Content SEO: Top SEO considerations for online writers and editors

Content SEO
Top SEO considerations for online writers and editors

The World Wide Web
As of October 2013:

• Number of websites worldwide:

767 million
• Number of URLs indexed in Google worldwide:

~39 billion
How will online readers find your content page?
Source: http://www.worldwidewebsize.com/
10/15/2013

Presented by Rick DeJarnette — The SEO Ace (www.theseoace.com)

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Agenda
• Introduction to search engine optimization (SEO)
• How writers and editors can affect SEO
•
•
•
•
•
•
•

Page title: the <title> tag
Page description: the <meta> description tag
Page headline: the <h1> tag
Alternative text for images: the <img> tag’s alt text attribute
Body content: Enough body text with inline links
News keywords: <meta> news_keywords tag
Social media promotion

• Google Authorship Markup
• Keyword research tools and techniques (if time allows)
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Quick Poll
• How many of you write or edit online content?
• How many of you can edit the page metadata or have
access to the HTML code in those pages?
• How many of you write or edit original online news
content?
• How many of you use social media to promote your
work?

• How many of you get bylines with your writing?
• How many of you would like to be recognized as an
authority in your subject area in Google?
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What is SEO?
Search engine optimization (SEO) is the process of
improving the content and architecture of the pages on a
website …
… so web search engines can optimally interpret the
meaning of the content they contain, …
… and thus give those pages the optimum stack rank they
deserve for keyword queries …
… compared to similar pages on competing websites.

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What is SEO?
Search engines:
• Are designed to emulate human readers, and thus strive to rank
webpages in the order of what is most useful, informative and
relevant to the search query
• Employ several hundred prioritized factors in their page ranking
algorithm
• Update their algorithms many hundreds of times per year
• Are not humans, and thus benefit from a little spoon-feeding of
information about the content on a page (in metadata HTML tags)
• Recognize that the spoon-feeding is a potential point of
vulnerability, and thus are extremely vigilant about combating web
spam & overly-aggressive, malicious, deceptive (black hat) SEO
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SEO Ranking Factors – Periodic Table

Source: http://searchengineland.com/seotable
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SEO: How Writers & Editors Have Impact
Best ways online writers and editors can affect SEO:
• Page title: <title> tag
• Page description: <meta> description tag
• Page headline: <h1> tag
• Alt text for images: <img> alt text
• Body text with inline links
• News keywords: <meta> news_keywords tag
• Social media promotion
Note: the old <meta> keywords tag has no keyword relevance value in modern SEO

Producing high content quality is the key!
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Defining content quality
Questions to identify what counts as high-quality content
(YES is good!):
• Does the site avoid having duplicate, overlapping or repeat articles
on the same or very similar topics with slightly different keyword
variations?
• Do the articles provide original content or information, original
reporting, original research or original analysis?
• Do the articles contain insightful analysis or interesting information
that is beyond the obvious?

• Do the articles avoid being too short, unsubstantial or otherwise
lacking in helpful specifics?
Source: http://googlewebmastercentral.blogspot.com/2011/05/more-guidance-on-building-high-quality.html by Amit Singhal, Google’s head of search
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SEO Editorial Best Practices Summary
HTML metadata tag

Length limits *

Purpose

<title>

40 - 65 characters,
including length of site
branding (if used)

Blue hyperlink in search engine results pages
(SERPs). The most important tag for keyword
relevance.

<meta> description

120 - 160 characters

Quick synopsis of what the searcher can expect to
find on the page, written in compelling, descriptive
and actionable terms, seen only in SERPs.

<h1>

10 - 200 characters

Visible, on-page headline defining the page content.

<img> alt text

25 - 150 characters

A text description of the digital image relevant to the
page content to enhance keyword relevance.

<meta>
news_keywords

Up to 10 keywords or
keyword phrases, parsed
by commas

Identifies additional keywords as relevant to the
content in the Google News index (only applicable to
sites accepted into Google News).

Body text

125 non-linked words bare The body text, read by search engines, enables them
minimum; at least 250+
to consume the content, interpret its topical theme,
words is better
and establish relevance to keywords.

Inline links

Strive for at least one
relevant link in the first
150 words

Adds value to article by pointing to additional,
related content for readers; use descriptive link text.

