The Title is Huge
As far as on-page factors the Title of a given page is incredibly important as search engines give it heavy weight when considering how to rank a page. Add to this the fact that the title is also used as the link to your page in SERP’s (Search Engine Results Pages) and that it will appear on the reverse bar of the visitor’s browser (the very top left of the browser window) then is it easy to see that the title is a key component. Unfortunately many blog templates set up a title that may not be the best for a given page. WordPress, the most used self-hosted blog software, is guilty of this. First let’s take a look at the problem.
I set up a page of my blog to do the wrong thing to illustrate what I’m talking about. I’ll leave this page up for the purposes of example, but understand this is WHAT NOT TOO DO. Look at the page source for this page http://www.jontnorwood.com/tv/ . I created the page, called it TV since it is a convenient URL and about TV shows I like, and populated it with unique content then published it “as is”. Notice the following elements:
<title> TV | Jon T. Norwood</title>
%MINIFYHTML0cfb86bfd65d50bc8922d160d1908ee417%
<meta name="generator" content="WordPress 3.1.1" />
I didn’t create the tags seen above myself, and none of this helps my page in any way. In fact the “generator” tag actually hurts. From a search engine perspective it would appear that this page is about TV and Jon T. Norwood, and that’s it. The chances of my internal page about the shows Buffy the Vampire Slayer and Angel ranking in Google for “TV” is simply impossible and therefore the title is useless. I have effectively nullified one of the strongest ranking tools of this page by accepting the default WordPress title. This is easy to fix.
If you are using a template or theme then there should be an option to edit the individual pages under the “Appearance” tab on the left menu of your WordPress dashboard. Look under Theme options and find the section that allows you to provide custom titles. Enable this and you should be able to create completely unique and relevant titles for every page you create without having an absurd URL. If your theme doesn’t have this option you may want to look into one that does if you have any desire to SEO the blog. A more appropriate title for the above page would be:
<title> Buffy the Vampire Slayer Episode Guide and Angel Episode Guide</title>
A little wordy but accurate and my ability to rank for the given subject matter, episode guides, is actually within the realms of believability while at the same time telling the visitor exactly what they are looking at. This is a win for my visitors and a win for the search engines.
You can read the following posts for choosing the best titles,
5 Tips For Choosing The Best Blog Post Titles
How To Write An Amazing Title For Your Blog Post?
Meta Tags Mean Something
Meta tags are not as important as they used to be, but they are easy to set up and they do count for something.Don’t use these areas to “stuff” keywords into a page, but use them to give a clear picture of what the page is about. The more the keywords and description match what is on the page the better off you are. You want your meta content to match what the visitor sees so they actually strengthen each other in the eyes of the search engines.
Special notice should be taken concerning the meta tags that contain the descriptor “generator” like:
<meta name="generator" content="WordPress 3.1.1" />
Or:
%MINIFYHTML0cfb86bfd65d50bc8922d160d1908ee418%
These are irrelevant from an SEO perspective but I mention them because they are an easy way for a hacker to target your blog. Hackers use bots to scour the Internet looking for sites that have security holes, and one way they do that is too look for out of date versions of WordPress or themes (the above theme is called Polishedv1.6). Unfortunately my WordPress install and theme are both out of date, and since all of my pages contain the “generator” tag by default I’m waving my hands around trying to get the attention of a botnet looking to infect more sites.
Links on the Page
Most blogs get the majority of their incoming links to the homepage. This means the internal linking structure, the way your blog links to its various pages, is very important. If 90% of the links a blog gets are too the homepage, then it is the homepage that directs 90% of the link value throughout the site. Think of it a circulatory system where the blog is the body and link power is the blood. If some parts of the site are not getting link power then they will die, at least from a search engine perspective. On the other hand if a tremendous amount of link power is directed at a page of little interest then it is wasted.
It is important to prioritize the pages that are linked to from the homepage. Important pages that generate revenue or interest or both are what you want your link power flowing too. Pages such as “About Us” or “Contact Us” are of value but you don’t want high quality link power flooding these areas. The best way to approach this is to decide how few links from the home you can live with. Don’t sacrifice pages of value, but be certain that everything you link too is key to what your page exists to do. Other pages can that are necessary but not primary functions like “About Us” can be linked to using the rel=”nofollow” tag associated with the link.
You can read more about on page optimization at, 6 Basic Steps Of On-Page Optimization.
One way to make sure that link power is circulated well throughout a site without linking to everything from the home is to use a sitemap that links to every page. Link to the site map from the homepage once and more likely than not all pages will get at least some link power.
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