This is a practical on-page SEO guide. Here I’m talking about key on-page elements that contribute to page relevance for specific keywords. What makes it unique is the fact that I’m using real life examples of the site in the “Calgary web design” field to show what works and what doesn’t. I hope you enjoy this guide!
If you simplify things a bit you can divide search engine optimization into two areas: on-page SEO and off-page. By now you and I know that it’s all about the balance between the two and both have to be developed in order for the site to rank high for select queries. Today and over the next 3 days I’ll take a look at an SEO experiment and see how much on-page SEO affects website rankings.
The on-page SEO experiment
The following on-page SEO experiment will have 3 major parts. First, I’ll look up and identify 5 websites competing for “Calgary web design”. To de-personalize the results I’ll use this plugin for Firefox. I’ll also narrow the results to those coming from Google.ca.
Then I’ll look up each one of 5 contenders using free site rankings tool WooRank. This will give me the score for each websites as well as highlight some insight into on-page SEO elements of each of the 5 websites. I will also showcase each of the websites as well as provide some comments.
Finally, I’ll provide you with summary thoughts or the verdict regarding on-page SEO elements that are important in affecting your website rankings. Let’s do it!
Calgary web design, top 5 listings in Google.ca (de-personalized)
You can see right away that titles showcase the target key phrase “Calgary web design” and it’s featured as the first 3 words of the title (except for #2 where the 3 words are switched). You will also notice that 4 out of 5 have “Calgary web design” in the Description of the article mentioned at least once (except for #1). Finally, you will notice that 4 out of 5 have their titles within the limit of 65-70 characters of title length (except for #5, which is running over a bit).
Tomorrow, I’ll look at each one of them in more details. For now, let me know if you have questions or comments and have an awesome day! In the meantime, feel free to follow me on Twitter where I share SEO things I find on the internet.
Part 2
Yesterday I started looking at on-page SEO factors affecting rankings for top 5 performers on Google.ca for “calgary web design”. Today we’ll look at the contenders and their on-page SEO elements in more details.
On-page SEO review for top 5 listings
#1: Calgary Web Design | SEO | Web Designer
Now let’s look at on-page SEO for WedgeIM in more details:
- WooRank score: 54.2, http://www.woorank.com/en/www/wedgeim.com
- Descriptive meta title: This “Calgary Web Design | SEO | Web Designer” title contains high traffic keywords that the company targets. It does describe what company does though. This title raises a question: is this a company or a freelancer. There’s nothing wrong with either but I prefer to be clear on that from the beginning.
- Promise in meta description: This description offers a promise of no-hassle answers, clean design and easy-to-navigate sites, as well as asks the user to give them a call. I’d include a phone number in this description. There’s enough space left for it too.
- Site links: This is the only website that has site links in Google listing. Site links are granted by Google to show a list of most popular pages on the website. This shows that the site is well trafficked. According to WooRank it gets over 1000 visits per month. It’s not a lot but considering the key phrase “Calgary web design”, it’s enough to get site links from Google.
- Landing page: This is where we land after clicking on the search listing. Are we in the right place? Based on latest website design showcase, we are in the right place. Good! Does this page look like a web design shop? At first it looks like a modern Web 2.0 web design with an image scroller and bold calls to action. However, looking at more details, it appears that the website is based on a Joomla website template with a few things unfinished.
- Headings: H1 tag is one of the most important elements on a webpage. It appears that H1 is missing here. According to WooRank the page has 5 H2’s and 8 H3’s, which is not so bad, but all H2’s are the same “Making beautiful websites since 2004…”. Not the best way to do it.
- Image alts: Also, according to WooRank, the page has 26 images and 18 of them are missing alt tags. Adding unique alt tags to those 18 images might help the company to solidify its #1 position
- Address / email / phone number: The page has contact details of the company spelled out in text on the page. This is exactly what you would want to do to be considered more credible according to Google, especially if you’re running a local business.
- Canonical issue: This page is missing canonical tag (has a www. vs. non-www issue). As a result Google views the URL with www. and without as two separate websites with exactly the same content. This raises a duplicate-content issue, which is bad. The fact that the website still ranks #1 interesting.
#2: Web Design Calgary & iPhone Apps by Mediumrare Inc.
And on-page SEO for Mediumrare in more details:
- WooRank score: 51.2, http://www.woorank.com/en/www/mrare.ca
- Descriptive title: The page title “Web Design Calgary & iPhone Apps by Mediumrare Inc.” sounds pretty descriptive to me. It identifies the keyword, the service and the company. Best one so far.
- Promise in description: This description is a humble (can compete…) overview of services the company offers. It invites the user to make the next step and check the portfolio. No promise made, but clean and within the character constraints.
- Landing page: This page is about creativity. It can be seen the headline and the graphics. To me this one looks as a very clean and unique website design showing that the company is in fact a web design agency.
- Headings: This page has 1 H1 and 8 H2’s. That’s what I like to see. However, H1’s text is “mediumrare” and like embedded into the logo on the page. Ideally, I’d like to see H1 showcasing a target key phrase for the page (i.e. Calgary web design by Mediumrare Inc.” or something like that.
- Image alts: 2 out of 2 image alts are missing. Adding those in and planing a key phrase in there should help the company make this page more relevant to its target search term.
- Canonical issue: No canonical issue here. All great! Google views the www. version and no-www version as one page.
- Contact info spelled out: This one also has the contact details spelled out in text. Google like to see things like that!
#3: Calgary web design – Apis Design
Here’s on-page SEO for Apis Design in more details:
- WooRank score: 61.8, http://www.woorank.com/en/www/apis.ca. That’s the top scored site according to WooRank. Let’s see what we have here.