* All character counts include space characters
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Where page metadata
shows up
Page title
(<title> tag)
Page headline
(<h1> tag)

Page description snippet
(<meta> description tag)
Not visible:
• <img> tag alt text attribute
• <meta> news_keywords tag
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Body text

Inline link

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<title> tag
The most important tag for creating keyword relevance

<title> tag
Purpose
• Concisely describes the content theme of the page
• Most important tag for establishing keyword relevance for the page with search engines
• Used as blue link text in Search Engine Result Pages (SERPs)
Best Practices
• Write in natural English language for humans, but format the tag text for search engines
• Write tag text highly relevant to the content of the page; avoid metaphors and irony
• Use the most potent keywords found in the body text of the page (determine keyword potency in Google AdWords)
• Put the core keyword phrase toward the start and site branding, if used, at the end of the tag text
• Ensure text length is between 40-65 characters, including spaces
• Avoid using stop words (such as: the, is, while, then, of, we, etc.) when possible; they offer no keyword relevance
• Differentiate <title> text from the page headline (<h1>) text by being more concise, keyword-focused
• *If your CMS doesn’t encode special characters, omit the double quote (") – it’ll truncate tag text in the HTML code
• *If your CMS reuses <title> text for friendly URLs (fURLs), keep fURLs clean by not using the following in <title> text:
non-English letters (such as the accented é) or these special characters <>{}[]():;'"/|&?@$#%,^+=!*
The following characters are OK -_.~ Also, don’t use Microsoft Word with Autocorrect enabled to write page
metadata – it substitutes special characters like curly quotes and dashes, which have to be percent-encoded in URLs
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<title> tag text: well-optimized example
<title> tag text

How this will appear in a SERP:

<title> tag text

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<title> tag text: room for improvement
<title> tag text


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<title> tag text


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<h1> tag
The visible, on-page headline that describes the content

<h1> tag
Purpose
• The visible, on-page headline defining the content of the page
• Similar to a newspaper article headline, this text provides significant keyword relevance
for the page to search engines
• Heading tags, such as <h1>, <h2>, and so on, were developed for formatting, but CSS has
replaced them for formatting, and search engines interpret them as data tags that provide
concise descriptions for pages, or sections of a page.

Best Practices
• Use relevant keywords found in the body text relating to the theme or subject of the page
content
• When possible, do not use an exact copy of the <title> tag text. Differentiate the headline
text by using a variant of the <title> tag text’s keyword phrase or use alternative, related
words taken from the body text

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<h1> tag text: well-optimized example

The well-optimized <h1> tag text includes related keywords from the <title> tag. This helps
with categorizing and ranking for keywords.
<h1> tag text: love: friendship, dating, sex & marriage

<title> tag text: Relationship and Dating Advice for Women and Men - MSN Living
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<h1> tag text: room for improvement

The <h1> tag text is a direct duplicate of the <title> tag (with site branding added) and
lacks any clear relevance to the content found on the page.
<h1> tag text: Plum crazy

<title> tag text: Plum crazy - MSN Living
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<img> alt text
The text content that describes a digital image

<img> alt text
Purpose
• Describes content of digital images in text form for search engines to consume
• Provides significant keyword relevance for the page to search engines

Best Practices
• Write using natural language. The text need not be a complete sentence nor are ending
periods needed, but it shouldn’t be merely a list of keywords
• Write the image description in context to the content theme of the page
• Use relevant keywords found in the body text

• Put the core keyword phrase toward the start of the text for strongest relevance
• Put copyright and photographer/agency attribution information, if used, at the end
• If your CMS doesn’t encode special characters, don’t use the double quote character (") in
this text – use single quote (') if necessary – it’ll truncate the tag text in the HTML code
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<img> alt text: well-optimized example

Alt text used: “Florida lizards: A young tegu lizard is held by Jake Edwards, a wildlife technician for the Florida
Fish and Wildlife Conservation Commission.”
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<img> alt text: room for improvement

Existing alt text:

Better optimized alt text:

“"Plum Crazy" CLINIQUE”

“Clinique Chubby Stick Lip Colour Balm in Voluptuous Violet”

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Body text with inline links
The meat of the story and links to more information

