Three Vital Tag Related Blog SEO Tips
If you’re constantly surfing the web looking for solid blog SEO content like me, you’ll notice a plethora of information and “top lists” on virtually every related source. Most of these lists are highly recommended, but in my opinion there are a few vital changes you can make that are not usually not listed.
1. H1 Tags for Titles
I cannot express enough how well this has worked on several of the projects I am intimately involved in. One of the major projects I work on is a wiki site with just under 5,000 pages indexed in Google. We work diligently to ensure that all URL’s are using the keywords of the page content title, and that each title is wrapped in h1 tags.
In doing so we have seen tremendous success on long tail keywords and keyphrases, and now that we’re starting to monitor some of the blogs we work with we’re seeing the same results across the board.
Now, I’m not suggesting that be simply making sure your titles are wrapped in h1 tags you will suddenly see magic happen within the SERPs, but as statistics have shown me in my experience, Google likes the tag and gives pages “points” in the ALGO for using them.
To check for the H1 tag, simply right click on your page and view the source. You should find the h1 tag wrapped around your titles as seen in the image below.
2. Rel, Title and NoFollow for Links
The “rel” tag is not extremely important, but it might be something you want to look at from time to time.
The title tag is very important, in my opinion, and a habit that you should work towards getting used to. It’s also one of the easier tweaks to overlook because Wordpress and other blogging platforms have made it so simple to paste in URL’s when adding links. If you truly wish to get the most bang for your time when looking at your content from an optimization standpoint, you really do need to take the extra step of adding in title tags.
NoFollow is a thorn in my side, personally, because I actually want to pass on “link juice” to anyone I link to. I personally believe it is the way the web is connected and I think if done properly, linking with the dofollow mentality is healthy for all of us. That being said, Google has made it clear that the search engine ALGO is looking for NoFollow to help cut down on link spam. With this in mind, we need to do what is required to obtain as much likability from Google and other search engines. If adding NoFollow is what the search engines want(you know, the guys who send us MOST of our traffic!) then that is what we should be giving them.
3. Image Title Tags
Last year one of the blogs that I host had an image posted as one of those “caption this” posts. The image ended up ranking VERY well for a completely unexpected keyword. It was in the bottom row on the first page of Google Images and was pulling in 200 visit per day. I went in and added the title tag for that particular keyword, and four days later it had become the second image on the top row.
That image has seen 600 plus unique visits in a single day, and still averages at least 50 unique visits per day almost a year later. We optimized the page to pull in the audience searching for the particular image, and the move has resulted in quite a few new RSS subscribers.
If using tags a little more wisely can result in extra visits and new RSS subscribers… isn’t it worth the effort?
Alex Cristache | May 15th, 2008 at 2:45 pm #
Nice post Eric, thanks!
Regarding the H1 tags, it should be mentioned that only one H1 tag should be present on a page. To be more exact, on archive pages, post titles should be wrapped in H2 and on single pages in H1.
Rob O. | May 15th, 2008 at 3:56 pm #
I include both TITLE and ALT tags on all of my images. Remember that the ALT tag comes into play when the page is being viewed with images disabled - probably most common for people with accessibility issues.
The odd thing is the disparity between what the different search engines find when searching my site for images. Yahoo! returns the most hits by far, but MSN does find items that Google doesn’t - in spite of the fact that most of my images are contained in the same folder.
I also think it’s well worth the effort to include the TITLE attribute on hyperlinks. This not only gives the reader a bit more information about the link you’ve provided, but also give the search engines that much more to chew on…
Eric Odom (Post Author) | May 15th, 2008 at 3:59 pm #
Alex, good point and I’ll update the post to reflect this shortly.
Rob, you’re absolutely correct. For some reason I forgot to mention that. Likely because in Wordpress the ALT tag is inserted for you when adding a link via pop-up. I’ll add that in to the post as well.
Thanks!
David Shaw | May 15th, 2008 at 6:25 pm #
Great Post Eric.
You got most things covered, was going to being up the point about 1 H! tag per page, but someone has already raised that.
Good Job.
Kevin | May 15th, 2008 at 6:33 pm #
Very good post Eric. Title tags in normal links is something I rarely do, probably because like you said, wordpress doesn’t automate it.
Alex - I know that H1 tags should only be used once but I’ve never heard that they shouldn’t be used on archive pages. Can you expand on this
Alex Cristache | May 16th, 2008 at 12:25 am #
Hey Kevin, when I said archives, I was referring to a template style. An archive type of page could be one of the following: home page, search results page, monthly archives, tag archives. You get the picture.
On these pages (and most importantly home page) it would be better to use H2 to wrap post title and use H1 around your tag line or logo, let’s say, thinking that your logo and tag line are written to include SEO-wise keywords. When going to a single post page, your post’s title becomes more important than you overall keywords, and that’s when you should switch between H1 and H2.
Take a look at the source code of my blog to see exactly what I’m talking about.
Kevin | May 16th, 2008 at 7:07 am #
Thanks Alex,
I knew that logos are usually wrapped with a H1 tag but to be honest I never really thought about the SEO implications of it.
Alex Cristache | May 16th, 2008 at 10:28 am #
It’s not a rule to have the logo in H1 tags (remember, only on homepage!). This practice is based on the fact the most times, the logo/tag line is very close to the top, and will be one of the first things the spider will read.
Directory submission service | June 21st, 2008 at 10:52 am #
Website directories is a list of sites designed by different categorizes. The category is determined by relevant to both your site and the directory as well as by the directory offerings and the sites that you link to. The relevancy is increasingly playing a larger role in the success of the web pages from the content to categories of the sites.
Heading Tag SEO Test | June 26th, 2008 at 7:35 am #
I like the suggestion on H1 tags. Recently there has been some speculation that H1 tags don’t have the weight that they used to. Now it is semantically correct to use them in any event but I set up a test to prove / disprove the suggestion that H1 tags don’t matter in Google anymore.
The preliminary results are in and show that H1 tags are still useful. Some further testing is planned.
Manual Directory Submission | August 10th, 2008 at 8:08 am #
Nice article with 3 big tips
thanks
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