SEO best practice

Table of contents

1. What is SEO?

SEO stands for 'Search Engine Optimisation'. At its most basic level, SEO is the process of making your content as discoverable as possible by search engines such as Google.

All search engines operate their own specific algorithms that are used to identify and rank content based on the criteria that the searcher enters. What you see as the searcher is what the search engine believes are the pages that will answer your query or question based on its assessment of millions of pages of content. We use SEO to increase the chances of our page being the result that a searcher sees first.

2. Isn't SEO a technical skill?

At heart, SEO is fundamentally about the production of high quality content that addresses the specific needs of a user.

Whilst many people do make a career out of being 'SEO professionals', there are some fundamental things you can do to give your content the best possible chance of being seen as high quality by search engines like Google.

3. What is your content for?

The starting point for anything you produce is determining who your content is for, and establishing how it will address their needs. You and your colleagues should be thinking about this before you even consider adding a page to Sitecore.

For example, if you're working to promote a project that Arup has produced you need to think about what your audience actually wants to know about that project before you begin writing. The chances are that they want to know key things such as:

• What was the problem(s) that Arup was hired to resolve?
• What were the skills that the client was specifically looking for and why was Arup the best firm for the job?
• How did Arup work to overcome the problem?
• What did the project actually deliver?
• What if any, were the benefits of delivering the project?

By thinking about the above or similar questions, you're able to craft your content with the aim of resolving the needs of your user. Doing this means you're halfway towards making your content more interesting and discoverable.

4. What are keywords?

A quick Google for 'key words meaning' will return millions of definitions. One of the best comes from the SEO experts at MOZ:

"Keywords are ideas and topics that define what your content is about. In terms of SEO, they're the words and phrases that searchers enter into search engines, also called "search queries." If you boil everything on your page — all the images, video, copy, etc. — down to a simple words and phrases, those are your primary keywords.

"As a content creator, you want the keywords on your page to be relevant to what people are searching for so they have a better chance of finding your content among the results."

In the recent past, people would work to 'keyword stuff' their content, which essentially means filling content with continual references to potential search terms such as 'Cheap flights' or 'discount trainers'. Fortunately, search engines have become wise to this practice and this is no longer possible (doing it will result in severe punishment by Google and its competitors).

5. Embeding keywords in your content

You've written your content, and your confident that it will address your user's needs. How then, does Google know that it does and what it's about if you can't repeat your keywords in every sentence?

Fortunately search engines and websites provide opportunities to add extra 'weight' to keywords used in certain places within your content. You'll find details about these below.

URLs

A key signal to Google about the content of a page is the structure and use of words in a page's URL. For example, if we have a page that contains details about red trainers, we'd need to ensure that the URL contained reference to this. A URL that is something like 'red-trainers' will tell Google more about the page's content than if its just 'trainers'.

The same principle applies to your pages. If you're creating a project page about a shopping centre in Melbourne, you need to think about how your audience would search for it. Lets assume the shopping centre in question is called 'the Glades'. A URL of 'arup.com/projects/the-glades-shopping-centre-melbourne' tells Google far more about the content than 'arup.com/projects/shopping-centre-melbourne' or 'arup.com/projects/the-glades'. It contains reference to a number of potential keywords users might search for.

Headings

Headings in your content are absolutely vital. Search engines use these to understand what your content is about. They assign different values and importance to the 'style' of heading that you use.

The most important heading on the page is the H1 heading - and this should never appear more than once. This is amongst the most important factors in telling search engines what is on your page. It should include the key words relating to your content.

For example, if Arup's facade engineering team lead the redevelopment of our fictional 'Glades' shopping centre, a good heading might be 'Ground breaking facades: Using cutting edge design to bring Melbourne's 'The Glades' shopping centre to life'.

You should also use headings within your content. Good headings serve a dual purpose. Not only do they aid the reader, by breaking up copy and identifying what they're going to find in a particular section, but they offer a further opportunity to tell search engines more about your content. Search engines assign extra value to the words contained within these headings and you should think about this carefully.

