Seo guru Page 2
Meta Description, Content and Image Optimization
Meta Description Attribute
Meta descriptions are HTML attributes that provide concise summaries of
webpages. They are between one sentence to a short paragraph and appear
underneath the blue clickable links in a search engine results page (SERP).
However, depending on a user's query, Google might pull meta description
text from other areas on your page (in an attempt to better answer the
searcher's query).
Example:
Meta description example
Code sample
Optimal length
Meta descriptions can be any length, but Google generally truncates snippets
~300 characters (this limit increased in December 2017). It's best to keep meta
descriptions long enough that they're sufficiently descriptive, so we
recommend descriptions between 50–300 characters. Keep in mind that the
"optimal" length will vary depending on the situation, and your primary goal
should be to provide value and drive clicks.
<head>
<meta name="description" content="This is an example of a meta description.
This will often show up in search results.">
</head>
Optimal format
Meta description tags, while not tied to search engine rankings, are extremely
important in gaining user click-through from SERPs. These short paragraphs are
a webmaster's opportunity to "advertise" content to searchers, and searchers'
chance to decide whether the content is relevant and contains the information
they're seeking from their search query.
A page's meta description should intelligently (read: in a natural, active, non-
spammy way) employ the keywords that page is targeting, but also create a
compelling description that a searcher will want to click. It should be directly
relevant to the page it describes, and unique from the descriptions for other
pages.
Google ranking factor?
Google announced in September of 2009 that neither meta descriptions nor
meta keywords factor into Google's ranking algorithms for web search.
Meta descriptions can however impact a page's CTR (click-through-rate) on
Google which can positively impact a page's ability to rank.
For that reason, among others, it's important to put some effort into meta
descriptions.
SEO best practices
Write compelling ad copy
The meta description tag serves the function of advertising copy. It draws
readers to a website from the SERP, and thus is a very visible and important
part of search marketing. Crafting a readable, compelling description using
important keywords can improve the click-through rate for a given webpage.
To maximize click-through rates on search engine result pages, it's important
to note that Google and other search engines bold keywords in the description
when they match search queries. This bold text can draw the eyes of
searchers, so you should match your descriptions to search terms as closely as
possible.
Avoid duplicate meta description tags
As with title tags, it's important that meta descriptions on each page be
unique. Otherwise, you'll end up with SERP results that look like this:
One way to combat duplicate meta descriptions is to implement a dynamic and
programmatic way to create unique meta descriptions for automated pages. If
possible, though, there's no substitute for an original description that you
write for each page.
Don't include double quotation marks
Any time quotation marks are used in the HTML of a meta description, Google
cuts off that description at the quotation mark when it appears on a SERP. To
prevent this from happening, your best bet is to remove all non-alphanumeric
characters from meta descriptions. If quotation marks are important in your
meta description, you can use the HTML entity rather than double quotes to
prevent truncation.
Sometimes it's okay to not write meta descriptions
Although conventional logic would hold that it's universally wiser to write a
good meta description rather than let the engines scrape a given web page,
this isn't always the case. Use this general rule of thumb to identify whether
you should write your own meta description:
If a page is targeting between one and three heavily searched terms or
phrases, write your own meta description that targets those users performing
search queries including those terms.
If the page is targeting long-tail traffic (three or more keywords), it can
sometimes be wiser to let the engines populate a meta description
themselves. The reason is simple: When search engines pull together a meta
description, they always display the keywords and surrounding phrases that
the user has searched for. If a webmaster writes a meta description into the
page's code, what they choose to write can actually detract from the relevance
the engines make naturally, depending on the query.
