SEO FAQ

Search Engine Optimization is a series of steps to help ensure the website can be properly indexed by search engines. A properly indexed site has a better opportunity to appear on page One of a search page. SEO is important because 94% of people who are searching don’t go beyond page one.

Search Engine Optimization depends on more than 200 algorithms  – including main headlines (H1), title tags, meta descriptions. Check out some of Google’s upcoming algorithm updates in June 2021. Some of these changes are page experience including load time, mobile experience and securing your site with https. To learn more about Google algorithm updates: https://developers.google.com/search/blog/2021/04/more-details-page-experience.

SEO’s role in lead generation is to help your target audience find you quickly and easily learn what it is you have to offer therefore recognizing your business as one that can potentially satisfy their needs.

People rarely land on a website the first time and convert to a sale.  They usually visit multiple websites, multiple times seeking more and different information. A useful SEO can help you figure out the information they’re likely looking for and present it in a way that is easy to find, digest, and be useful.

Local Search Optimization (LSO) boosts the probability of bringing local prospects to your site. It depends on many of the same tactics of SEO – including main headlines (H1), title tags, and meta descriptions.

Local SEO requires an optimized Google Business Profile page, and Google Map be setup to support “near me” search results.

First and foremost, your copy must satisfy the searcher’s information intent – the goal of the person visiting your website.

How do you do that?

• Your copy must be structured so visitors can quickly scan and get a sense of whether it is relevant, credible and useful.
  • Use a headline and sub-headings to organize the copy on the page to make for easy readability, as website pages are often scanned
  • Use lists where practical
  • Whitespace is your friend for readability
  • Use short paragraphs
  • Enhance understanding with visuals
  • If applicable, employ an introduction at the beginning and a summary at the end
• Relevance is determined by the use of keywords.
  • Keywords are the words and phrases people type into search engines
  • Use the words and phrases that your intended audience also uses and was looking for when they landed on the website
  • Keywords (keyword phrases) should be in your opening paragraph, headings, and wherever it makes sense throughout
• Highlight the author’s bio to help generate trust and demonstrate subject matter expertise.
• Use Blogging to add copy frequently, to keep the search engine coming back for more.
• Think beyond copy for content strategy.
  • Add video, Infographics, etc. to create a richer experience that keeps visitors on the page.
• Lastly, your content should end with a Call-To-Action to either build trust or generate a lead.
  Click here to view examples of Our Work.

(P) Author, Date

(H2) Snippet Copy (short answer to question)

(P) Body Copy (full article)
Incorporate thumbnail photo in text block

(H4) About the Author

(P) Author Bio (3 or 4 sentences)

Website navigation and corresponding page structure have to do with the way files are organized on your website.

A good website page structure makes it easy for:

• Search engines to find, understand, and assign importance to your content; and
• Website visitors to quickly and easily navigate your content to find what they’re looking for

The ideal website structure is pyramid-shaped with the most important information at the top. The home page should be your starting point. It appears at the very top. Below that should be the topics or categories most important to your business and below that, sub-categories (like the table of contents at the beginning of a book), pages and posts.

Here’s how an Engineering Company’s website might be structured. (Think of a pyramid). First there’s the Home Page. Then there are tabs that represent the categories, in this case they would be:

Category/Tab 1: About   Category/Tab 2: Services   Category/Tab 3: Projects   Category/Tab 4: Contact

Beneath the Categories there are sub-categories providing more extensive information regarding the Categories. In the case of the Engineering Company:

About could be followed by sub-categories:

Executive Team and History;

Services:

Environmental Compliance, Civil/Municipal, Geospacial/GIS, Stormwater/MS4;

Projects:

ABC,Llc;  BLT, Inc.;  XYZ, Ltd.

Contact:

Locations, Telephone Numbers, Maps, Contact Us Form.

*Notice how the bulk of pages appear at the lowest level and are grouped according to topic or category giving Google (and site visitors) context.

Navigation considerations

In addition to the above structure, also consider the this question.  Is it better to have lots of main topic categories for the navigation or is it better to minimize the number of navigation elements.  The answer…it depends!

• From a user experience perspective the ideal navigation structure is flat, where at a glance you can see every page that is on the website.  For the search engine this is a very inefficient structure because the content is not grouped or logically organized by content type.
• The opposite is to have a single navigation button with sub-menu structure listing every page.  From a search engine perspective the single button is efficient for the search engine but would create a terrible user experience.
• When thinking about the navigation structure it is better to put the important content about your services and products under a single navigation button, and to please the lower level less important content into another umbrella button, e.g., Resources, About, etc.

Don’t shortchange the effort that goes into structuring your site. It’s very important and difficult to change once your website is launched.

What is a Title Tag and why is it important?

Title Tags are one of the most important elements of an optimized website.

A Title Tag tells the search engine what your page content is about which helps it deliver the right page to a searcher. It should be unique and keyword focused.

