Category: SEO

Page title is still the most important on-page SEO factor on any web page in 2016

I recently read this article about page title optimisation tips in 2016, and here’s some notes:

The page title tag ( the <title> element) is still massively important in 2016

The title of a snippet on the SERP probably won’t show this though, and on mobile it might be totally different.

Don’t do this across pages:

Page 1: <title>my website’s keyword - page 1</title>

Page 2: <title>my website’s keyword - page 2</title>

The number of characters for a title tag is as many as Google will fit into about 512px, the number of characters depends on the text, but will be about 70.

I don’t often post stuff about SEO, but when I do it’ll go here.

Does image Alt text get used in Google’s rankings?

EDIT – March 21 2015 – This article is really old now, so please take what it says with a pinch of salt!  

Alt text in a browser

One of the questions I’ve often been asked about SEO is this:

“Does the wording we put in image Alt text get used in Google’s rankings?”

The answer to this question seems to have changed over the years, where first it seemed to be a really popular place for web developers to sneak in a few additional SEO keywords into their page. Continue reading Does image Alt text get used in Google’s rankings?

How one tiny hyphen destroyed our SEO efforts

Edit – This article was written a long time ago now, and best-practice has actually now changed. The investigation in this article finds that hyphens in a domain name have a negative effect, wheras Google has since recommended their use to help identify spaces between words. 

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SEE ALSO: The difference between a <button> and an <a>

You might have seen Silktide’s SEO challenge, where three intrepid developers battled to get their website the highest in Google’s rankings for the obscure term: ‘frictionless owls’

Here’s the order they came when we finished the challenge:

  1. frictionlessowls.com – My site had content rich with relevant keywords.
  2. www.frictionlessowls.co.uk – Ali’s site had a few pages of unique content.
  3. frictionless-owls.com – Oliver’s site with machine-generated nonsensical content.

Continue reading How one tiny hyphen destroyed our SEO efforts