- Descriptive title: The title is descriptive, includes the key phrase and the company name. I’m not sure if adding “inc.” at the end would make any difference though.
- Promise in description: Describes the service being offered, has the keyword phrase mentioned and promises “we build websites that work”. Adding a recommendation for next step could make this description more actionable. Like, “get a free quote today” or “call us today (and list a number)”.
- Landing page: The page showcases a visual scroller of featured website projects as well as shows strong calls-to-action such as “improve communication” and “reach the masses”. This website is custom-built, no templates involved, a good sign of a true web design agency. Their websites might be more expensive, but they will be unique, professional and, according to the promise, they will work.
- Headings: The page has no H1, 3 H2’s and 7 H4’s. Not the best case. As mentioned above, I like to see at least 1 H1 per page containing a target key phrase. In addition, H2’s do not contain any text. In this case, they’re just images. I’d highly recommend adding the text to these H2. It won’t be a big deal if it’s left as is, but there might be a good opportunity in adding text.
- Image alts: out of 7 images, 1 is missing alt attribute. Not a big deal, but for the sake of consistency I’d recommend specifying an alt attribute here.
- Canonical issue: no issues here. We’re great!
#4: Calgary Web Design – Web Design Calgary – Calgary Web Design
Now on-page SEO for Calgary Web Design Network in more details:
- WooRank score: 50.2, http://www.woorank.com/en/www/calgarywebdesign.ca
- Descriptive title: Although it contains the keyword and appears relevant this title looks like plain keyword stuffing. It does not identify the company.
- Promise in description: The description identifies the company as well as the key phrase, which is actually the same in a lot of cases. Its description is a bit too long to fit into the Google snippet so the user only sees the initial portion of it. It outlines the service, but does not more to the next step. I’d recommend shortening the description and adding a call-to-action.
- Landing page: The page does not really look visually relevant to the query “calgary web design”. Although it displays various computer related images, there’s nothing that says “a web design agency”.
- Headings: According to WooRank all major headings are missing. Adding headings to the page will likely increase its relevance for focus key terms.
- Image alts: 6 out of 38 images on the page are missing alt attributes.
- Canonical issue: Just like WedgeIM this site may have duplicate content issues and, as a results, may be devalued in rankings.
#5: Calgary Web Design, SEO, E-Commerce, Graphic Designers & More | Web Candy – Calgary Web Design and Web Development
Let’s look at on-page SEO for Web Candy in more details:
- WooRank score: 53.7, http://www.woorank.com/en/www/webcandy.ca
- Descriptive title: This title is descriptive and includes the company name. However, it also looks a bit keyword-stuffed. There are many opinions on the length limit for meta-titles. My personal take is that 70 characters (including spaces) is enough space to tell your audience about the focus of your company and mention your company’s name. Also, with so many different things in the title, the value of each key phrase is diffused.
- Promise in description: With the length of over 150 characters this description does describe the business, but puts it a bit more for search engines than for people. There’s a clear promise “Your best source for Calgary Web Designers” but it gets truncated due to character limitation and the potential customer does not see it.
- Landing page: This landing page is relevant to the search query and actually very useful. It’s got a functional display area that tells you about the company’s services. It’s got a sitemap-like menu of things the company does, which allows users to see all in one place, and very well-organized.
- Headings: The page is missing H1, it’s got one H2 and one H3, which appears very weird. Adding at least a H1 to this page and ensuring it contains target terms will likely help the company be more relevant for their target search queries.
- Image alts: no image alt attributes are missing. That’s great!
- Canonical issue: no problem here either!
I will summarize the findings tomorrow. For now, as always, let me know if you have questions or comments! In the meantime, feel free to follow me on Twitter where I share SEO things I find on the internet.
Part 3
Now that we’ve gone through all 5 on-page SEO contenders and their on-page SEO factors, let’s do a summary of findings and things to keep in mind when thinking about on-page SEO for your website.
On-page SEO – The Summary table
Here’s a summary table that combines WooRank score and a number of other key on-page SEO elements we talked about. Please note, That WooRank score is out of 100.
Scores for other elements are out of 10 and are very arbitrary (but I hope more or less accurate). At the bottom of the table I’m putting my numbers in based on how I would rank the sites Well, I’m not Google, but I am a person and websites should be built for people, not search engines.
Now, let’s look at some more general lessons from this series of articles about on-page SEO.
On-page SEO – The Verdict
So, what did we just find out that will help identify key elements of on-page SEO?
- There are many on-page SEO factors that contribute to web page relevancy. There’s a few key SEO factors that affect your rankings more than other factors. Titles, headings, link anchors, image alts, etc. are among the most important ones.
- Always remember that your website experience starts from a search listing. Landing on your site in step 2 or even 3. So, make sure you use unique and descriptive titles and promising descriptions on your pages.
- Build your websites for people first, then for search engines. Make sure your landing page (the page that results in clicking on your Google listing) is clean and actually representative of your business. If you claim you’re a design shop, show it.
- Although all 5 websites have relatively high WooRank score, there are things to improve on. Also, looking at score variation between the 5 sites, we see that there’s something else at play besides on-page SEO.
The fact that some of the most critical on-page SEO elements like canonical tagging, headings, image alts, etc. are being missed by top performers in “calgary web design” competition, suggests that either these are not as important to Google OR the rest of the sites perform even worse.
Next week I will do a similar exercise with off-page SEO and external factors affecting website rankings. In the meantime, feel free to follow me on Twitter where I share SEO things I find on the internet.
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