Simple SEO
Studio44 SEO PICTURE acronym checklist
After completing a blog post don’t press the publish button without checking this simple SEO checklist!
Preview
Have you seen your post the same way everyone else is going to see it live? When you preview your post this is the fool proof tool for eradicating any errors you may not have seen from the back end. Before posting, ask yourself if you have done everything possible to give it that attention that makes it shareable and appealing which is why you're writing the article in the first place.
Image featured
The days of pages of constant writing are over! People like interactive images. What do you need to do with your pictures? To make your images SEO friendly you need to make sure that you ALT text and caption your images so that search engines recognise the value. Make sure that you resize your photos so that they fit the width of your post space accordingly.
Categories and tags
It is important in getting people to click on your search result. Title tags, on the index page are the most important html element to any website. Make sure that your first three words on your title tag include your main keyword search phrase. For more details on tags and when you should use them look at this video: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RBTBEfd7z_Y
Title
An effective title is one that is optimised under SEO best practices. It needs to be descriptive but at the same time compelling and to the point. On average, only 20% of viewers read beyond a headline, higlighting the importance of a captivating title!
URL
A URL is a web address. But why does an optimised URL impact on your SEO ranking? A complex URL such as this E-Commerce site will do nothing to enhance your visibility in search engines:
http://www.argos.co.uk/static/Browse/ID72/14418875/ c_1/1%7Ccategory_root%7CGarden+and+DIY%7C14418702/c_2/2%7 Ccat_14418702%7CBarbecues%7C14418875.htm
A clear and concise SEO-Friendly URL should include your target keyword phrase and should reassure your readers that your page will deliver what they are searching for. This is likely to increase your sites “click through rate” known as CTR, an important metric in demonstrating the relevance of your site. Make sure that every page of your site has one URL, if the page has more than one URL then you have created a duplicate page. Too many duplicate pages will not make you popular with Google and may result in a punishment from Google Panda. For more information and tips for URLs look at: http://www.wordtracker.com/academy/learn-seo/technical-guides/seo-clean-urls.
Readable Content
This is more commonly known as your body copy. Which is the body of the page that provides valuable information. You need to make sure that your blog posts are SEO optimised with well-formatted, search-engine friendly content. How do you achieve this? Think about including shorter paragraphs that help the reader cruise through the content. Sub headings which are known as H2 and H3 tags, are also a great way to cut up chunky text or to break the post down. They also allow for search engine spiders to crawl and rank your post. If this explanation is too vague read Yoasts SEO blog https://yoast.com/headings-use/ for more details.
A good post will also incorporate external and internal links, these links will be useful, related content sources. What is the point in links? An external link is a great way to expand a point without boring your readers with great detail. Internal linking within your own site send signals to search engines as to which pages on your site are the best resources. A great practice to use external links to improve your relationships within your industry is to organically link out to good domain authority sites that can earn you links back!
A read more tag is effective to control how much of your entry is visible from your blog’s home and archive pages. Lastly, ensure that you target keyword phrase preferably in the first paragraph. BUT make it sound natural don’t force it.
Enticing tone
The enticing tone should be carried out throughout your website and blog posts when possible but most importantly in your meta description. What is a meta description? A meta description is the snippet of text that will appear beneath your title in search engine results. Make this relevant and enticing when a user sees this description in search engines and you're already ticking SEO best practice boxes before a user enters the site!
So, by following the PICTURE SEO checklist you should be well on your way to a good ranking blog and website! If you want to learn more about SEO and how we use it then click here!
