Website Technical Requirements & Optimizations Guide

Meta data

Meta titles

A meta title, also known as a title tag, refers to the text displayed on search engine result pages and browser tabs to indicate the topic of a webpage.

Note: you should aim for these to be less than 60 characters, or the title will cut off.

Meta descriptions

A meta description is the information about your page that appears in the search engine results below the title / URL of your page. The description does not directly factor into your search engine results page (SERP) rank but influences whether a user clicks on the link to your page. However, you should try to utilize your main keyword within the meta description.

You don’t want your meta description to be over 155 characters, because at that point, your content will be cut off and people won’t be able to read the full text on Google.

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Duplicate content

Duplicate content is content that appears in multiple locations (URLs) on the web. As a result, search engines don’t know which URL to show in the search results nor which one to rank for query results.

Search engines rarely show multiple versions of the same content, therefore they use their algorithms to choose which version they think will produce the best results.

However, it can result in Google choosing the non-original link, causing link equity to be diluted and visibility of each page to be compromised which negatively affects the search ranking for that piece of content.

Duplicate content, separate URLs

Search engines will treat URLs that do not resolve to a single version as separate pages.

Example:

• https://www.withisforyou.com/
• https://www.withisforyou.com/home

Both of the above URLs will likely have the same content.

🧐So how do we fix it?

Make sure one a 301 redirect to the main page or set up a canonical tag.

Duplicate titles

Ensure pages have unique titles. For example:

URLYou don’t want thisYou want thiswww.slammedialab.com/web-design-developmentServiceSlam Media Labwww.slammedialab.com/seoServiceSlam Media Labwww.slammedialab.com/brand-identity-strategyServiceSlam Media Lab

Canonicalization

A canonical tag (aka "rel canonical") is a way of telling search engines that a specific URL represents the master copy of a page.

Using the canonical tag prevents problems caused by identical or "duplicate" content appearing on multiple URLs. Practically speaking, the canonical tag tells search engines which version of a URL you want to appear in search results.

Trailing Slashes in URLs

Historically, it’s common for URLs with a trailing slash to indicate a directory, and those without a trailing slash to denote a file.

Example:

• https://www.slammedialab.com/blog/ (with trailing slash, conventionally a directory)
• https://www.slammedialab.com/blog (without trailing slash, conventionally a file)

Both sites serve the same content and one should redirect to another.

Thin Content

Thin content is content that has little or no value to the user. Google considers doorway pages, low-quality affiliate pages, or simply pages with very little or no content as thin content pages.

If you don’t want these pages to index, include “noindex” tags or pagination pages.

Orphan pages

Orphan pages of a website have no incoming internal links.

Search engine crawlers can only discover such pages from the sitemap file or external back-links. Website visitors won't be able to get to this page from any other page on your website.

404 Pages

404 – Not Found is one of the most common 4xx errors and indicates the requested URL does not exist. Links pointing to the 404 URLs are widely known as "broken links.”

404 URLs on your website damage the user experience, as people cannot access the page or file via a link they click. Besides, internal links to 404 URLs create unnecessary "dead ends" for search engine crawlers and can waste your crawl budget.

🤷‍♀️ So how do we fix it?

Review the list of 404 URLs on your website. Click on the number of in-links to a given 404 URL to access the list of pages that link to it.

You should review the internal outgoing links to all the 404 pages reported, and either remove these links or replace them with relevant links to live pages.

Alternatively, you can set the appropriate 301 redirects. It is especially important for the 404 pages with a decent number of external back-links.

Sitemaps

Sitemaps are made specifically for search engine spiders.

It allows websites to include additional information about each URL: when it was last updated, how often it changes, and how important it is in relation to other URLs on the site.

Also, XML sitemaps can be an indexation diagnostic tool. Google Search Console will tell you the number of indexed pages for each XML sitemap that is submitted.

Images

Images offer a great opportunity to earn visibility and additional organic traffic with image and universal search results. The use of images on the site is also helpful to make pages more attractive, illustrate an idea, and earn visitors’ attention.

Tip: Since search engines crawlers like Googlebot cannot view images, make sure to keep images on the same subdomain or domain as the content you want to have ranked by using focus key phrases in the image folder’s name.

