SEO for local businesses pt. 2

SEO for local businesses in Hawaii

An in-depth series — Part 2 — SEO Basics

SEO basics for local businesses in Hawaii: pages analysis. In this second in our series on SEO, we will go over details of basic SEO pages analysis. This series discusses comprehensive on-site analysis. Another series will address on-page SEO analysis.

What is SEO?

For more details on what Search Engine Optimization (SEO) involves, see part 1 in this series.

A comprehensive website audit will address the following aspects of your website: 

  1. Basic Health Check
  2. Pages Analysis (covered in this article)
  3. Meta Analysis
  4. Content Analysis
  5. Links Analysis
  6. Images Analysis
  7. Mobile & Desktop Optimization
  8. Usability & Technologies

Since we already covered Basic Health Check in the first part of this series, this article covers details on Pages Analysis. Other articles in this series will address the remaining aspects listed above.

SEO Basics: Pages Analysis

  1. HTTP responses: Pages Analysis includes checking the HTTP response of your pages. The topic of HTTP requests and local seo companyresponses can become quite technical and thick; but here's a great list of HTTP responses using photos of cats to offer an easier understanding.

  2.  Page size: Measured in kilobytes, be sure your pages are not too big. An official 2017 Think With Google publication suggests page sizes should not be more than 500 KB. All text and media on your web page adds up to the page size. We can offer suggestions on how to minimize your page size including video and image compression.

  3. URL length: Every page on your website has its own URL. Be sure to keep URLs short:

    1. between 50-60 characters is ideal; not more than 120 characters. 

    2. we suggest adding keywords to your URL. (This is covered in the upcoming series discussing on-page SEO). 

  4. Robots.txt blocked pages: If you look at the root of your domain you should have a .txt file named robots.txt. If you don't seelocal seo company in hawaii  one then you should create one and add suggested directives. The robots.txt file tells robots (kind robots, that is—wicked robots ignore this file) a few important details about your site, which improves your SEO. Contact us for more details. 

  5. Noindex & Nofollow Metadata: These are two ways of telling robots not to index a web page or follow links on specific pages.

    1. noindex: tells robots not to index a page

      1. this is useful for "Admin" pages

    2. nofollow: tells robots not to follow links on a page

  6. Refresh redirect Metadata: This is a redirect executed by the browser (as opposed to the server). Metadata redirects are not recommended (as w3.org states: "Redirects are preferably implemented on the server side...") because:

    1. it may disorient users

    2. they are often used in aggressive attacks

      1. if used on your site, search engines may think your site is executing an attack

  7. Canonical rel attribute: These are HTML tags that tell search engines "this is the main page" when duplicate content is detected. For example, if you have a blog listing all of your blog posts and you have a group of links that filter the blog posts by categories, when a user clicks a category a different page is rendered. Search engines will consider this a duplicate of the main page listing all of your blog posts. In order to avoid this, a canonical tag is placed on the "master" page.

  8. Alternate rel tag: This is an HTML tag that provides information on an alternate version of the current page (often used with an hreflang attribute to tell search engines the language of the current page).

  9. Hreflang attribute: This HTML attribute tells search engines which language the current page uses.

  10. Mixed content: Ensure every form of media on your website is served over HTTPS. As mentioned above, HTTPS is highly recommended; so be sure that all images, videos, and any other links are served over HTTPS. Otherwise, this is considered "mixed content" because while your website is served over HTTPS some images or videos are served over HTTP protocol. 

Local businesses in Hawaii can benefit from following the directives of SEO experts; for further reading, see this authoritative starter guide. If you are interested in executing your own SEO plan, I recommend using SE Ranking. Hawaii SEO CompaniesTheir plan includes 35+ SEO tools to help you optimize your site; it also includes an in-depth guide on implementing an online marketing plan. Otherwise, I recommend running our FREE on-page SEO audit. This is a free SEO audit for a single page. We understand you have your choice in Hawaii SEO companies, that's why we are committed to providing neutral advice; consultation that is truly in your best interest. For an objective approach in SEO web design in Hawaii, contact Vital Tech Results.