Content optimization: -
An ideal web page should do all of the following:
● Be hyper-relevant to a specific topic (usually a product or single object)
o Include subject in title tag
o Include subject in URL
o Include subject in image alt text
o Specify subject several times throughout text content
● Provide unique content about a given subject
● Link back to its category page
● Link back to its subcategory page (If applicable)
Link back to its homepage (normally accomplished with an image link
showing the website logo on the top left of a page)
Below you can find a summary of the points that has to be taken care while
optimizing your content :-
1. DO NOT COPY CONTENT (YOU CAN CHECK IT ON COPYSCAPE.COM)
2. YOUR FOCUS KEYWORD SHOULD BE PRESENT IN META TITLE AND HEADLINE OF YOUR
WEBPAGE AS WELL
3. YOU SHOULD FOLLOW HTML ARCHITECTURE WHILE WRITING YOUR CONTENT
4. MIN. OF 300 WORDS OF CONTENT IS REQUIRED
5. IDEAL FONT SIZE = 12, FONT TYPE=TIMES NEW ROMAN
6. YOU SHOULD TAKE CARE OF YOUR COLOR COMBINATION. IDEAL IS LIGHT
BACKGROUND N DARK TEXT.
7. KEYWORD DENSITY OF YOUR CONTENT SHOULD BE 3-5%
8. YOUR IMAGE SEO SHOULD BE PROPERLY DONE
9. WRITE SMALL PARAGRAPHS N DONOT MAKE ANY GRAMMETICAL MISTAKES
10. ALWAYS HAVE INTERLINKING, OUTBOUND LINKS IN YOUR CONTENT
11. MAINTAIN SEO FRIENDLY URL (VERY IMP.)
12. DONOT HAVE ANY NO FOLLOW LINKS ON YOUR WEBPAGE
13. DON’T HAVE ANY BROKEN LINKS (PAGE NOT FOUND) ON YOUR WEBSITE
14. YOUR WEBSITE OPEN TIME SHOULD BE 5 SECS FOR DESKTOP, 3 SECS FOR MOBILE
PHONES
15. ALWAYS UPLOAD SITE MAP ON YOUR WEBSITE
16. DONOT CREATE ANY CANONICAL ERROR
17. ALWAYS HAVE A COMPRESSED PAGES (PAGE SHOULD BE VERY LIGHT WITHOUT
EFFECTING QUALITY OF IMAGE)
FOR COMPRESSING IMAGE SOFTWARE: COMPRESSOR. IO
18. INCLUDE MICRODATA SCHEMA (NEW FEATURE ADDED BY GOOGLE) IN YOUR
WEBPAGE
KEYWORD DENSITY: AMOUNT OF KEYWORD IN YOUR CONTENT.
Image seo
What do you mean by image SEO?
The optimizing of the image as per the SEO parameters is referred to as image
SEO. Just like text, there is also an image section in Google where images are
shown as a result of keyword search. It works the same as the normal
searches. Thus, the title of the image and tags used, contribute to image SEO.
Simply put, with an attempt to explain image SEO to a layman we will quote
image SEO as the practice of attempting to rank the images higher in the
search for related keywords. Basically, this phenomenon came into practice to
match up with Google’s algorithms for search displays. Google algorithms are a
certain set of criteria followed by Google to show results for various searches.
Similarly, Google has a separate set of algorithm for image searches which use
image title, captions, alt text and tags for the images.
Let us begin with the clarity of concepts of image alt tags and image title tags.
The image tags are commonly known as alt tags or alt text and title tags even
though, they are not actually tags. They are the alt attributes of the image, the
purpose of which is to provide a description to the image.
Why do we need images and how they help us increase the engagement per
post?
The bloggers and SEO experts have time and again suggested that the images
must be used in blog posts in order to increase the reader’s engagement and
for certain other reasons we will be discussing in this space.
Visually appealing
The first and foremost reason to add pictures amidst the boring texts is to
make it attractive to read. The images describe the blog much before the texts
do. So, yes! the images are significant in their purpose i.e. make the texts
visually appealing.
Image SEO- The Search engine traffic generated by images
Images are capable of getting more traffic on the website than you can think
of. The image SEO works equally in proportion to texts in terms of getting the
traffic. By taking care of the metrics for image SEO, the images too can rank
higher. These images, when shown in search results, redirect the web users to
the owner’s website.