Body text with inline links
Purpose
• Body text, written in clear ASCII text, not displayed via JavaScript, AJAX, Flash, Silverlight, video or in images, is what
search engine crawlers read to determine the subject of the page
• An inline link used in body text further develops the concepts on the page by referring the reader to another, related
page (optimally within the site) using a relevant keyword phrase for the target page as link text
• Search engines see inline links as benefitting human readers and generally regard links as endorsements of the
target page

Best Practices
• Ensure there is a bare minimum 125 non-linked words in the body text section of an article page or on the first slide
of a single URL gallery. Optimally, 250+ non-linked words is a much better minimum to develop search engine
relevance
• In galleries that do not change the URL as they advance through the images, each subsequent slide also needs body
text, but a minimum of a couple descriptive sentences is usually sufficient. More is better, however
• Only link to pages that are relevant to the content of the page containing the link
• Ensure hyperlink text is relevant to the target page, as they are keyword(s) for that page. Do NOT use “click here” or
“more” as link text
• The most effective links for SEO purposes are those found within the first ~150 words of body text
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Social media for content
The rising gauge on how search measures popularity

Social media for content
Purpose
• Exposes content to users of other sites, such as Facebook, Twitter, Pinterest, Google+, etc.,
that then drives page views and links back to your site
• Social is the new link building audience-building methodology
Best Practices

• Use social media to announce and update breaking news stories
• Use social to link to evergreen stories that have become newsworthy and relevant again
• Republish social media posts later in the day for major feature stories or those that
remain highly relevant to daily events

• Retweet received messages that mention your content in a positive light
• Establish a consistent daily cadence of social posts
• Promote newly produced content and related evergreen content
• Consider using post scheduling automation and efficiency tools and services such as
HootSuite and Bit.ly
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Social media & audience building
Share compelling content on
social networks and blogs

Google and Bing will see
the links and add value
to your content, giving a
boost in the rankings for
a page

10/15/2013

The larger the audience for a
piece of content = more links
to your content


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Influence of social media on search ranking
• Studies show that URLs receive a significant boost in
Google rankings when they are shared on Twitter
• The benefits of this boost seem to level out at around 50
tweets, and the subsequent benefit of gaining additional
tweets is minimal until around 5,000 tweets
• After 5,000 tweets, the average ranking of URLs
improves considerably
• URLs receiving over 7,500 tweets almost always rank
inside the top 5 results
• Average rankings are heavily correlated to the number
of tweets about each URL

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Google Authorship Markup
Help Google identify YOU as an expert on the topics you
know best

What is Google Authorship Markup?
It’s Google’s method to
attribute author credit to
original, expert content.
With GAM enabled, the
Google web SERPs use rich
snippets to show additional
author info, including a head
shot photo and a link to
more content by the author.

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Requirements & methods
• A verified digital identify, owned by Google (a personal
Google+ profile), that links out to your published content
• Your published content needs to reference you as the
sole author in a byline (multiple-author content is not
yet supported) and link back to your verified Google+
profile (make sure your byline name exactly matches
your name used in your Google+ profile)
• Google supports 4 methods of verifying that trust:
 a 3-link method
 a 2-link method
 <link> tag in source code
 an email verification method (Google’s preferred method)
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Email verification method
The email verification method can be used when the
author can’t edit the content page author bio content.
1. The author byline links
to an email address
using the same root
domain name as the
content page.
2. That email address is
registered and verified
in the author’s Google+
profile.

10/15/2013

Note: This scenario can be used
anytime an email address link is
used in the author byline.


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Set up your personal Google+ profile
If you have a
Gmail account,
you have a
Google+ profile.
Otherwise,
create one at
plus.google.com.
First, edit your
profile and select
a head shot
photo to add.
No animals,
cartoons, art or
abstract designs.
Just a facial
photo of you.
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Enable +1s:

Add links to your other online profiles:

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• Consider adding information about your occupation,
employment, and other pertinent professional
information related to your areas of expertise. These are
not required for authorship markup, but they can often
contribute an added degree of authority to an author.
• When you finish editing and saving the profile updates,
copy the 21-digit number of the Google+ profile URL.
• Leave the browser tab open. You’re not done yet.

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Set up email verification sites
Browse to the Google+ page titled, Link your Google+
profile to the content you create.

1. Sign in to Google (if not
already so)
2. Add the email address
used in your content’s
byline link
3. Click Signup for Authorship

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Set up email verification sites
Click the link in the Google
verification email you’ll
receive.
Once verified, the email
address will then be
automatically added to
your Google+ profile.

