How to make a website optimized for SEO

Now that you know what SEO is and what the main factors are that Google takes into account when ranking a website, you need to learn what you need to do to give your page a chance of ranking high in the SERPs .

In this chapter, we’ll discuss how to optimize the main ranking factors, as well as the main SEO problems that arise when optimizing a website and their possible solutions.

We will divide the topics of this chapter into 4 large blocks:

1. Accessibility
2. Indexability
3. Content
4. Meta tags

1. Accessibility

The first step in optimizing a website’s SEO is to allow search engines to access your content. In other words, you need to check whether your website is visible to search engines and, above all, how they view the page.

For various reasons, which we’ll explain later, search engines may not be able to correctly read a website, a prerequisite for ranking.

Aspects to take into account for good accessibility

• Robots txt file
• Robots meta tag
• HTTP status codes
• Sitemap
• Web structure
• JavaScript and CSS
• Web speed

Robots txt file

The robots.txt file is used to prevent search engines from accessing and indexing certain parts of a website. It’s very useful for preventing Google from displaying unwanted pages in search results. For example, in WordPress, to prevent access to administrator files, the robots.txt file would look like this:

NOTE: You must be very careful not to inadvertently block search engine access to your entire website, as in this example:

We need to check that the robots.txt file isn’t blocking any important parts of our website. We can do this by visiting the URL www.example.com/robots.txt, or through Google Webmaster Tools under “Crawl” > “Robots.txt Tester.”

The robots.txt file can also be used to indicate where our sitemap is located by adding it to the last line of the document.

So, a complete robots.txt example for WordPress would look like this:

If you’d like to learn more about this file, we recommend visiting the website with information about the standard.

Robot meta tag

The “robots” meta tag is used to tell search engine robots whether or not they can index the page and whether they should follow any links on it.

When analyzing a page, you should check for any meta tags that are accidentally blocking access to these robots. Here’s an example of what these tags would look like in the HTML code:

On the other hand, meta tags are very useful for preventing Google from indexing pages you don’t want, such as pagination or filters, but preventing it from following links so it can continue crawling your website. In this case, the tag would look like this:

We can check the meta tags by right-clicking on the page and selecting “view page source.”

Or if we want to go a little further, with the Screaming Frog tool , we can see at a glance which pages across the entire website have this tag implemented. You can see it in the “Directives” tab and in the “Meta Robots 1” field. Once you’ve located all the pages with this tag, simply delete them.

HTTP status codes

If a URL returns a status code (404, 502, etc.), users and search engines will not be able to access that page. To identify these URLs, we also recommend using Screaming Frog, as it quickly displays the status of all the URLs on your page.

IDEA: Every time you run a new search in Screaming Frog, export the results to a CSV file. This way, you can compile them all into one Excel spreadsheet later.

Sitemap

A sitemap is an XML file that contains a list of the site’s pages along with some additional information, such as how often the page changes its content, when it was last updated, etc.

A small extract from a sitemap would be:

Important points to check regarding the Sitemap:

• Follow the protocols, otherwise Google will not process it properly.
• It is uploaded to Google Webmaster Tools
• Stay up-to-date. When you update your website, make sure you have all the new pages in your sitemap.
• All pages in the sitemap are being indexed by Google

If the website does not have a sitemap, we must create one by following four steps:

1. Generate an Excel file with all the pages we want to be indexed. To do this, we will use the same Excel file that we created when searching for the HTTP response codes.
2. Create the sitemap. We recommend the Sitemap Generator tool (simple and comprehensive) for this.
3. Compare the pages in your Excel spreadsheet and the ones in the sitemap and remove the ones you don’t want to be indexed from Excel.
4. Upload the sitemap through Google Webmaster Tools

Web structure

If a website’s structure is too deep, it will be more difficult for Google to access all of its pages. Therefore, it is recommended that the structure be no more than three levels deep (not including the home page), since Google’s robot has a limited time to crawl a website. The more levels it has to traverse, the less time it will have to access the deeper pages.

That’s why it’s always better to create a horizontal web structure, not a vertical one.

Vertical Structure

Horizontal structure

Our advice is to create a diagram of the entire website so you can easily see its levels, from the home page to the deepest page, and calculate how many clicks it takes to reach it.

Find out what level each page is on and if you have links pointing to it using Screaming Frog again.

