Correlation of onpage factors and positions in the SERP

The job of a web referencing consultant requires a constant updating of our knowledge and references, which leads to a questioning of our practices (or at least adjustments) in the implementation of ever finer parameters.

That’s why I start my day with a watch on the best SEO sites and read at least an hour a day (in the morning with my strong coffee) the latest articles on SEO.

Moz and Searchmetrics are must-haves in my RSS feed reader, which is not limited to Americans, there are a few blogs in France that publish informative and generous content.

In Quebec, it is unfortunately rarer, most SEO blogs are only pretexts for self-promotion and technical information is rarely available.

I even know colleagues who have their articles written by editors… However, I will mention the My Little big Web blog, which stands out from the crowd.

An SEO Lab Study

Moz is a laboratory, an observatory of the behavior of search engine algorithms. The seriousness of his studies is no longer to be demonstrated and the specialized tools available to SEOs are among the best (also the most expensive).

This article is a compilation of conclusions from a few reports from a study of the correlation of SEO criteria with the results found in different search engines.

As you read, I give the links to the original articles in case you want to dig into each subject.

Search Engine Accessibility

To rank your pages in search results, engines need to be able to crawl and index them. Before you can benefit from keyword targeting or other optimization techniques, you need to make sure that your page/post is accessible to search engines.

Recommendation:
Make sure your pages receive:

HTTP 200 return codes.

See http://moz.com/learn/seo/http-status-codes.

And that they are not blocked by robots.txt, or an x-robots protocol.

See http://moz.com/learn/seo/robotstxt.

Do not use a refresh to another URL.

If you don’t want this page to be visible or visited by search engines, use a 301 to permanently redirect it to a new page; This will preserve all the “link juice” on that page.

For more information on redirection, see http://moz.com/learn-seo/redirection or http://moz.com/blog/whiteboard-friday-which-way-did-he-go

The title tag <>

I have written the following paragraphs using either title or <title> so as not to confuse it with H1<>, also called title.

Embed your keyword in the Title tag <>

Moz’s correlation research has shown that the highest ranking pages are closely related to the use of a keyword in the tag <title>.

When search engines rank your page for a keyword, they consider the content of the tag to be <title> is the most important field.

Using a keyword or phrase in your title helps search engines associate the page with a query and/or its top-level lexical field.

Recommendation:
Add a shape of the targeted keywords in the <title>, preferably in the first few words of the tag. Using the master query is preferable, but by turning its expression finely, you will find many variations.

Avoid repetition of keywords in the title> tag < of the page

If you use keywords more than once in the title tag, search engines are able to “tag” your page for keyword stuffing (similar to text), which will hurt the page’s search engine rankings.

Recommendation:
Make sure you don’t use your targeted keywords more than once in the <title>. Instead, use this key phrase at the beginning of the tag.

Keyword at the beginning of the Title tag

Moz’s correlation research showed that pages that use the keywords targeted in the first few words of the tag <title> have a decisive advantage.

There is a direct relationship between this proximity to the beginning of the tag and the ranking by search engines.

Recommendation:
Write your page title to move targeted keywords to the beginning, or as soon as possible, in your page title tag.

Optimal Title Length

When search engines display your page on their results page, they only show the first 68/70 characters (the number of characters changed in June 2016 depends in part on how many pixels wide each character contains, but 70 is a good overall goal).

If your title is longer than that, the engines will truncate it.

The best <title> (and the best way to encourage potential visitors to click on your page), is a tag that doesn’t exceed 70 characters, explicit and “sexy” in its wording.

Recommendation:
Edit your <title > to 70 characters or less. See http://moz.com/learn/seo/title-tag.

The title <tag h1>

Avoid multiplying titles

Even if this is not formally an SEO mistake… like the book that has only one cover and one title, your web pages are supposed to have only one title <H1>, and for the sake of optimization and understanding of your pages by search engines, we recommend that you follow this practice.

See http://moz.com/learn/seo/title-tag.

Optimal use of keywords in the H1 tag <>

While using the targeted keywords in H1 tags on your page doesn’t directly imply high rankings, it does seem to provide a slight value.

It is also considered a best practice when it comes to accessibility and helps potential visitors and determines the content of your page, so we recommend it.

However, keyword repetition can be perceived as keyword stuffing (a form of search engine spam) and can have a negative impact on rankings.

To adhere to best practices in “Google News“ and “Bing news”, headlines should contain the target of relevant keywords and be treated with the same importance as <title>… Without repeating this keyword identically from one signal to another. (avoid the bully triplet –> [URL + title> + < H1> identical]

Recommendation:
Use a close variation of your targeted keyword(s) at the beginning of your H1> headers <once [but not more] on this page.

Read: http://moz.com/blog/4-graphics-to-help-illustrate-onpage-optimization.

