Next on-page steps for an SEO newbie
-
Hi there!
I'm new to Seomoz and am really pleased with the service so far. I've been doing some On-page optimizations and am gradually getting most of my pages to an A grade, but I wondered what the next steps would be?
For example I have been looking at the search term "the shins fans". I have an A grade for my page (http://tastebuds.fm/artists/the+shins) but it lists on the 2nd page of SERPS for the term (in the UK at least).
Can anyone recommend any tips for taking my page to the 1st page of SERPS? This site seems to do well: http://www.fanpop.com/spots/the-shins
I am aware of the importance of link-building, but I'm specifically looking for tips on optimizing the page itself.
Many Thanks,
Alex
-
Oops. Sorry for looking at the wrong site Alex. Some quick opportunities I noticed for your site:
-
improve your HTML and CSS validation
-
add some unique content to the page. As far as I can tell, there is not any unique content on the entire page.
-
add more social engagement
-
provide more engaging content. What content would visitors find helpful? Your page is about The Shins. Perhaps their next tour dates where people can meet up? Band News? etc.
-
I would recommend examining every Shins fan page you can find. Take a look at what is being offered on those pages. Incorporate any additional cool ideas into your page. Perhaps a poll or asking users to share their favorite songs or band stories.
-
replace the "+" in the URL with a hyphen. http://tastebuds.fm/artists/the+shins
-
the ALT text is mainly numbers. Replace the text with helpful descriptions. Also provide more helpful image file names.
Those are just a few initial ideas I noticed.
-
-
I don't suppose you have any comments on my page? I'd be interested to see if you had any tips that differed. Many thanks.
-
No worries.
Maybe im making it more complicated then it is.
Each page just has some sharing buttons, when someone shares the page using one of these buttons social signal is generated, end of, happy days.
So the type of thing you could do which is similar to your page is the social sharing box at bottom/left - http://blog.kissmetrics.com/
Penalties don't even come into this so forget that worry.
But do you get what I mean from that example link?
-
Great article, thanks for that.
I'm not sure what you mean about the like buttons. Will I get penalised if I have Facebook like buttons that like different types of content, on the same page?
-
Yeah course: http://www.seomoz.org/blog/google-bing-confirm-twitter-facebook-influence-seo
Also be careful, you got a facebook page which gains likes (fans) and then you got a like button on a webpage which when clicked 'likes' the website page on someones facebook page.
You want buttons on your site, which once clicked, basically places a link on there facebook wall to the page they liked.
-
Hi Ryan, thanks for responding so thoroughly. Unfortunately I think you were examining the wrong page! My site is tastebuds.fm, rather than www.fanpop.com! I'll take those suggestions on board though, thanks!
-
Hi Alex,
A few tips:
-
your web page has over 140 html errors. Try fixing most of the HTML and CSS errors. They may cause various issues ranging from search engines not being able to crawl your site properly to errors being displayed on various browsers and devices. http://validator.w3.org/check?uri=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.fanpop.com%2Fspots%2Fthe-shins&charset=%28detect+automatically%29&doctype=Inline&group=0
-
Change your title a bit. Your desired keyword focus is "the shins fans". Your present title is "The Shins Fan Club | Fansite with photos, videos, and more". Try a title of "The Shins Fans" or at least replace "The Shins Fan Club" with "The Shins Fans".
-
Try using the keyword target in the page's content. You have shared your focus is "the shins fans". The only place that phrase is used is in the very bottom block of the page. If that is your keyword focus it should be used prominently at the top of the page where it is visible when the page first loads.
-
Use ALT tags to identify images. Search engines cannot "see" images so they rely on your help to identify them.
-
Use image file names which represent the image. One of the main images on the page is named "520_800_100.jpg". Perhaps name it "Shins Group photo.jpg" or something more helpful.
There are tons of opportunities to improve your SEO. I don't place a lot of value in the "A grade" for your page. If you desire to be on the first page, especially if you wish to be at the top, there is a lot of work to do. A great place to start: http://www.seomoz.org/beginners-guide-to-seo
Good Luck
-
-
Super thanks, I'll definitely add more social buttons and make them more prominent.
Out of interest does Google only take into account the number of Google +1 clicks for the page? Or is it clever enough to take into account Facebook likes and number of tweets?
-
Get your social on!
I would be inclined to add some more social buttons and make more of them as well, you got that box on the left which just has 1 facebook like button.
Why not have a facebook, twitter, linkedin, stumble upon type buttons, maybe with even an arrow pointing to them with the line 'give this artist some love' or something like that.
If the sharing goes on your gain some social signals, which in turn will help with ranking.
Got a burning SEO question?
Subscribe to Moz Pro to gain full access to Q&A, answer questions, and ask your own.
Browse Questions
Explore more categories
-
Moz Tools
Chat with the community about the Moz tools.
-
SEO Tactics
Discuss the SEO process with fellow marketers
-
Community
Discuss industry events, jobs, and news!
-
Digital Marketing
Chat about tactics outside of SEO
-
Research & Trends
Dive into research and trends in the search industry.
-
Support
Connect on product support and feature requests.
Related Questions
-
What's the best SEO tactics when you have a dedicated web address pointing to a page on a different site?