JavaScript and CSS

Although Google has become smarter in recent years when it comes to reading these types of technologies, we must be careful because JavaScript can hide part of our content and CSS can clutter it up, displaying it in a different order than Google sees it.

There are two methods to find out how Google reads a page:

• Plugins
• “cache:” command

Plugins

Plugins like Web Developer or Disable-HTML help us see how a search engine crawls the website. To do this, you need to open one of these tools and disable JavaScript. We do this because all drop-down menus, links, and text must be readable by Google.

We then disable CSS, as we want to see the actual order of the content and CSS can change this completely.

“cache:” command

Another way to know how Google sees a website is through the “cache:” command.

Enter “cache:www.myexample.com” in the search engine and click “Text-only version.” Google will show you a snapshot of how it reads a website and when it was last accessed.

Of course, for the “cache:” command to work correctly, our pages must be previously indexed in Google’s indexes.

Once Google indexes a page for the first time, it determines how often it will revisit it for updates. This will depend on the authority and relevance of the domain that owns the page and how frequently it is updated.

Whether using a plugin or the “cache:” command, make sure you comply with the following points:

• You can see all the links in the menu.
• All links on the website are clickable.
• There is no text that is not visible with CSS and Javascript enabled.
• The most important links are at the top.

Loading speed

The Google robot has a limited time when browsing our website; the less time each page takes to load, the more pages it will be able to reach.

You should also keep in mind that a very slow page load can cause your bounce rate to skyrocket, so conversion is a vital factor not only for positioning but also for a good user experience.

To see your website’s loading speed, we recommend Google Page Speed . There you can check which issues are slowing down your site the most, as well as find Google’s tips for addressing them. Focus on those with high and medium priority.

Indexability

Once Googlebot has accessed a page, the next step is to index it. These pages will be included in an index where they are sorted by content, authority, and relevance to make them easier and faster for Google to access.

How do I check if Google has indexed my website correctly?

The first thing you have to do to know if Google has indexed your website correctly is to perform a search with the command “site:” . This way, Google will give you the approximate number of pages on our website that it has indexed:

If you have Google Webmaster Tools linked to your website, you can also check the actual number of indexed pages by going to Google Index > Indexing Status

Once you know (roughly) the exact number of pages on your website, this data will help you compare the number of pages indexed by Google with the actual number of pages on your website. Three scenarios can occur:

1. The number in both cases is very similar. This means everything is in order.
2. The number that appears in Google search results is lower , which means Google isn’t indexing many of the pages. This happens because it can’t access all the pages on the website. To resolve this, review the accessibility section of this chapter.
3. The number appearing in Google search results is higher , which means your website has a duplicate content problem. The reason why more pages are indexed than actually exist on your website is likely because you have duplicate content or because Google is indexing pages you don’t want indexed.

Duplicate content

Duplicate content means having the same content on multiple URLs. This is a very common problem, often unintentional, and can also have negative effects on Google rankings.

These are the main reasons for duplicate content:

• “Canonicalization” of the page
• Parameters in the URL
• Pagination

This is the most common cause of duplicate content and occurs when your homepage has more than one URL:

Each of the above links to the same page with the same content. If you don’t tell Google which one is correct, it won’t know which one to rank and may rank the exact version you don’t want.

• Parameters in the URL

There are many types of parameters, especially in e-commerce: product filters (color, size, rating, etc.), sorting (lowest price, relevance, highest price, grid, etc.), and user sessions. The problem is that many of these parameters don’t change the page content, which results in multiple URLs for the same content.

www.ejemplo.com/boligrafos?color=black&price-from=5&price-to=10

In this example we find three parameters: color, minimum price and maximum price.

Another possible solution is to specify via Google Webmaster Tools > Crawling > URL Parameters which parameters Google should ignore when indexing a website’s pages.

• Pagination

When an article, product listing, or tag and category page has more than one page, duplicate content issues can arise even if the pages have different content, because they’re all focused on the same topic. This is a huge problem on e-commerce sites where there are hundreds of articles in the same category.

How to use the NEXT and PREV parameters

1. Add the rel=next tag to the code section of the first page:

• link rel=”next” href=”http://www.example.com/page-2.html” />

2. Add the rel=next and rel=prev tags to all pages except the first and last.

• link rel=”prev” href=”http://www.example.com/page-1.html” />
• link rel=”next” href=”http://www.example.com/page-3.html” />

3. Add the rel=prev tag to the last page

• link rel=”prev” href=”http://www.example.com/page-4.html” />

Another solution is to look for the pagination parameter in the URL and enter it in Google Webmaster Tools to prevent it from being indexed.

