Code is usually a large core pillar of an excellent SEO strategy and is sometimes the part that is learned before other sections which might have some equal weight to them; learning how to produce clean code that displays the types of tags and elements that search engines need to see in order to evaluate your website, before long it becomes common knowledge that you need to focus on certain on-page elements in order for your website to rank in search engines.
At the start of the SEO industry, many people had no idea how to get traffic from search engines, and starting very early on, they began to take a look at other websites in order to not only teach themselves coding and design but also to take a look at the on-page elements of websites that ranked highly. This began the whole industry of SEO and the idea that search engines could be used as a marketing channel for businesses or for your personal branding. At the start of the internet, it became a very easy way to put your catalogue online and then be able to edit it on the go without needing to reprint it.
Website visitors, of course, have no idea about what code you use to build your website and instead only really care about what value you bring to the internet with your website. If you add value to their lives by answering their question or solving their problem, then how your website is structured and coded is of no real concern to them.
The reason why you want a good grasp and understanding of coding alongside SEO is that each individual choice we make can have a profound effect on things in the SEO process. An example of this might be having a greater understanding of HTML than other websites in the market, which will then give you a faster load time. A website that loads much faster than their competition makes Google and other search engines more likely to promote your site due to visitors being able to find the information they need much faster.
Part of the reason Google exists and has such market dominance is because it worked much faster at finding answers than its competition. At the time, most search engines were loaded with banner ads, and search results were not very accurate, which led to very frustrating experiences for anyone using these engines. At the time, it was deemed that helping people find things online was not really all that important, and instead, the number of eyeballs viewing the search engine homepage was the only thing that mattered.
As time went on it was seen that producing a quality coded system that allowed users to find accurate information quickly was the way to go; people began to work on search engine algorithms and thought more about how information should be stored and about how it should be ranked and filtered. At the start this was of little importance, and as a result, when the SEO industry began, it was very easy to spam your website’s META tags and rank for a wide range of unrelated keywords; this led to users being extremely frustrated with poor search results.
Becoming well versed in programming languages and how they might affect your SEO efforts is an undervalued strategy when it comes to SEO processes; a basic knowledge of HTML is a requirement for most inside of the industry, but some knowledge of backend programming such as Java, PHP and Python might be a wise time investment. Again, this isn’t always a requirement, but it does help you to understand your site’s framework and how that might impact what SEO efforts you are applying.
Enhancing the user experience is a critical part of your website’s overall purpose; trying to rewrite tags to make your site easier to find by search engines and easier for them to crawl, index and promote is all part of the coding sections that you should focus on. Producing well-formatted and clean code helps search engines, and as a result, you get a nice reward in terms of a boost in search engine rankings.
Search engines will find your site after you launch it, and then a spider is sent to crawl and understand the content of your website, which then enables search engines to determine how much overall quality your website has. If it sends low-quality signals or has poor coding, poor tag formatting or is very slow to load, then this signals to search engines that you haven’t really invested a lot of time or effort into your website and may just view your site as a hobby instead of a business.
Elements such as on-page and technical SEO activities fall into the coding side; these could include:
• Schema markup
• Heading tags
• Meta descriptions
• Page titles
• Image alt text
Schema markup tags are a type of structured data that enhance search snippets, which means that Google comes in and reads these tags and displays them to give your website listing a visual enhancement among other listings. An example of how you could use this on your website to boost sales might be if you are a headphones retailer; as a retailer, you want your listing to stand out above other websites, and this should help to sell more products.
A great example of this might be someone searching for a product such as the Bose QuietComfort 45. You want to rank for this keyword, but your listing is lost in a sea of websites that also sell that product. Well, Schema allows you to use certain data to make your listing stand out. With Schema, you can display information such as customer ratings, number of customer reviews, price point, stock levels and even an image of the product in question.
The goal of Schema is to take your existing listing and make it stand out visually but also help both the user and the search engine to find the information they need quickly. A boost in search engine results can happen with a site that sells products and implements Schema correctly, which is usually due to a rise in click-through rates but also helps Google to display accurate listings of retailers that have items in stock rather than having a high bounce rate from a searcher clicking on a result and then having to click back due to it being out of stock.
In short, you might want to consider schema if your website sells products and you want to get better rankings with Google; using schema is a great way to increase clicks to your website and to do so at a rapid pace, but it’s also a great way to show that you are staying up to date with search engine technology and how to keep Google happy.
