Blog items tagged with "meta-description"

Keyword Optimization Tips for Your Exponent Ecommerce Website

The Exponent CMS is the ideal platform for online stores, especially when it comes to ecommerce SEO. Not only does Exponent generate website's to be SEO code-friendly in the back end, but Exponent makes keyword optimization easy in the front-end user interface.

In this video, we share with you some tips on how to go about properly keyword optimizing the product pages of you ecommerce site for better SEO performance. We start with some brief insights on keyword research and selection, then move forward on some of the best practices of optimizing your company's website via the page title, meta description, keyword, and URL.

If you'd like to learn more about the SEO strengths and weaknesses of you ecommerce site, visit ClickCentric SEO for free website assessment. The experts at ClickCentric will perform a hands-on audit and evaluation of your website.

On-Page SEO Tips for Your Exponent CMS Website

On-page SEO is essential to ensure the pages of your site are indexed according to certain keyword targets. On-page SEO, or on-page optimization, is the art of using specific keywords throughout the content of a page.

As a result, pages of your site will be stored in the right 'search engine deck' or keyword category, and your potential to rank on those keywords is optimized. When it comes to on-page SEO, having an Exponent CMS website offers many advantages. Exponent aids the on-page optimization process by providing content editing fields for the page elements that have the most impact on SEO.

Three of those page elements are the Page Title, Meta Description, and Page Copy (or text). In short, it's critical that you establish keyword relevancy in these three areas of the page. For the context of this article, we'll assume you've done your keyword research and move forward with the on-page SEO process.

Optimizing Page Titles

The page title highlights the main focus or subject matter of a page. The text of the page title makes up the hyperlink that's shown on a Google search engine results page. Page titles have the most weight for on-page SEO and establishing keyword relevancy for a page.

It is thus important to write well-balanced page titles that are both keyword optimized and user focused. Below are several tips to keep in mind when creating well optimized page titles:

  1. Always include the exact phrase match of your primary keyword target for each page. It also helps to introduce the keyword phrase as early as possible in the page title.
     
  2. Make sure the page title accurately describes the content of the webpage (and is not overly keyword-stuffed.) This gives search engine users a good representation of what the page is about.
     
  3. Try to keep the length of each page title between 60 and 70 characters. Google will only display so many characters, so keep your titles tight and to the point.
     
  4. Ensure that the title for each page is unique. This is extremely important for ecommerce SEO, for some deep websites have automatically generated page titles that are duplicated throughout the site. Taking the time to customize and keyword optimized the title for each page is critical for SEO.

Optimizing Meta Descriptions

In essence, Meta descriptions are short summaries of a page that are displayed just below page titles in a search results listing. Similar to page titles, Meta descriptions are not visible on the actual page (only in the search results,) yet they still carry a great deal of importance for SEO and establishing keyword relevancy.

In addition to including keywords for SEO, good Meta descriptions are informative, value-oriented, and will usually include a call to action. Below are a few tips for writing quality Meta descriptions with both SEO and users in mind.

  1. Keep your Meta descriptions about one sentence long, or between 150 and 200 characters. Google and other search engine will only display about 160 characters.
     
  2. Use your primary keyword target early in the Meta description. If you have room or if it makes sense in the copy, try using a keyword variation towards the end, but do this respectively and avoid keyword stuffing.
     
  3. Write creative and compelling Meta descriptions. Include verbs and call to action statements, and really promote what’s unique and valuable about the page or what's being offered.

Optimizing On-Page Copy

The on-page copy or visible text is what users read while on your pages. It is also what spiders crawl after they hit the page title and Meta description. Thus it is important that your page copy is user-focused in that it reads smoothly and expresses value to visitors, as well as keyword-focused in that the copy includes a balance of keywords in the right places. Writing keyword-optimized copy is not always easy. The process is a balancing act of writing with a natural, creative flow while making sure your targeted keywords are mentioned throughout the copy. Below are some on-page optimization tips to keep top of mind while scribing optimized webpage copy.

  1. Use different types of headers in your page copy. That is, group or chunk your copy based on various ideas and concepts, and make use of H1's, H2's, and H3's while separating each idea. Think of H1's as the primary title of a page, while h2's and h3's are supportive sub-headers for each topic. Respectively include your keyword targets in headers.
     
  2. Strong tag (not bold) instances of keywords in the copy. This tells search engine spiders that a specific word or phrase is a bit more significant.
     
  3. Apply other text styling attributes, like italics or underlining, to the copy. Whether or not your keywords are involved, these styling elements can offer a bit more stimulation for users when reading your page copy.
     
  4. Reference your primary keyword target a few times in the page copy. Mention your keyword target in first H1 and in the first few sentences of the copy, but avoid keyword-stuffing. Use keywords naturally while writing optimized copy.
     
  5. Try to include a sufficient amount of text on each page. Pages that have been well optimized will have between 200 and 2,000 words of text, depending on the nature of the page. Typically, the more (unique and valuable) content you include on your optimized pages, the better potential they'll have of ranking well in the search engines.

Optimizing the Page Title, Meta Description, and Page Copy is not rocket science, and neither is search engine optimization. The focus of on-page SEO is to establish keyword relevancy with creative and logical use of certain semantics. Although this phase is essential for SEO, it is only half the battle of achieving a top ranking. Off-page SEO holds just as much importance to the website optimization process.