit good authors who are experts in their subject areas.

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Keyword research toolsIdentify which words hold the most power in search


Keyword research tools

There are numerous keyword research tools that can help uncover the words people use most often in search. Let’s take a look at some of the most commonly used and popular choices.

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Predictive searchIn both Google and Bing


Predictive search

How to use predictive search in Google and Bing

www.google.com or www.bing.com

• Start typing your core keyword phrase to see the results

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Predictive search shows what terms are being searched at the moment.

Google TrendsMine Google for historical trend data of hot search topics


Google Trends Hot SearchesHot searches - http://www.google.com/trends/hottrends

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Google Trends Hot Searches uses real time data to show which topics have jumped significantly in traffic.


Google Trends Top ChartsHot searches - http://www.google.com/trends/topcharts

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Google Trends Top Charts shows people, places and things with high, overall monthly search traffic going back to 2004.


Google Trends ExploreExplore Trends - http://www.google.com/trends/explore

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Google Trends Explore adds access to deeper levels of search trends data, based on specific words, categories, trends over time, in specific markets, etc.


Google Trends Explore

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Note that you can explore search trends for one or more specific words and phrases, and then drill down to get greater specificity with filters covering: • countries• dates• categories• specific Google

search indexes



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Location filters allow for country-wide drill downs in most locations, but for US searches, you can actually drill down by state, and even by major metro areas within a state.

Date filters allow for drill downs for the past week, month, quarter, year, a specific year, or a custom date of your choosing.



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Category filters allow for topic drill downs, and many have secondary and tertiary categories. Categories can be helpful in specifying the meaning of an ambiguous term.

While most people use web search most often, the other search indexes contain specific types of information, and these can be specified for Trends data.



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Google Trends Explore adds access to deeper levels of search trends data, based on specific words, categories, trends over time, in specific markets, etc.



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Google Trends Explore presents search trend data, detailing the amount of traffic over time, regional and metro traffic sources, and related search terms.



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You can further dig into your keyword research by comparing search terms, search traffic by locations, or search traffic over separate time slices.


Google Trends ExploreSecret to Success: Get much more useful data by downloading the report as a CSV from Google (you must be logged in first!).

Additional downloaded data includes:• Searcher interest over time for each keyword phrase (on a weekly basis)

• Top subregions for each keyword phrase (in the US, numbers provided by state)

• Top cities for each keyword phrase (when data is available)

• Top 20 keyword phrases (rather than just the top 10 as shown in the webpage)

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Google Keyword Planner Tool

Let Google help identify the best words to use in content


Google AdWords Keyword Planner ToolNext, take your list of keyword ideas and stack rank them further with the Google AdWords Keyword Planner Tool: https://adwords.google.com/ko/KeywordPlanner/Home

About the newest keyword research tool from Google:

• The old Google AdWords Keyword Tool was shut down in the summer of 2013 by Google, replaced with Google AdWords Keyword Planner Tool

• The new tool is primarily designed to help plan Pay-Per-Click (PPC) search ad campaigns

• However, we can make it work for SEO keyword research

Note: You will need a Google account login to use this tool. Your Gmail account login should suffice.

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https://adwords.google.com/ko/KeywordPlanner/Home


Google AdWords Keyword Planner ToolThere are 4 ways to use the tool. For keyword research for SEO, you’ll primarily use Search for new keyword and ad group ideas.

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Google AdWords Keyword Planner Tool• Add your keywords to the box

labeled Your product or service.

• Under Targeting, set the option to your site’s intended market (you can get quite specific in the US).

• Add any Negative keywords (words you don’t want in your keyword ideas list).

• Under Keyword options, choose between broad or closely related keyword ideas.

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Google AdWords Keyword Planner ToolThe tool will generate a list of ideas based on the seed ideas you give it. The Ad Group ideas tab contains keyword ideas by categories.

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Google AdWords Keyword Planner ToolThe Keywords ideas tab contains all of the individual keywords in a single list.

Click the column header Avg. monthly searches to sort them high-to-low.

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Google AdWords Keyword Planner ToolNote you can alter the way the tool works with keyword ideas. By default, broad match is used, but you can tighten up the results if you are looking for specific context.

You can directly edit keywords on the tool’s command line, including the individual match type.

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Google AdWords Keyword Planner ToolHere are the Google Keyword Planner Tool match type definitions. You’ll typically use broad match to get the most results, but here’s what the others match types do.Match type Special symbol Example keyword(s) Ads may show on searches that Example keywords included

Broad match none women's hatsinclude misspellings, synonyms, related searches, and other relevant variations

buy ladies hats, womens caps, hats for girls, womans hats, Buy red hats for women

Broad match modifier

+keyword +women's +hatscontain the modified term (or close variations, but not synonyms), in any order

women's hats, buy women's hats, Hats for women

But excludes:helmets for women, women's visors

Phrase match "keyword" "women's hats"are a phrase, and close variations of that phrase

women's hats, buy women's hats, woman's hats, Women's hats

But excludes:girls hats, womens baseball hats

Exact match [keyword] [women's hats]are an exact term and close variations of that exact term

women's hats, woman's hats

But excludes:buy women's hats, women's hats on sale

Negative match -keyword -baseball are searches without the term

women's hats, sun hats

But excludes:baseball hats, baseball caps

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Google AdWords Keyword Planner ToolIf you already know your list of keywords and just want to check the search volume for each, use Get search volume for a list of keywords or group them into ad groups.

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Google AdWords Keyword Planner ToolYou can add your list of specific keyword phrases to check to the list (either on separate lines or separated by commas) or upload a CSV file containing those keyword phrases.

Click Get search volumeto generate the list.

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Google AdWords Keyword Planner ToolOn the resulting page, click Keyword ideas tab to see the resulting data. Click Avg. monthly searches to sort by search volume.

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Google AdWords Keyword Planner ToolFor keyword mash-ups, you might try Multiply keyword lists to get new keyword ideas.

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Google AdWords Keyword Planner ToolYou can add specific items to one list and then add relevant modifiers to the other to create the mash-up list. Note that the mash-ups are concatenated in the order you present them in the lists. Click Get search volume to generate the mash-up list.

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Google AdWords Keyword Planner ToolOn the resulting page, click Keyword ideas tab to see the resulting mash-ups. Click Avg. monthly searches to sort by search volume.

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Google AdWords Keyword Planner ToolSecret to Success: Get much more useful data by downloading the report as a CSV from Google.

Be sure to select Segment statistics by month.

Additional data includes:• Google search traffic

per month for the past 12 months

• Competition data in detail (rather than high, medium or low)

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More information on me

Rick DeJarnette is the sole in-house SEO for all US channels

in MSN.com. He’s published original blog posts about SEO

in Search Engine Land, Internet Marketing Ninjas, The SEO

Ace and Bing Webmaster Center.

Rick can be found online at:

[email protected] LinkedIn

@rickdejarnette Google+

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http://searchengineland.com/author/rick-dejarnette

http://www.internetmarketingninjas.com/blog/author/rick-dejarnette/

http://www.theseoace.com/

http://www.bing.com/community/site_blogs/b/webmaster/archive/tags/sem+101/default.aspx

mailto:[email protected]

http://www.linkedin.com/in/rickdej

http://twitter.com/

https://plus.google.com/103276483247415774619

Thank you!