Elements of an Optimized Page

Uniquely Valuable

Ø Page  provides authentic, obvious value beyond self-promotion of the host site/author

Ø Content quality stands apart from the crowd by a significant margin

Ø Text, images, & multimedia are remarkable

Ø Page would be described by 80%+ of visitors as useful, high quality, & unique

Ø Searchers who visit would be unlikely to go "back" from the page to choose a different result

Provides Phenomenal UX

o   Content and navigation elements are easily consumed/ understood by users

o   Design is aesthetically polished, high quality, and fit authentically with the brand

o   Page layout makes scanning easy & important content elements obvious

o   Page renders fast (<0.5 secs to first response; <4 secs to primary content loaded)

o   A minimal number of browser requests are required to fully load the page

o   Page is browser & device responsive (or specifically optimized to each as appropriate)

Keyword-Targeted

§  Page targets a single searcher intent(and associated keyword phrases)

§  Primary Keyword phrase is the first words of the title element

§  Primary keyword phrase appears in page URL

§  Content is logical & comprehensive, employing related terms/phrases

§  Keyword phrases are highlighted with bold/italic/sizing/etc as appropriate

§  Primary keywords are used prominently in the page headline

§  Primary keyword is found in the body content 2X+

§  Secondary keywords appear in headline(s)/title/body as appropriate

§  Images on the page employ descriptive, keyword-rich alt attributes

§  Descriptive anchor text is used in links pointing to the page

Built to be Shared through Social Networks

v URL is descriptive and makes the page's topic obvious

v Includes sharing options to the optimal social networks for the page's audience

v Page has inherent sharing value (i.e. those who share it will be praised by their audiences, and additional amplification is likely)

v As appropriate, employ tags for Facebook Open Graph, Twitter Cards, etc

Multi-Device Ready

·        Renders in every (popular) browser properly

·        Optimized to render legibly & elegantly on every screen size

·        Employs the same URL when requested/loaded on every device

Authorship, Meta Data, Schema & Rich Snippets

ü Page content is associated with the author/publisher in the markup via Google+ rel="author" or rel="publisher" attribution

ü As appropriate to the content/topic/vertical, page includes schema.org micro data markup options

ü As appropriate to the content/topic/vertical, page includes Google's rich snippets markup options

ü Employs primary & secondary keywords in the meta description

ü Meta description inspires interest & click-through from SERPs/social

ü Generally avoids meta keywords (unless used for internal search)

ü As appropriate to country/language, page employs hreflang

Crawler/Bot Accessible

Ø URL is static (contains no dynamic parameters)

Ø Content is unique to this URL (all duplicates canonicalize to it)

Ø Content loads in page's HTML (not via post-load JS/AJAX/iFrames/etc)

Ø No more than 4 clicks are required from any page on the site to reach the URL

Ø Redirects from other/older versions use 301s or rel=canonical (not 302s)

Ø Redirects from other/older versions come direct (no redirect chains)

Ø If the page is temporarily unviable, status code 503 is returned by the server

Ø As appropriate, page is include din an RSS feed; RSS URL is canonicalized/ redirects to original

Ø Meta robots tag allows crawling & indexing

Ø Robots.txt file does not block crawler access

Ø Host server does not restrict search crawler IPs

Ø Key page elements are character length limited:

o   Title <75 characters

o   URL <90 characters

o   Meta Description <160 characters

Ø URL is included in site's XML Sitemaps file

Ref: http://moz.com/rand/wp-content/uploads/2013/08/elements-optimized-lrg.gif