URL Optimization

URL: Use only standard characters

If you only use characters that are common in URLs, it’s easier for users to access and interpret your URL.

Internet users have very different keyboards capable of typing less common characters, which browsers support more or less well, some special characters are even considered spammy.

By using only standard characters, you will also avoid possible problems with your search engine’s ranking.

Recommendation:
Make sure that your URLs contain only the following characters: letters, numbers, and the hyphen as a separator, all closed with a forward slash [/].

The parameters using the ampersand [&] and the hash [#] are quite fine too, but their functions are specific [internal engine and internal anchors].

A single canonical URL

The canonical URL tag is intended to denote the main pages (owner of the original content) when the content is in the site.

To ensure that search engines correctly parse the canonical source, your page should use only one version of this tag in the header.
Recommendation:
Make sure that pages that are duplicates of another page use the canonical URL tag to point to the same correct canonical URL.

Read http://moz.com/blog/canonical-url-tag-the-most-important-advancement-in-seo-practices-since-sitemaps.

Use keywords in your URL

Using your targeted keywords in the URL string adds relevance to your page for search engine rankings.

This helps potential visitors identify what your page is about from the URL, and brings SEO value when it is used as the link reference anchor text.

Recommendation:

Use your targeted keywords in the URL string of the page.

If you’re aiming for a sentence of multiple words, use hyphens [not underlining] to separate individual words. They allow search engines to read the URL as separate words.

Minimize URL size

Search engines often truncate the display of the URL to 75 characters, and long URLs seem to pass less value on the keywords in them.

We also recommend limiting your URLs to two levels of depth to make them easier for search engines to parse.

Recommendation:
Enter URLs that are as short as possible (especially categories), preferably less than 35 characters, and limit to three subfolder levels if possible.

Be descriptive and use keywords without articles, prepositions, or stop words.

The URL doesn’t need syntax

Take advantage of the fact that the URL is the only place where you can write a query such as “Keyword + City name” such as “roofing in Montreal” (/toiture-montreal/) without syntax errors. In a text on the page, the preposition “to” is essential. Avoid sending an image of an uneducated or spammer to the reader…

Example found on the web: Don’t bias the syntax, it’s useless.

Use static URLs

Using a static URL can improve your performance in search engine rankings.

Moz’s correlation studies show that URLs with dynamic parameters perform considerably worse in rankings.

Using dynamic settings doesn’t necessarily cause the worst rankings, but there seems to be a correlation that shows much lower click-through rates.

Dynamic URLs are also a source of duplicate content.
Recommendation:
Use mod rewrite or ISAPI rewrite to change your URLs and make them static [remove all instances of, =, etc.?].

Read: http://moz.com/blog/url-rewrites-and-301-redirects-how-does-it-all-work.

Pay attention to Canonical Rel URL tags

The canonical URL tag tells search engines that a page with content already edited on the site should be treated as a copy of the original (this happens when an item is placed under several categories, several “labels” or when e-commerce products are displayed under different parameters.

Check that your canonical tags point to the correct “target URL”, otherwise the “similarity” link won’t go through correctly, search engines might consider your pages as duplicate content.

Internal duplicate content is not really penalized, yet it unnecessarily increases the number of pages on a site without providing it with value. It is better to reduce it as much as possible.

Master pages and articles should also display their canonical tag (so they refer to themselves. (Kind of self-referencing).

Although Google has stated that this is a good practice, no correlation could be established by Moz’s studies.

It’s also unclear how the Bing engine views it.
Recommendation:
If this page is a copy of another page, add a canonical URL tag to the head of that page to reference the original page.

See http://moz.com/blog/canonical-url-tag-the-most-important-advancement-in-seo-practices-since-sitemaps.

Meta description

Use Meta descriptions

While a meta description has no influence on your page’s ranking in search results, it can be useful for improving the click-through results rate of potential visitors to the page, and for providing context for potential visitors to the topic and focus on the page.

The meta description is also what will appear as a description when users share your page on social media sharing sites like Facebook and Google+.

Recommendation:
Add a meta description tag to your page, describing the content of the page in a way that will make it irresistible to potential visitors who see the snippet in search results.

Meta Description of Optimal Length

The least SEO of the criteria of criteria??? of web referencing.

The meta description is not used for ranking, it must be thought out for marketing and written to present the article while making the user want to click on the result.

This is the snippet that search engines use to describe your page in the SERP.

It displays only 165 characters in most cases.

When your meta does not match the search, but a paragraph of the text in question answers the query, Google does not display your meta, it composes a snippet in its own way by drawing on the text and making an edit.
Recommendation:
Write your meta description tags by really targeting the essence of the subject at hand, you will keep control of it. All in 155 characters or less, 170 at most.

Keywords in the Meta Description

If your keywords are in the meta description tag, there are more likely search engines that will use it as the snippet that describes your page. Potential visitors see the keyword in bold in the snippet, which increases your page’s awareness and visibility.

