This is where Craft really comes into its own with SEO. I have talked on this blog before about the control of the content we have with Craft, and it’s that complete and precise control that makes Craft shine when it comes to search engine optimisation.
Strong on-page SEO improves the following areas:
- Clarifies topical relevance
- Improves crawlability and indexing
- Enhances user experience
- Increases click-through rates
- Supports higher and more stable rankings
Title tag
The title tag is one of the most powerful on-page tools at your disposal. I’ve seen websites jump from page 5 on Google to the first page with just a title tag adjustment. The title tag is truly a behemoth when it comes to on-page power. Using SEOMatic (cost $99) i usually give the title tag to it’s UI. In there, you can give each page a unique page title.
A few tips for title tags
- Try to include the main keyphrase in there early in the tag.
- No more than 60 characters is recommended, but you won't get penalised for going longer; your title tag content will simply be truncated.
- Try to make the title tag sound natural as you would speak. Don't just bombard it with 3 keyword phrases thrown together.
- Make sure each page has a unique title tag. Again, Google won’t penalise you for using the same title tag across many pages, but you are missing SEO opportunities.
Meta Description
In our regular builds, we utilise SEOMatic and put the meta description tag alongside the title tag. Whilst the meta description doesn't wield any power whatsoever over ranking (whilst the title does - greatly!), It’s still a useful tag. Google picks it up and shows it under the blue title tag, so it affects click-through rate(CTR). Use it not to sell your product directly, but use it to persuade the user to click on your result over the competition, big difference there.
Meta Keywords
This tag has almost zero benefit or use. A mentor told me many years ago to use it to throw the competition off, to them not knowing which keywords you are targeting. I still use it on some sites, for a little fun more than anything, silly I know! But you can leave this tag completely out as it will have no effect on rankings, and it doesn't even help with CTR like its close cousin, the meta description. HTML heading + img tags In the Why is Craft CMS so good for SEO post, I covered that you can set up as few or as many custom fields as you want to output the content you want. We can also set up multiple custom fields for each asset, and an asset, in this case, is an image, yes, for each image you set up, zero or unlimited custom fields. This allows us to give a different alt text and even a longdesc tag if we want. Custom control is Craft’s forte.
Image tips
- For alt text, describe what the image is - don’t just keyword stuff.
- Use descriptive image file names. Don’t use img_56674.webp use nike-trainer-deluxe-edition.webp
- You can optimise images within Craft very easily with custom fields. If you are adding images in full size within CK Editor, then its best to optimise them manually. At Media Surgery, I’ve started using WebP images rather than JPGs or PNGs. The reason is file size. WebP compresses very well, and you can even half the size of WebP over a JPG in many situations.
Schema
Schema is a whole other level of complexity when dealing with websites and SEO. Like most things, it’s not really that hard when you look at what it’s actually trying to do. You are basically describing the content of your page. There is different code used for different types of content. Naturally Craft can handle schema quite easily. There are two go-to options I think about when planning out Schema for a Craft site. The first is to utilise the customisable options for SEOMatic, which I wrote a full review for. SEOMatic makes it easy to set up schema with the data coming from custom fields. The second option is to simply use a custom field and insert the custom Schema markup in there. It’s my understanding that it doesn't really matter where the schema code goes in your rendered HTML, just that it is actually there and it’s valid code. There is a schema validator built into Google Search Console, so that’s a place you will visit regularly if you are dealing with schema markup. Schema can seem like another hassle that you need to learn, but it’s quite straightforward when you have done it a few times for different sites.
Link, links, links
Internal links are a big factor in on-page SEO. Craft CMS (again) gives precise control over them, and you can really maximise their effect using Craft. External links also have a huge say in what content gets ranked highly. If your page has no backlinks and your competitors have numerous from popular websites, there is little question what will get ranked (and it isn't the page with no backlinks.)
On-page utopia
On-page content has a few different moving parts to it, but an overlooked part is content. Some expect to have the perfect title tag, heading tags, and multiple keywords used throughout and expect to rank well with poorly written content. Great content [link] is very important to the whole user experience of the site. If Google is evaluating a few different sites for top terms its determined that people just leave your site and click on a competitor's, pogosticking, then it doesn't matter how well your other tags are, your page will be negatively affected because of the user experience. Yes, on-page seo is important, but make sure your content is top-notch too. You want great content and great on-page SEO. Think about the user and what they are looking for at all times, and you will go far in SEO.
Written by John Macpherson