Relatability and Sharing
Images make the blog posts more interesting and descriptive in nature. The
readers are able to relate themselves more with the pictorial representations
and are able to understand better the blog posts that contain more of pictures.
Such pieces of writings increase relatability. When a reader is able to relate to
a piece of text, she is more likely to share it with her friends. The promotions
through word of mouth led by excitement and reliability are the best form of
promotion and if you are able to achieve that level, you are lucky.
The write-up appears substantial
A write-up that has covered one-fourth of the entire length with images is
more capable of retaining the reader’s attention. Also, the images create a
perception that the article is relatively more credible in information and is a
substantial source to pick information from.
Images are Descriptive
‘A picture is worth a thousand words’, is a popular quote and abiding by it, we
know that choosing the right image can be difficult but the right image is worth
more than long paragraphs of description of a particular subject. The texts are
important too but the value added by images is much more appealing to the
masses.
So, this was about why must you include images in a write-up. Let us now take
a look at the ways you can optimize the images inserted in a blog post, article
or any other form of digital write-up.
How to optimize images for Search Engine?
The web has listed several ways to optimize images as per the Google’s search
engine algorithms. In this space, we will take a glance at some of the
prominent points with an attempt to be able to optimize images at the end of
this blog.
Naming the images
Now, this might sound silly to you but when you download an image, it is very
important to save the image with the relevant name. Doing so will have two
major benefits: First, it will become very easy to locate the images in the
gallery. Second, it is beneficial from the SEO perspective as it will be
automatically picked up as the title tag.
The title tag helps the search engines to read the information better and show
your images in the related searches. Thus, for image SEO you must make it a
habit of saving the images with proper names.
An important point to be kept in mind while saving the images is to choose
image titles that will be used by your target audiences for searching your
products or website online. Accordingly, you must choose your title names
that will show your image in the search results.
Use friendly Alt text for your images
Many SEO experts may be using Alt text for images but most of them lack the
knowledge on how to write SEO friendly alt text for your images. The idea of
Alt text is that it is a text alternative to the images. Thus, making it easy for
web crawlers to render the information. This is the reason you will find it
suggested on many places that you must use friendly alt tags for your images.
But what do we mean by friendly here? Friendly, here refers to the texts that
are easily understood by the search engines and are written in plain English.
So, stick to it- Be descriptive and use plain English.
Tips for choosing Alt texts:
●Be specific with the product terms, especially if you are dealing in technical
products.
●Do not stuff keywords in all your images
●The decorative images do not need to be filled with alternative texts since
those do not substantiate the texts. Thus, inserting alt attributes in these
images will do no good but only harm the reputation o your website.
Do not set your image size too high
The image size and the load time are directly proportional to each other. Thus,
it is always advised to avoid using too high image size since it will affect the
load time of the website which is not a good sign from the SEO perspective.
(Read for SEO tips and tricks for bloggers)
Whatever image size you choose you must keep it consistent throughout the
post and equip it with descriptive alt tags.
Also, it must be noted that the image size does not necessarily refer to the
dimensions of the image.It is mainly focused on the file size and if you use
WordPress, you will anyhow have to use an image that is of max. 2 MB.
Choose the file type wisely Jpeg, Png, or any other
The file type you choose has an effect on the image quality that will be
displayed on the web. And you don’t want to display a poor quality image on
your blog or generally on the website either. So, you know there is another
point to be considered while you are optimizing the images on the blog i.e. the
file type of the image. Let me show you an example that clearly differentiates
between the image quality of different file types.
This image seems like an evident enough example of the quality difference
with different file types.
Avoid Uploading Decorative images
When we say avoid uploading Decorative images, it is because we suggest you
to add them to the layout design of the website and not upload it each time
you publish a post. This subtracts the spamming issue and eases your task
overall.
Also, if you upload decorative images each time without alt attributes, it will
do no good to your website, instead, harm the value of your website. Thus,
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