Hope someone can help with a question I've got about sorting out some duplicate content issues. To simplify the question, imagine there is a website a.com which has a page a.com/newslettersignup. In addition to the a.com domain, there is also a different web address, ashortcut.com, which points to a.com/newslettersignup. ashortcut.com is the web address that is advertised in marketing material etc. So what is the best way then to tell Google etc. that ashortcut.com is the preferred URL for the page which sits at a.com/newslettersignup? The advice I've read about the canonical tag, for example, doesn't cover this exact scenario so although it can support cross-domain information, I'm not sure if that's the best route to follow. Thanks!
On-Page Optimization | | Nobody15755058948220 -
How should i optimize this page
Hi, i am having major problems in optimizing this page as it is a magazine site. On normal sites i have no problem in optimizing the page to get the correct keywords to come up in the search engines but since the upgrade and also because it is a magazine site, i am having problems on how i should do this. my site is www.in2town.co.uk and i am trying to optimize the page for the following keywords lifestyle magazine online magazine lifestyle news Life and Style articles healthy lifestyle i am trying to make sure that google knows what the magazine is about, as i know have dropped down the rankings since the upgrade and for lifestyle magazine we were number one in google for such a long time but now we are on page 9 and this is our home page. we are seeing sites that have hardly any content ranking above us for this keyword i have a small intro which i have just put in the past few days at the top and we have a welcome in the middle which is here. Welcome to In2town Lifestyle Magazine Our Lifestyle Magazine is a fresh, innovative and vibrant online magazine offering you the best in health,fitness and life & style features, as well as modern lifestyle, beauty, fashion, personal finance and entertainment. Over the years In2town Lifestyle Magazine has established a reputation for quality articles and informed lifestyle and health features thanks to our experienced team of editorial professionals. By reading our online Lifestyle Magazine, you will be able to enjoy the interesting mix of entertainment features, health and lifestyle news as well as finding out what is happening in the celebrity world. We are always happy to hear from our readers, if you have lifestyle news or a story that you feel our readers would be interested in then please do contact us. xxxxxxxx but i would like to get rid of that section as i am going to put the latest articles there. any advice on how to sort this mess out would be great
On-Page Optimization | | ClaireH-1848860 -
Index Page Content
Mozers, I am of the believe and as a person who puts the utmost emphasis on the index page of any website I am trying to rank, especially with a new domain ... insuring content is relevant, structured, optimized and we have some link juice flowing in. I find once we get the index page ranked, Google's little bots then start to index and rank accordingly the rest of the website ... and we start producing results. We also develop websites (dare I say its where we expertise in) and unexpectantly the client has asked us to carry out SEO work additionally to their web development. Problem lies here, their index page, has absolutely no written content at all, just one large image with a logo (Fashion Website) ...Which I identify as a huge issue as per my explanation is paragraphs one or two. I am sure withe the many more qualified SEO experts and gurus within the SEOmoz community, you have also come across this issue So a few questions, if you don't mind adding advice. 1 - Am I putting too much emphasize on content within the index page, in terms of indexing and actually ranking ...yes I appreciate that terms within the website will be ranked against other pages other than the index page, but will it harm us for having no content at all within the index page 2 - If so, and yes is the answer to above, how do we handle it, we have spoke with the client and he is pretty adamant that he want the index page as is, he has been through out the whole website building process. As suggested, any advice would be really appreciated, its a difficult market to rank within a it is, and i can only see this index page making the task a lot more difficult Cheers John
On-Page Optimization | | Johnny4B0 -
Anyone done SEO with on-page ONLY?
I read this blog post: http://www.seomoz.org/ugc/let-onpage-optimization-change-your-life The author claims they have increased the visitors 50 fold doing on-page seo ONLY. So they just added content, and optimized the site structure. Anyone have seen similar results? Not outreach whatsoever, just adding content to site. Technically, this should be true, article directories has tons of visitors and they were giving out links.
On-Page Optimization | | inhouseseo0 -
Seo Moz says there are 124 links on this page - do you see it?
I'm look at the report under Crawl Diagnostics Summary/Too Many On-Page Links It says there are 124 links on this page. I don't see it?! do you? http://www.kisswedding.com/blog/category/garden-wedding-ideas/
On-Page Optimization | | annasusmiles0 -
How much does punctuation affect on-page SEO?
I have a page on a site that is targeted for "men's custom suits." Using the on-page analysis tool from SEOmoz it gives me an F for "mens custom suits" but an A with the apostrophe. Even though the apostrophe is proper English grammar, does it affect rankings either way?
On-Page Optimization | | cgray010 -
URL for location pages
Hello all We would like to create clean, easy URLs for our large list of Location pages. If there are a few URLs for each of the pages, am I right when I'm saying we would like this to be the canonical? Right now we would like the URL to be: For example
On-Page Optimization | | Ferguson
Domain.com/locations/Columbus I have found some instances where there might be 2,3 or more locations in the same city,zip. My conclusion for these would be: adding their Branch id's on to the URL
Domain.com/locations/Columbus/0304 Is this an okay approach? We are unsure if the URL should have city,State,zip for SEO purposes?
The pages will have all of this info in it's content
BUT what would be best for SEO and ranking for a given location? Thank you for any info!0 -
SEO Domain Values
I always thought that there was no difference in value between a .com and .net, also that hyphens have the same value as the keyphrase without the hyphen. But I have heard Rand lately saying hyphens are spammy - whats the go? Is CarParts.com better than Car-Parts.com or Car-Parts.net etc?
On-Page Optimization | | Ventura0