Cannibalization

Keyword cannibalization occurs when multiple pages on a website compete for the same keywords. This confuses the search engine, which can’t determine which one is most relevant for that keyword.

This problem is very common in e-commerce, because having multiple versions of the same product all “attacks” the same keywords. For example, if a book is sold in paperback, hardcover, and digital versions, there will be three pages with virtually the same content.

3. Content

Since it’s become abundantly clear in recent years that content is king for Google, let’s give it a good throne then.

Content is the most important part of a website, and no matter how well it’s optimized for SEO, if it’s not relevant to users’ searches, it will never appear in the top positions.

To properly analyze the content of your website, you have several tools at your disposal, but ultimately, the most useful option is to use the page with JavaScript and CSS disabled, as explained above. This way, you’ll see what content Google is actually reading and the order in which it’s arranged.

When analyzing the content of the pages, you should ask yourself several questions that will guide you through the process:

• Does the page have enough content? There’s no standard measure of “enough,” but it should contain at least 300 words.
• Is the content relevant? It should be useful to the reader. Just ask yourself if you would read that. Be honest.
• Do you have important keywords in the first paragraphs? In addition to these, we should use related terms because Google is very effective at linking terms.

A page will never rank for something it doesn’t contain Tweet this

• Is it keyword stuffed ?  If your page content is too keyword-heavy, Google won’t like it. There’s no exact number that defines perfect keyword density , but Google recommends using it as naturally as possible.
• Do you have any spelling mistakes?
• Is it easy to read? If it’s not tedious to read, it’s fine. Paragraphs shouldn’t be too long, the font shouldn’t be too small, and it’s recommended that there be images or videos to reinforce the text. Remember to always consider the audience you’re writing for.
• Can Google read the text on the page? We need to avoid having Flash, images, or JavaScript inside the text. We’ll check this by viewing the text-only version of our page, using the cache:www.example.com command in Google and selecting this version.
• Is the content well-distributed? Does it have the appropriate H1, H2, etc. tags, are the images well-laid out, etc.
• Is it linkable? If we don’t make it easy for users to share it, they’re likely not to. Include social media sharing buttons in prominent places on the page that don’t obstruct the view of the content, whether it’s a video, photo, or text.
• Is it up-to-date? The more up-to-date your content is, the more frequently Google will crawl your website and the better the user experience will be.

4. Meta tags

Meta tags are used to convey information to search engines about what a page is about when sorting and displaying their results. These are the most important tags to keep in mind:

Title

The title tag is the most important element in the meta tags. It’s the first thing that appears in Google search results.

When optimizing the title, keep in mind that:

• The tag must be in the <head> </head> section of the code.
• Each page must have a unique title.
• It must not exceed 70 characters, otherwise it will appear cut off.
• It must be descriptive with respect to the content of the page.
• It must contain the keyword for which we are optimizing the page.

We should never overuse keywords in the title , as this will make users suspicious and make Google think we are trying to deceive them.

Another aspect to keep in mind is where to put the “brand” (i.e., the name of the website). It is usually placed at the end to give more importance to the keywords, separating them from the website name with a hyphen or a vertical bar.

Meta-description

Although it is not a critical factor in a website’s ranking, it significantly affects the click-through rate in search results.

For the meta description, we’ll follow the same principles as for the title, except its length shouldn’t exceed 155 characters. For both titles and meta descriptions, we must avoid duplication; this can be verified in Google Webmaster Tools > Search Appearance > HTML Enhancements.

Meta Keywords

Meta keywords were once a very important ranking factor, but Google discovered how easy it is to manipulate search results, so it eliminated them as a ranking factor.

H1, H2, H3 tags…

H1, H2, and other tags are very important for a good information structure and user experience, as they define the content hierarchy, which will improve SEO. We should emphasize the H1 because it’s usually at the top of the content, and the higher up a keyword is, the more importance Google will give it.

“Alt” tag on the image

The “alt” tag in images is added directly in the image code itself.

This tag must be descriptive of the image and its content , as this is what Google reads when crawling it and is one of the factors it uses to rank it in Google Images.

Conclusion

You already know how to create an SEO-optimized page and that there are many factors to optimize if you want to appear at the top of search results. Now you’re probably wondering, what keywords rank my website best?