SEO Basics to Better Website Content Optimization

Most people understand the importance of managing website content, but when you start to create contents for the website, you may realize that no one read your content and no traffic is coming into your website.

Table of Contents

What is Content Creation and Optimization?

From a content creator’s point of view, the golden rule is always:

Don’t just talk about what you want to talk about. Know what your TA really care about and what kind of content they want.

From technical point of view it could be a bit more complicated: How to produce good content thst meet the needs of your users and search engines?

Let website content optimization be your first step into a better SEO performance.

Please do note that the following contents are subject to change due to locale, and should be adapted based on your location.

For example, Chinese and English characters are calculated differently and so the use of H tags could have differences.

<Title> Tag

Each page should have a title tag, the title tag is the title shown on the search results, so it should be clear, concise, unique and attractive.

Use titles that can trigger emotions to appeal users to click, and make good use of “how to” and “list of” titles.

You can also go to the search results page to see how the titles ranked on top are written. Observe the similarities and modify your title to make them unique and stand out.

Key points of the Title

The number of words should be under 140 characters (including spaces)
Keyword must be present, but no more than twice.
The earlier the keyword appears, the better.
Avoid stuffing in a bunch of keywords.
Put the company name in the end of the title or don’t even write it at all.
Consider using a keyword + the variant of this keyword if possible.
Avoid using too much punctuations, such as: , and … so you don’t waste the already limited characters you have.

Check if there is a <title> tag:

Right-click on the web page to view the source code.
Find <title>title tag</title>

Snippets (Meta Description)

Google may crawl the meta description to display in the search results, and each page should have it’s own unique meta description, so that if Google can’t find the texts that can be used as a snippet on the page, it can use the meta description tag to display the page summary.

The meta description should be persuasive and can arouse the user’s curiosity, in addition to making it descriptive, it should also be user-oriented (it should be concise and easy for users to know what it’s about right away)

Key Points of the Meta Description

Each page should have an unique description, and you should avoid writing contents that is not related to the page.
The number of words should be controlled between 40-50 words, or 300 characters (including space).
Keywords need to be brought out, and should appear twice.
Avoid stuffing a bunch of keywords
Use keywords and variants naturally, and make them appear as early as possible.
Don’t copy and paste the texts in your page and use it as the description.

Check if there are meta descriptions:

Right-click on the web page to view the source code.
Look for <meta name=”description” content=”description of your page”/>

Page Title, Headings, and <h> Tag

<h> tags are used to emphasize on the authority of the key messages your website wants to deliver.

H1 is the main title, H2 is the sub-title and so on. Proper use of the H tag can make the website SEO better. The H1 tag should echo your title, it’s fine if they are the same. Then use H2, H3 and maybe H4. I wouldn’t recommend H5 and H6 because that means you simply have too much to talk about.

If that’s the case, you should divide the contents into different pages or posts. Use your H tags according to the importance of your titles to make the tags more SEO-friendly.

IMPORTANT: The platforms you use makes a big difference

For example: LinkedIn only have H1, H2 and normal paragraph, where as WordPress, uses H1 as <title>, and still have H2-H6 and normal paragraph.

So it really depends on the platform you are using, but it would be beneficial to make sure your <title> and <h1> are identical.

Key Points of Page Title Optimization

Each page should have a unique web title (using <title> tags)
The number of words is controlled within 140 characters (including spaces)
Keywords should be brought out as early as possible.
Don’t over use the H1 tag, there should only be one. If everything is H2, it means every point is equally important, which also means none of it is important.

Check if the <h1> tag has been set:

Right-click on the web page to view the source code.
Find <h1>Web Title</h1>

Before writing right away, you should have a draft of your contents listed by the importance of the messages you want to deliver:

Identify the keywords/key phrases of the page
Have at least three to four keywords and their variants ready.
Then apply them accordingly in your titles based on the importance.

H1 should have your core keyword, followed by H2s with relevant keywords and variants of the main keyword.

Remember to make good use of the relevant words and synonyms of the keywords, so that the whole page is aligned and revolve to the keyword theme.

Don’t forget that it’s always mobile first now. Your contents shown on mobile devices should be divided into sections; and the computer version should have a break every three to four sentences, which is more comfortable viewing.

Key points of the Content Optimizations

The length should be between 800 to 1600 words, with a minimum of 300 words (enough for SEO and suitable for reading)
Bring out keywords and their variants (about 3 to 4 times)
Make good use of related words and synonyms of the keywords.
Keywords can be strengthened in bold, italic, list, etc.
Avoid pictureization of your texts. It’s terrible for SEO and could affect reading due to resolution.

Conclusion

So here are the four SEO basics for web content optimization. I’ll share more later in another more detailed, technical post about it.