One of the most important on-page items is heading tags; these heading tags are normally used to format your content but also let Google know which keywords you are targeting. Including your main keywords in a heading tag is one of the best ways to increase your website’s rankings. The H1 tag is by far the most powerful tag but should also include some descriptive keywords and some sales keywords; things like “free delivery” or describing a colour or modifier such as a clothing size are good things to include within an H1 tag.
While there are many heading tags, the main one by far and the most important is the H1 tag, but you should focus on both the H1 and H2 tags and maybe even include H3 and H4 to give further technical information on a product. These tags are really helpful if you are writing a long product description, as they really give you a chance to include your own brand name and any further product benefits that you may feel are important; you could include some terms like “free delivery” or “made with pure cotton” if you are trying to sell a clothing item.
While the heading tags are important, you should treat them with respect and avoid keyword stuffing. Having the same keyword repeated over and over again or just having an entire tag containing a keyword is not good practice any longer; search engines want to see you produce some more descriptive text which has been shown to be good for users instead of just writing for search engines.
A great way to improve your on-page elements, such as heading tags, is to try to learn copywriting skills. You may even want to take a look at really old printed ads from brands like Apple or Nike; these very simple ads had to cram in a lot of information and are written by some of the best in the world when it comes to words. These are a great place to start when it comes to thinking about unique ideas for your on-page SEO tasks.
Heading tags are a great tool to use for formatting content; also, they can be used to break up longer paragraphs and really give your content a tighter format so that you can make your content easier to read and stop people from scrolling past key content areas. One of the best ways to do this is to write a good headline that grabs attention. You must learn two skills for writing header tags, and that’s the actual keyword-rich SEO side and then also learning how to craft interesting headlines that make visitors stop scrolling your content without reading, which will help you to lower bounce rate and also increase time on site metrics, which gives your SEO an indirect boost.
Headings can also be used in content tables as a way to break up data and make it clickable; most in the SEO industry have simply forgotten about this feature, as it is so rarely used, but a table of contents at the top of the article is always a great idea when dealing with a content page that might have 10,000 words on it. These types of articles tend to rank on page 1 for super-generic one- or two-keyword phrases, with things like town or city names or the names of celebrities being a great example.
Navigation using heading items is a great way for search engines to find these keywords and to understand how important they are, but it’s also a great way for users to skip to sections that are relevant to them very quickly. Normally, when you have a large content page with 10,000 words, the last thing you want to do is to have to read or scroll through the entire thing to find out the information you need; in this case, heading tags are used by site visitors to save time and effort.
Meta descriptions have really gone out of the SEO conversation these days due to more important elements like link building moving more to the forefront. These trends seem to come and go when it comes to how important the SEO community views them, but also how important Google views them. The meta descriptions on your website should be thought of as a display window in a shop; in other words, the person hasn’t been inside your shop yet, and your job is to get them to click. A well-written meta description is something that can make your site stand out among the competition.
In terms of writing a great meta description, the best advice is always to include the keyword you are trying to rank for and include that keyword upfront in the tag; the rest of the tag you should use to mention your brand name and some form of USP that your shop might have. Things like “free delivery on this item” or “free carry case” are often things that can set you apart from the rest of the search results and really sell the click.
Page titles, otherwise known as title tags, are pretty much one of the most important on-page factors to take your time on and get correct. Part of this game is to include as many details as possible while also making things very keyword-rich by adding in colour modifiers and technical specs and always making sure your brand name is included.
Getting the perfect blend of these elements but also including some salesmanship and ensuring you get in the retailer’s name is a difficult task, but writing a good quality title tag cannot be done without investing some serious time and effort. You should take your time and consider each element to be important. A great idea would be to copy and paste a sample size of 100 or larger title tags from big-name brands into a spreadsheet and see what they all have in common. This will enable you to come up with not only a winning formula but also some ideas for how to stay ahead and innovate for the future.
The last thing you can modify is the image alt text; alt text was designed for visual impairment. It allows readers who have low or failing vision to have an alternative for the visual message. In many cases, the image alt text can also be used to correct some technical problems; these can be issues such as site load time, missing or incorrect image URLs or even just slow-loading images in general.
Image alt text is designed to make your site more usable by those with visual disabilities but also to help search engines understand the context of your image, so adding in some keywords but also a description is recommended. Alt text is a text-based description which is used as a fallback plan for search engine spiders, slow-loading sites and site visitors with visual impairments.