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WordPress challenges
• WordPress strips out all anchor tag attributes. There are
workarounds, but be wary of the plug-in suggested by Google. It’s
universally applicable (easy for Google), but it’s potentially unsafe
(bad for the site owner).
• For most users, if the email method is not usable, the next best
approach in WordPress is to use the 2-link method with a link to the
author’s Google+ profile in the author bio snippet using
?rel=author.
<a href="https://plus.google.com/
123456789012345678901?rel=author">Google+</a>
• For more details on setting up Google Authorship Markup in
WordPress, see The Definitive Guide to Google Authorship Markup
article in Search Engine Land.
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Validate the markup code
If you didn’t use the email verification method but instead
used markup code, you need to validate the code with
Google to be sure everything was done right.
Browse to the Structured Data Testing Tool
(www.google.com/webmasters/tools/richsnippets), then
have Google validate the markup code on your content
page URLs (as well as your author bio page URL, if used)

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Validate the markup code
For 3-link and 2-link methods, you should see test results
similar to this (the email method was verified by the
submission form):

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Google Authorship Markup wrap up
• TIP: If your site also uses Google’s <link> rel=publisher code, it
apparently interferes with rel=author functionality in the
SERPs, so only use rel=publisher code on the site’s home page.
• Authorship markup helps Google identify the original source
of published content. If Google judges the content as high
quality, the author of that topic can also earn “author rank,”
which may positively influence the ranking of future posts by
the same author on the same topic.
• The author identification in the SERP will likely positively
influence click-through rates for that listing, which is especially
important for results ranked lower that #1.
• Employing Google Authorship Markup can only benefit good
authors who are experts in their subject areas.
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Keyword research tools
Identify which words hold the most power in search

Keyword research tools
There are numerous keyword research tools that can help
uncover the words people use most often in search. Let’s
take a look at some of the most commonly used and
popular choices.

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Predictive search
In both Google and Bing

Predictive search
How to use predictive search in Google and Bing
www.google.com or www.bing.com
•

Start typing your core keyword phrase to see the results

Predictive search shows
what terms are being
searched at the moment.
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Google Trends
Mine Google for historical trend data of hot search topics

Google Trends Hot Searches
Hot searches - http://www.google.com/trends/hottrends
Google Trends
Hot Searches
uses real time
data to show
which topics
have jumped
significantly in
traffic.

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Google Trends Top Charts
Hot searches - http://www.google.com/trends/topcharts
Google Trends
Top Charts shows
people, places
and things with
high, overall
monthly search
traffic going back
to 2004.

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Google Trends Explore
Explore Trends - http://www.google.com/trends/explore
Google Trends
Explore adds
access to
deeper levels of
search trends
data, based on
specific words,
categories,
trends over
time, in specific
markets, etc.

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Note that you can
explore search
trends for one or
more specific
words and phrases,
and then drill
down to get
greater specificity
with filters
covering:
• countries
• dates
• categories
• specific Google
search indexes
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Location filters allow for
country-wide drill downs
in most locations, but for
US searches, you can
actually drill down by
state, and even by major
metro areas within a state.

10/15/2013

Date filters allow for drill downs
for the past week, month,
quarter, year, a specific year, or
a custom date of your choosing.


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Category filters allow for
topic drill downs, and
many have secondary and
tertiary categories.
Categories can be helpful
in specifying the meaning
of an ambiguous term.

10/15/2013

While most people use
web search most often,
the other search indexes
contain specific types of
information, and these
can be specified for Trends
data.


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Google Trends
Explore adds
access to deeper
levels of search
trends data, based
on specific words,
categories, trends
over time, in
specific markets,
etc.

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presents search trend data,
detailing the amount of
traffic over time, regional
and metro traffic sources,
and related search terms.

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You can further dig into your
keyword research by
comparing search terms,
search traffic by locations, or
search traffic over separate
time slices.