To keep images optimized, use descriptive, keyword-rich file names.

Large Images

With SEO being inextricably tied to user experience, search engines are trying to motivate webmasters to make their sites easier to use by adding page load time as a ranking factor. One factor that can bloat page load times is large images. In the rush to publish, it’s easy to overlook image size. However, great care should be taken to make sure images are under 100KB (and even smaller if you have an entire page of images).

Images with no or irrelevant alt text

Alt (alternative) text, attributes or descriptions are used within HTML code to describe the appearance and function of an image on a page to site visitors who may use a screen reader or a browser that blocks images. By adding more context around images, results can become much more useful, which can lead to higher-quality traffic to your site.

Broken Redirects

Broken Redirects are redirects that point to a page, returning one of the 4xx or 5xx HTTP response codes.

These URLs can be accessed neither by your website visitors nor by the search engines crawlers. Crawlers will be forced to abandon the request, while people will likely leave your website.

🤷‍♂️ So how do we fix it?

Applying 301 redirects to new content is the easiest way to fix this.

Headers (H1, H2, H3)

Headers, also known as HTML headers, are tags used in the code of a webpage to indicate the importance and hierarchy of the content on that page. They are commonly referred to as H1, H2, H3, etc. Headers play a crucial role in on-page search engine optimization (SEO) because they help search engines understand the structure and content of a page, and they also make it easier for users to scan and understand the page's content.

The main types of headers used in HTML are:

1. H1: This is the most important header on a page and should be used only once. It should contain the main topic or keyword of the page.
2. H2: This is used for subheadings that are directly related to the main topic of the page. There can be multiple H2 tags on a page.
3. H3: This is used for sub-subheadings and should be nested under H2 tags. There can be multiple H3 tags under one H2 tag.</aside>

Site Optimizations

Copywriting

There are several best practices here that we should add as we write content to help optimize the content for search:

• Structure and utilize more SEO friendly formatting
• Utilize H2s, H3s, etc.
• These should also include keywords and variations
• Use bulleted and numbered lists
• Embed rich content like YouTube videos, IG posts, Tweets, etc. to make your content more interactive
• Interlink to other articles where it makes sense. This will help to keep people engaged longer on the site and allowed Google to index your articles faster.
• Example
• Say you had an article titled “How Burnout is Affecting Employee Productivity.” You happen to have an article that is focused on the keyword/similar topic “Work Burnout.” What you want to do here is link the “Work Burnout” article to the “How Burnout is Affecting Employee Productivity.” Specifically, you want to mention the keyword from the other piece (work burnout) and link it there.

For SEO writing, make sure to reference the WITH SEO Writing Guide for tips and formatting for search engines.

On-Page Structural Optimization

In addition to these two recommendations for the content itself, these structural changes will help optimize the content:

• Breadcrumb at the top of the page — This creates an easier navigation experience and adds additional interlinking‍
• Table of contents to the side bar of articles — This will also help create more interlinks, allow Google to link to specific sections of your article VS just the top, and makes it easier for the user to navigate to their specific part of the content‍
• Email capture or CTA to the sidebar — Once there is a sidebar for the Table of Contents (TOC), consider adding the newsletter/email/ CTA sign-up there. This way, your visitors won’t have to scroll to the bottom to see the CTA.‍
• URL structure — You want to keep the URL as short as possible (every new slug makes the site load slower). If you are trying to rank for a specific keyword, make sure to include the keyword vs the long title you have‍
• H1 in the homepage/landing pages — This helps Google know what’s the most important information on the page and what {client name} should be known for.‍
• External links — On all external links, make sure they open in a new tab. This way, your users can easily return to your site after exploring the link.‍
• Set-up a Google My Business panel — This will allow people searching for {client name} to see quick information about the company before visiting the site. Here’s the link to learn more.‍
• PDFs — For PDFs, we should have these as fully built webpages. This will allow for better UX across devices. However, we should still allow users to download the PDF if they still choose that option. Otherwise, possibly a gated download that requires people to share their email (helps grow your email list).‍
• Avoid subdomains — In the future, as you scale the site, avoid subdomains. In general, Google favors sub directories over sub domains. Subdomains are actually considered a whole new URL.