SEO by the numbers
I’ve been receiving a lot of calls and emails from clients and business owners concerned about the optimization of their sites, more specifically with the search volume of their keywords, and the back-end data of their website called the META-data. This data is important to make available to the search engines and viewers about the content of the pages on a website or webpage. These communications typically have been anxious that the technical aspect of META-tags with questions ranging from “do we have the proper keyword density and optimization” to “are we within character limits for our META data,” “do the keywords have appropriate search volumes” and much more…
Back to SEO Basics
I know I’ve written a lot on the topic of keyword research & keyword optimization. I have a client that pays me a consulting fee to do just this, however, he likes to do the work himself. Still, I cannot force him to think things through. He has a very specific and unique business model. He has a rock quarry, and fabrication shop that only works with a unique stone called Honeycomb Onyx, Honey Onyx, or Amber Onyx. He recently sent me a list of 4 new keywords he wanted added to his pages and meta data. He always asked me “what do you think?” All to often I believe I burst his bubble. The four new words ranged in search volume on Google Ad words from 390 searches down to only 30 searches. That is simply not enough to justify changing. Even if he were in positions one, two and three on Google, it would not give him the volume of traffic he wants. So I do my analysis and tell him what I think.
SEO numbers have to work
This blog was meant to discuss Meta data and the SEO numbers. I’m afraid I have wandered off a little into search volume and SEO numbers. I’ll get right back on track to the misunderstood side of META Tags, and character count limits and SEO numbers as they impact search engine optimization.
I will begin by saying many of the character limitations you have read about are not actually character count limitations, but rather pixel limitations. Different letters and numbers occupy varying amounts of pixel space; for example a capital “Z” occupies more pixel space and a lower case “z “and so forth. It is an enormous pain to actually measure pixels, and very few have the appropriate tools, therefore, the SEO numbers have been boiled down to a fairly simple character count. That is why you typically see number-ranges instead of hard-set numbers when searching the topic SEO numbers. I is also important to mention that there is also a minimums, not just maximums. There must be enough information for the search engine to understand what you are saying. So here we go:
- META-Title 30 min to 65 max characters (what is the page about)
- META-Description 70 min to 156 max characters (make it count)
- META-Keywords 8 words to 200 characters (not that they matter)
- H-Tags 70 characters max (H-1, H-2 etc.)
- URL length 115 characters max (keep it simple)
- Image Alt Attribute 100 characters max (all images need to have one)
In Conclusion
SEO numbers are important. Nailing down just these 6 attributes of your site will not mean your site will sky rocket to the number one position, however having the appropriate items in place will help. There are hundreds of SEO numbers and Items to consider. Theses SEO numbers will help. Always use “White Hat” techniques, and be clear about what your page(s) are about. They must be relevance and have meaning.
Always use www.e2-ts.com to help with your SEO numbers/plan.
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