On-Page Fixes Site Creators Can Implement

Content

Make content easy to read

• • You should use bolding and bullet points to set apart words in the text.

  • Don’t go wild or you’ll end up cluttering up your page and aggravating the user.

  • Paragraphs should be roughly three sentences long. Extremely long sentences will lose the users’ attention.

  • Write for humans - not what people have told you Google’s spiders are looking for.

Zoom in on what your department or lab is best at and make sure you’re using the words that are most relevant and popular to your target audience. (You can check popularity and related terms for searches using Google Trends.)

• • Each page of the website should be hyper-relevant to a specific topic.

  • Specify subject several times throughout text content; if you have a page about Gas Dynamics, it’s best to mention the term and related terms a few times on the page

  • Provide unique content about a given subject.

• Look at how your competitors structure their content.

• Avoid having 404 errors on your website - you can do this using Dead Link Checker or the Google Chrome extension called Check My Links.

• Remove duplicate content from your website: Duplicate content is your website’s worst enemy and is punished pretty severely by Google when ranking websites.

• Keep your site up to date: Websites with fresh content added on a regular basis are given more authority, and rank higher in the search results.

• Avoid using PDFs, Word documents, etc. Search engines can’t index them, so any information they contain is essentially hidden from Google.

Page Structure

The subject should be included in the title tag, URL and image alt text.

Use SEO-friendly URLs for your page.

• • URL should include your main keywords

  • Keep URLs as short as possible - drop adverbs from your URL.

  • Use hyphens instead of underscores and try to maintain a consistency.

  • If a human can’t tell what’s on your page by looking at the URL, a computer most likely can’t either.

Use meta descriptions - these are the short page descriptions that show up on Google search results.

• • Write compelling meta descriptions.

  • 150 to 160 characters is the recommended length

  • Avoid duplicate meta descriptions.

  • Do not use quotes or any non-alpha characters (Google, cuts them out of the meta description)

Use unique title tags.

• • This is one of the most important on-page SEO factors.

  • The title tag tells search engines what the page is about and that the page on your website is relevant for that keyword or keyword phrase.

  • Let’s say you’re trying to rank for “Gas Dynamics,” your title tag may look like this: “Gas Dynamics | Aerospace Engineering”

  • Keep title tags at 55 characters or less in length, including spaces.

Use Header tags responsibly

• • An H1 tag is much like the subject line of your web page.

  • You can also use H2 tags (second header) if there are multiple sections - think of these as subheadlines.

  • Use your keyword phrase once in your H1 tag

  • Do not skip H tag numberings on a page

  • Use headings to reflect structure. DO NOT use headings to affect the design (ie. make something big and bold)

Multimedia Content

Optimize your images

• • Slow websites are ranked lower; if you are not following the image sizing best practices dictated by C&M WordPress guidelines, your site will run slower

Use your image fields: All images published on your website should have a relevant name.

• • Use image ALT tags: an alt tag is essentially the name of an image, it also supplies screen readers with the content of the image.

  • Write descriptions and captions for your images

  • Ensure your images files are named properly - you can find image best practices in this document.

FYI

Content hidden behind interactions

Google has stated content hidden behind interactions is at best devalued in their ranking and at worst ignored. This includes content in sliders, modal windows, and any kind of element with a show/hide behavior.

(https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tFSI4cpJX-I&t=645s)

Duplicate content

Google has stated they prefer “unique” content over duplicated content (or duplicated content altered to appear unique) and while strategic and occasional duplication may not incur any penalty wholesale duplication (or malicious duplication) may result in action on Google’s part.

(https://support.google.com/webmasters/forum/AAAA2Jdx3sUy9LlYcYxH8E?hl=en)

However, much of the infrastructure that identifies problematic content is increasingly automated (due in part to the realities of work during COVID-19).

(https://9to5google.com/2020/03/16/google-coronavirus-impact/)

Due to the rise of “pink-slime news” sites, which use a form of content duplication as a tactic for legitimacy, content duplication may not be as safe an option as it had been previously.

(https://www.cjr.org/tow_center_reports/hundreds-of-pink-slime-local-news-outlets-are-distributing-algorithmic-stories-conservative-talking-points.php)

Mobile first

Google ranks websites primarily based on their mobile version.

(https://developers.google.com/search/blog/2016/11/mobile-first-indexing)

Performance

Google has stated they will soon begin using performance and user experience metrics directly in their rankings, as well as potentially highlighting this information directly in their products. (https://developers.google.com/search/blog/2020/05/evaluating-page-experience)

Development Best Practices Followed by C&M

The C&M team creates wireframes and information architecture suggestions with inherently strong internal linking systems

• • Create opportunities to link back to category and subcategory pages (using breadcrumbs), home pages (via logo in navigation)

  • Promo areas for cross-sell opportunities

C&M uses Google Search Console (formerly Webmaster Tools)

• • We use and submit sitemaps - they help Google easily crawl your pages and index your website.

Site speed

• • C&M creates image guidelines to ensure fastest possible site load times

  • We monitor, iterate and refactor our websites to create the fastest possible loading sites with the features and functionality requested of our team

Good content is linkable

• • C&M recommends and creates website components that can be linked to; If people can’t link to it, search engines will be very unlikely to rank it, and as a result the content won’t drive traffic to the given website.