Be careful not to use too many of these keywords, however, as it can be considered spam by search engines and potential visitors and reduce click-through rates and therefore potential visitors.

Recommendation:
Use your targeted keywords at least once, but no more than two times in the meta description tag. Instead, consider writing with a variation of this keyword.

See http://moz.com/learn/seo/meta-description.

Keyword, Keyword and Content

Avoid repetition of keywords in the document

If you use your “keyword” too many times in the document, search engines may negatively mark your page for keyword stuffing (a form of search engine spam that was widely used until 2012).

Keyword stuffing is detrimental to the referencing of the page and the SEO of the site.

Recommendation:
Check that your page doesn’t use your targeted keywords more than twice every 100 words. See http://moz.com/blog/perfecting-keyword-targeting-on-page-optimization.

Use the exact keyword at least once in the document

Both search engines and potential visitors are looking for the targeted keywords in your page text. Using keywords in the document element is not only a best practice, but an essential part of SEO and a good user experience.

Recommendation:
Use your targeted keywords at least once in the text of the page’s document.

See http://moz.com/blog/4-graphics-to-help-illustrate-onpage-optimization

Original content

Search engines look for pages that are as original as possible. Pages with unique content are less likely to be considered duplicate content from other pages and tagged as such from the index.

Our minimum of 500 words is certainly somewhat arbitrary, but it is also a number of words that allows us to dilute paragraphs or passages that could be similar or very inspired by other pages.

Recommendation:
Look for master pages with at least 500 words of engine-readable content, single text that offers real value to potential visitors.

Referencing is largely played out in the text! Images (without alt text), Flash files, Java applets, and other non-text content are virtually invisible to search spider engines.

Sufficient number of words in the content

In order to best rank them, your articles that deal with a searched topic/query, Bing or Google engines need texts that contain a sufficient amount of terms to understand it and evaluate its level of expertise.

The day before Moz’s algorithm (already mentioned in this article) on 1 million keywords indicated in July 2015 that the average number of pages positioned in the top 30 (yes, three pages of results) was 12,85 words, this average has risen to 1,800 words this year…

The 500-word reference is a vital minimum, a bit arbitrary, to be taken as a rule of thumb.

Recommendation :

Cover the topic thoroughly and make content engaging.

See http://moz.com/beginners-guide-to-seo/basics-of-search-engine-friendly-design-and-development

Image keywords: Alt attribute

The use of keywords in the alt attribute of an image on a page is slightly positively correlated with good rankings.

It also helps your page rank in Google images, a popular universal system and often used in searches.

Describing your images correctly using keywords also adds value for blind users who use a text reader app to browse the web.

Recommendation:

Add targeted keywords in your pages to the alt attribute of a relevant or graphic image. If your page doesn’t have any images, consider adding one.

Read: http://moz.com/learn-seo/on-page-factors.

Read also this article on image optimization for SEO

Internal and external linking

Use external links

The use of links to external pages is a practice “rewarded” by search engines and many SEO experts can confirm this.

On a page specifically targeting a keyword, pointing at least [and often more than one] external link to a reliable relevant resource is a great practice.

Recommendation :

Add a link to a relevant trusted resource that potential visitors can enjoy.

Avoid too many external links

External linking without abuse is generally a good thing, but like many SEO optimization tricks or tactics, moderation is the best choice.

If your page uses a large number of “follow” links to external pages, the transmission of “juice” from your page to the other is reduced, moreover, the suspicion of spam/manipulation is never far away, especially if these links do not point to trustworthy and quality pages/articles.

Recommendation:
Reduce the number of external, tracked links on your page below the 100 mark. An easy goal to achieve….

Avoid excess internal links

Google has confirmed that using too many internal links on a page will never trigger a penalty, but it does affect the link juice passed through those links.

Recommendation:
Reduce the number of internal links on your page to less than 100.

Read: http://moz.com/blog/external-linking-good-for-seo-whiteboard-friday and http://moz.com/blog/how-many-links-is-too-many.

Of course it is impossible to comply 100% with these recommendations and you will still find many sites very well placed in the SERPs which:

• heavily repeat the key word;
• whose meta tags are not optimal;
• which have no canonicals

Onpage optimization is not enough

Old practices die hard and SEO is often about being “less bad than others” by working in detail on what others have forgotten.

On the other hand, onpage criteria are only one part of organic SEO. some sites have acquired an authority that naturally positions them ahead of sites with impeccable onpage, despite the numerous and constant updates of Google.

They have other assets to compensate, tungsten carbide links for example…

By working ethically, you give your portal the chance to gain positions with each update rather than lose them.

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Don’t hesitate to participate in the SEO café, it’s free or to take an SEO training, the cost is very quickly amortized.

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