SEO Guide for Publishers
This guide has been produced to help you understand how to publish web content to the highest SEO standards using NgageCMS.
The first rule about writing “content for the web” is to understand your audience and produce content for them, not just yourself. Make sure your content is short and to the point, the use of bullet points really helps users to quickly read important information.
Make sure your content reads from left to right, eye-tracking studies have proven users expect content to be left aligned.
For more information on this please see nichcy.org.
Below is a list of requirements that you must adhere to, failing these requirements will result in your web page/website ranking to drop significantly.
Meta Title (Vital) – Found in the “Meta Data” tab in NgageCMS
The Meta title of a page is most important and should contain keywords. Keep it short and simple. Do not stuff with keywords. Meta titles should be between 60-70 characters. The Meta title will appear in the browser’s title bar. Search engines use this information to validate against your content. NgageCMS will automatically append your website name i.e. “Meta title – Website Name Here”.
NOTE: This must be unique, pages should never have the same Meta title.
Bad Examples are:
- Flowers
- Population Statistics
- Chocolate Indulgence
- E-Z Tax Tips
Good Examples are:
- Tips on Growing Flowers, How to Grow Flowers
- 2008 US Population Statistics, Number of People In United States
- Chocolate Dessert Recipe, Best Baked Chocolate Recipes
- Tax Advice, Tips on How to Pay Less Taxes
Meta Description – Found in the “Meta Data” tab in NgageCMS
Best practice is to fill in the Description tag to grab the visitor’s attention. (On a google search page, the description will be displayed below the link to the page). Characters should be between 100 and 150 characters.
NOTE: This must be unique, pages should never have the same Meta description.
Search Terms. Don’t forget that keywords matching the user’s query will be matched in bold and therefore draw the eye’s attention to your result increasing your chances of click through.
Brand message/strap line/USP’s/discounts/offers. An important differentiator in a crowded marketplace.
Some examples of great Meta descriptions:
Duplicate Content
Avoid duplicate content at all times, this includes on our own website or on others, if duplicate content is a requirement, NgageCMS automatically handles duplicate content published to websites within the same CMS, please see the “Multisite” feature, which sets a canonical tag. This tells search engines that the content has been duplicated for a reason.
Publishing the same content across multiple websites is not advisable, although NgageCMS adds this content to the robots.txt ignore list which tells search engines to ignore this piece of content, as duplicate content is not allowed across multiple websites.
Heading tags (Very important)
Where possible, include only one H1 tag per page. H1s should be short and simple, containing your main keyword in a phrase. Use secondary keywords in H2, H3 tags, etc.
Page Heading (H1)
paragraph text
Sub Heading (H2)
paragraph text
Sub Sub Heading (H3)
paragraph text
Unique content (Very important)
Search engines prefer to index unique content. Not having unique copy usually results in search engines going elsewhere. There are many online tools to check your content is unique on the web, www.copyscape.com is a good starting point.
Synonyms and phrase variance (Fairly important)
Use a thesaurus to find similar words. Singularise/pluralise keywords. Use your keywords differently than you would normally do for phrase variance.
Keyword density (Fairly important)
Be natural with your keyword phrases and avoid keyword stuffing in your content. Use synonyms and variance in your phrasing, as above. Make sure target keywords are in the first couple of paragraphs, at least above the fold.
Spelling and grammar (Very important)
Intelligible, well-written copy not only serves the likes of Google but visitors will appreciate the content as well.
Emphasise keywords (Fairly important) – Use the NgageCMS “Bold” option in the editor.
Use tags such as <strong> around your keyword phrases. Use sparingly.
Link text (Fairly important)
Check anchor text in your links across the site are well optimised, meaningful, and contains a good proportion of keywords related to the page. See contextual linking in SEO.