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SEO Best Practices

Before publishing a page, it is important to ensure your content is following SEO best practices. Below is a basic guide to follow to increase web traffic.

Page Titles

  • Create an interesting and engaging title.
    • Avoid using a title similar to another page, make sure it is unique!
    • Avoid lengthy titles, keep it under 50 characters.
  • Try to make your main target keyword the same as the page title.
  • If you can not make the page title the same as your keyword due to length or restrictions, its important to include the keyword somewhere in the title
    • For example, if our target keyword is “SEO Best Practices” and it is required to have “Valpo” in the web page title, “SEO Best Practices for Valpo” would be a good alternative.

Body Content

  • Write content that closely relates to your title/target keyword.
  • Use your title/keyword early on in your body content.
  • Review your body content and check if its at least 500 words.
  • Try to use internal linking (linking to another page on the same website).
    • Avoid using link tags such as “click here” or “read more”.
    • Try to use the keyword or title of the page you are linking to.

Meta Descriptions

  • Create a description for your page that closely reflects your title/target keyword.
    • Try to include your keyword/title in the description.
    • Keep descriptions under 160 characters.
  • For example, on the “Our Work” page, the target keyword/title “Our Work” is used in the description and describes what it is.
  • Below is an example of the Yoast SEO section which can be found by editing a page and scrolling down to the bottom of page.
Our work description

Images

Alt Tags
  • Images must have alt tag attributes.
  • Be descriptive as possible.
  • Use the target keyword of the page for the image tag if it works for the description.
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