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Search engine optimisation (SEO)

Help users find your content

When writing content for the web, it is good practice to consider the words and phrases users may type in a search engine to find your information.

This approach helps improve the rankings and visibility of the page.

On page SEO

It’s very unlikely that a user will find a page with a search term, if that term is not contained on the page.

Keywords should be added to the page in a natural way. Repeating your keyword once or twice will be more than enough. More than this will put off users and potentially set off spam filters at the search engine.

If content quality is high, users tend to stay on a site longer. This is a factor that could increase a page’s visibility in the search engines.

Areas, where keyword (phrases) can be added, include:

  • meta description
  • meta title
  • meta keywords
  • headings (h1, h2, h3, h4, h5 and h6)
  • content text
  • bold and italic text
  • internal links in the content
  • image filenames, image alt tags and title tags
  • video filename and video title

Meta tags

Meta tags are bits of code on a website that control how your page appears in the search engine.

Meta description

The meta description tag has a character limit of roughly 150 characters. Just like the title tag, Google will shorten your listing if it has more than 155 characters in the tag.

Meta title

The title tag has a character limit of roughly 70 characters in Google. Use any more than 70 characters and it is likely Google will truncate your title tag in the search engine.

This is one of the main factors used by search engines to rank pages.

Meta keywords

The meta keywords tag, if used, should be used sparingly. Using just a handful of words is recommended here.

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