Meta tags

Meta data in SEO terms is data about your content. It's invisible to users, but an important signal to search engines. Traditionally there have been three key areas of meta data to consider:

1. Meta title - the meta title is generally speaking the name of a page that appears in a set of search results. Generally speaking it will match the H1 header you've given to a page - but it doesnt need to. It is vital that it effectively describes your page, and includes words that users are likely to use in searching for your content
2. Meta description - this a short piece of text that should effectively describe what your page is about. Again, its an opportunity to use keywords and phrases that a searcher would likely use to discover your content. A good meta description will describe the contents of your page in around 150 - 200 characters. NB - whilst still important, search engines no longer automatically display the meta description in search results. They can use content from your page that best addresses the user's query.
3. Meta keywords - meta keywords traditionally included all the potential words and phrases that a user might search for. Whilst important in the past, widespread abuse has meant that search engines now no longer take this signal into account.

6. The importance of links

Outside of your immediate content, one of the most important factors search engines take into account is links. This takes two forms, links to your page from other websites and links to your page from within your own website.

External links

Search engines looking to answer users queries need a way of determining how accurate a page will be in answering that query. One of the most important factors they consider is the 'authority' of your page.

Essentially, authority is determined by the number of other people who think your content serves a valid purpose. In web terms, this is measured by the number of other websites linking to your page. Lots of links into your page tells a search engine that people think your content has value.

There is an important caveat to this though. In Google's eyes, all websites are not created equal. It sees some websites as having more authority than others. In practical terms, this means that big, powerful websites like bbc.co.uk or theguardian.com have far more authority than xyznews.com. A single link from a major, high profile website can add more authority to your page in a search engine's eyes than a dozen links from tiny blogs seen by 3 avid readers.

Ultimately, the best way to obtain this authority is to write great copy that solves a need. You can actively reach out to people and ask them to link to your site, and when writing things like press releases it's always important to ask the journalists you work with if they can link to your content. But be careful - links from some sites can do more harm than good. If someone approaches you and offers to add links to your site in return for links to their site, make sure you know who they are and who they represent. Links to arup.com from a site marked as spam by a search engine will do far more harm than good.

Internal links

Links to internal pages are a vital tool for two key reasons:

1. Search engines' spiders are able to follow links in a page they're browsing - this means that you can help the search engines discover more about content on arup.com
2. Linking to internal pages is great for human users too - again it helps them to discover more relevant content and learn more about Arup

When adding internal links it's vital to add context. For example, if you have a sentence like 'Arup's civil engineering team used its knowledge and skill to help overcome construction challenges'. In this sentence, you could add a link to the Civil Engineering expertise page - specifically linking the words 'civil engineering team'. Doing this, you've told users and search engines that clicking the link will take them to content about our civil engineering team.

What you shouldn't do in this example is link content you want to promote - but which lacks relevance. For example, linking to a project that involved our civil engineering expertise would not be sufficiently relevant. Again, clicking the link, a user would expect to find content about the team in question - not another project or perspective which merely happens to reference civil engineering.

Relevance and context is vital for both human users and search engine spiders.

7. SEO checklist

To help you ensure your content is optimised in the best way, you can consult the checklist below:

1. Does your content meet user needs? Write content with your user's needs in mind first, and Arup's needs second. Addressing your user's needs will ensure they find the content - which helps meet Arup's needs
2. Does the name of your page include relevant keywords? The name you give to a page when you create it in the CMS is used to generate the page's URL. When you create content in the CMS, ensure you label it in a way others would search for it - not how we internally label it, particularly for projects. Ensure that words people use to describe your content 'in the real world' are included. One word names are not good
3. Ensure your main page heading is powerful - that it describes and summarises your content and includes words or phrases people would use to find it
4. Add useful and relevant headings - Use strong headings througout your content to break it up in easily discernable chunks. Make sure your headers are descriptive of the content that sits under them and avoid abstract concepts or 'marketing' speak
5. Always add a meta title and a meta description - The title can match the name of your page, but the description should efficiently summarise your content, and include keywords and phrases
6. Add 'alt' text to all images - Check that you've added 'alt' text to any images you've added to your page. This text not only tells search engines more about your content, but is absolutely vital in ensuring that the accessibility of arup.com is maintained
7. Have you linked to all relevant pages? Ensure that wherever possible you link phrases in your content to relevant pages on arup.com. If you're talking about our BIM offering, make sure you link to the BIM expertise page. Ensure that these links are relevant and add the correct context.
8. Have you added related content? Wherever possible add related content to your page such as projects or perspectives. If you can, go back to older content and add your new page as relaetd content if appropriate

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