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Secret to Success: Get much more useful data by
downloading the report as a CSV from Google (you must be
logged in first!).
Additional downloaded data includes:
• Searcher interest over time for each keyword phrase (on a weekly basis)
• Top subregions for each keyword phrase (in the US, numbers provided by
state)
• Top cities for each keyword phrase (when data is available)
• Top 20 keyword phrases (rather than just the top 10 as shown in the
webpage)

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Google Keyword Planner Tool
Let Google help identify the best words to use in content

Google AdWords Keyword Planner Tool
Next, take your list of keyword ideas and stack rank them
further with the Google AdWords Keyword Planner Tool:
https://adwords.google.com/ko/KeywordPlanner/Home
About the newest keyword research tool from Google:
•
•

•

The old Google AdWords Keyword Tool was shut down in the
summer of 2013 by Google, replaced with Google AdWords
Keyword Planner Tool
The new tool is primarily designed to help plan Pay-Per-Click
(PPC) search ad campaigns
However, we can make it work for SEO keyword research

Note: You will need a Google account login to use this tool. Your
Gmail account login should suffice.
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There are 4 ways to use the tool. For keyword research for SEO,
you’ll primarily use Search for new keyword and ad group ideas.

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• Add your keywords to the box
labeled Your product or
service.
• Under Targeting, set the
option to your site’s intended
market (you can get quite
specific in the US).
• Add any Negative keywords
(words you don’t want in your
keyword ideas list).
• Under Keyword options,
choose between broad or
closely related keyword ideas.
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The tool will generate a list of ideas based on the seed ideas
you give it. The Ad Group ideas tab contains keyword ideas by
categories.

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The Keywords ideas tab contains all of the individual keywords
in a single list.
Click the column header Avg. monthly searches to sort them
high-to-low.

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Note you can alter the way the tool works with keyword ideas.
By default, broad match is used, but you can tighten up the
results if you are looking for specific context.

You can directly edit keywords on the tool’s command line,
including the individual match type.
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Here are the Google Keyword Planner Tool match type
definitions. You’ll typically use broad match to get the most
results, but here’s what the others match types do.
Match type

Special symbol

Example keyword(s)

Ads may show on searches that

Example keywords included

Broad match

none

women's hats

include misspellings, synonyms, related
searches, and other relevant variations

buy ladies hats, womens caps, hats for girls,
womans hats, Buy red hats for women

Broad match
modifier

Phrase match

+keyword

"keyword"

+women's +hats

"women's hats"

contain the modified term (or close
variations, but not synonyms), in any
order

are a phrase, and close variations of
that phrase

women's hats, buy women's hats, Hats for
women
But excludes:
helmets for women, women's visors
women's hats, buy women's hats, woman's
hats, Women's hats
But excludes:
girls hats, womens baseball hats
women's hats, woman's hats

Exact match

[keyword]

[women's hats]

are an exact term and close variations
of that exact term

But excludes:
buy women's hats, women's hats on sale
women's hats, sun hats

Negative match -keyword
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-baseball

are searches without the term

But excludes:
baseball hats, baseball caps


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If you already know your list of keywords and just want to
check the search volume for each, use Get search volume for a
list of keywords or group them into ad groups.

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You can add your list of
specific keyword phrases
to check to the list
(either on separate lines
or separated by commas)
or upload a CSV file
containing those
keyword phrases.
Click Get search volume
to generate the list.

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On the resulting page, click Keyword ideas tab to see the
resulting data. Click Avg. monthly searches to sort by search
volume.

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For keyword mash-ups, you might try Multiply keyword lists to
get new keyword ideas.

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You can add specific items to one list and then add relevant
modifiers to the other to create the mash-up list. Note that the
mash-ups are concatenated in the order you present them in
the lists. Click Get search volume to generate the mash-up list.

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On the resulting page, click Keyword ideas tab to see the
resulting mash-ups. Click Avg. monthly searches to sort by
search volume.

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Secret to Success: Get much more useful data by downloading
the report as a CSV from Google.

Be sure to select Segment statistics by month.
Additional data
includes:
• Google search traffic
per month for the
past 12 months
• Competition data in
detail (rather than
high, medium or low)
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More information on me
Rick DeJarnette is the sole in-house SEO for all US channels
in MSN.com. He’s published original blog posts about SEO
in Search Engine Land, Internet Marketing Ninjas, The SEO
Ace and Bing Webmaster Center.
Rick can be found online at:
rick@theseoace.com
@rickdejarnette

10/15/2013

LinkedIn
Google+


80

Content SEO: Top SEO considerations for online writers and editors

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