Duplicate Title Tags (tags that appear on more than one page of your site) tell the search engine that the pages are of low value, not important enough to merit a unique tag. Duplicate tags may cause the search engine to filter your pages and not deliver them and deny them the ability to rank for key terms.

For optimal local search results, the Title Tag should also incorporate a geographic attribute (city, or ZIP Code).

A Title Tag can not exceed 66 characters. You can tell the Title Tag is too long if it is displaying with an ellipse ( … ) at the end of the text. The Moz.com website has an excellent Tutorial on Title Tags.

There are many Title Tag testers, Google it and you will see many options. Here is an example.

To understand the importance of Title Tags read out blog.

What is a Meta Description?

A Search Engine Results Page (SERP) is presented to a viewer when they do a search on Google.  Each company listed on the SERP has three components a Title Tag, the website URL, and a Meta Description.

The Meta Description is about 180 characters used to describe what information the visitor can expect to see on the specific website page listed on the SERP.

The best way to use the Meta Description is to think of it as an ad because there can be up to fourteen search results to choose from.  The Meta Description copy gives you the opportunity to differentiate your Meta Description from the competing search results and speak directly to the searcher.  The goal is to get the searcher to click on your website.

The Meta Description is not a Google Ranking Factor, but Click-Thru-Rate is, so give thoughtful consideration to the Meta Description copy and Title Tag keywords to speak directly to your ideal customer’s search intent.

Speak directly to your ideal customer’s search intent with the use of Meta Tags.

What is an Alt Tag and Why You Should Use Them?

Alt Tags are the Meta Descriptions used to describe the images used on your website. It should summarize the purpose of the image.  The Alt Tag text which describes an important photo (i.e. a product) makes it possible for the search engine to find it, interpret the meaning or content of the photo, and index it. Strictly decorative photos do not need Alt Tags.

How many characters are allowed in a Alt Tag

Technically speaking there is no limitation.  As a practical matter, best practice is to be between 100 and 125 characters.  If accessibility is the goal, the recommendation is 100 characters.  Google will count about 15 words which are roughly equivalent to about 125 characters.

Alt Tags aid the Search Engine

• Can contain keywords related to your product or service
• Provide another place to describe your product or service
• Provide a unique description of the photo or image

Alt Tags Enable Accessibility

For the visually impaired, an Alt Tag assists with website accessibility when connected to screen readers.

Read why Alt Tags are increasingly important to the accessibility of your website.

What is a Sitemap?

Simply put, a sitemap is a list of pages on your website and how that content is organized. It’s a list of pages of a website available to both search engine crawlers and website visitors. A sitemap can be used as a development planning tool for web design. Usually the website pages are organized hierarchically. This helps the visitors and search engine bots (crawlers) find specific pages on the website. Think of a sitemap as a Table of Contents for the website pages.

There are two types of sitemaps. There is the visual one that is created before building a website – the planning tool also know as a Wire Frame Drawing. The most important kind of sitemap, however, is the XML sitemap which is a list of the pages, videos and other files and how they are related on the website that the search engines can interpret.

“An XML sitemap is a file where you can list the web pages of your website to tell Google and other search engines about the organization of your site content. Search engine web crawlers like Googlebot read this file to more intelligently crawl your website.” More about sitemaps from Google.

The sitemap not only tells the search engines that pages exist but also what’s on the pages, for instance rich media like images, video or audio.

You can help Google know that you have an XML sitemap through the Google Search Console. Submitting it alerts Google that the website exists and is ready for Google or other search engine bots to crawl and index the website.

The other sitemap is the one that is usually displayed in the footer which lists the pages on your website to help the visitor understand how the website is organized.

What does Indexing a Website Mean?

This is rather technical, but an important question because it is search engine indexing that allows the keywords on your website pages to be found and your website to appear in a web search. In simple terms, indexing is a process used by search engine crawlers (BOTS) to read the content on your website and store the content with keywords found in their proprietary database. This is the way keywords are used to find particular pages on your site when it is searched by an end-user.

Depending on the meta tag you use (Index or Noindex), Google will crawl and index your pages. A noindexed tag tells Google you don’t think the page is important and not to index the page. On the other hand, if the meta tag you use is index then that signals the search engine that the page is important and it will automatically be indexed (stored in the search engine’s database). Many search engines, such as Google, Bing, Yahoo, etc., are continuously visiting (crawling) webpages and compiling keywords to include in a database (index). The index maps keywords to pages for easier data retrieval when someone is searching the web.

Here is an example: When you search for “Marketing Agencies Near Me” you get a Search Engine Results Page (SERP) that looks like this.

The Noindex concept is important because you can eliminate pages from the search engine index that you know are not important or have little or no value in getting leads for your business. Some examples of low value pages might be Landing pages related to ads, Privacy Policy page, a Price List page, an Employment page, a Donate page, etc.