The five areas to optimise for better search
Search engine optimisation is really not as complex or mysterious as many people think. In this short post I'll show you the five areas of content that are important to get right and, best of all, easy to do!
1. Page title
It's important that this clearly relates to the subject matter of the page and that it reflects words used in the page. Google looks for the two to match and if they do this increases the authority of the page.
2. URL slug
This is the bit that goes after the closing forward slash, like this: www.caxtoncomms.co.uk/slug. It's great if you make the slug similar to your page title and most web builders will do this automatically but it can be worth checking, especially for blog articles which can sometimes generate ugly slugs with random letters and numbers - Google hates them!
3. Page content
Maybe this is obvious but it's vital that what's on the page matches what the title and slug both refer to. Content should be written in normal parlance with usual grammar and syntax. Never never add random keywords into prose - another thing Google hates!
4. Page description
Most web builders will allow you to write a short page description. This is especially good for Google because this is the bit that shows up beneath the URL in a search result. Make sure it matches the other three and that it contains your keywords within proper syntax.
5. Tags and categories
Again this is pretty standard for most web builders but you have to add them yourself. Use your keywords here as long as they match the rest of the content.
When Google (or Bing, or any search engine) crawls your site they are looking for authority and relevance so if you can demonstrate both through having good quality content that is backed by sensible titles, descriptions and tags you are onto a winner.
Happy ranking!
Update September 2023
If you want to get an overview of how well your site is doing against these elements, check out the tool I use daily and recommend, SEMrush.
