During this 20-minute video, SAF’s Max Duchaine outlines “the rules” for on-page SEO, discussing HTML components like title tags, header tags, meta tags and image attributes, as well as page URLs, how page design affects SEO, a linking strategy that will boost your page’s visibility and where to put keywords in your copy.
Looking for your next binge-worthy series? Put screen time to good use by working on your website’s search engine optimization. The Society of American Florists released the third episode in its new tech video series, “Your Brand Online.” In it, Max Duchaine, SAF’s manager of digital strategy, builds on the previous videos’ introduction to search engine optimization by breaking down on-page SEO.
In laymen’s terms, this refers to all the elements that live within the code of your website that have an impact on how your content ranks in search engines. “The good news about on-page SEO is that we have total control over these elements,” Duchaine said. “The bad news is that there isn’t a magic bullet for optimizing it.”
Although on-page SEO is brand-dependent and ultimately requires a little trial and error, there are a few principles that every website should follow to optimize these elements. “On any given page, there are countless factors that influence how that page ranks on a search engine,” Duchaine said.
In this episode, Duchaine focuses on HTML (hypertext markup language). HTML is the standard language for creating websites and the code that tells a web browser how to render your website for a visitor, such as showing a headline, a paragraph, an image or a hyperlink. Additionally, search engines rely on certain HTML tags to assign relevance to any given webpage, thus determining your ranking in search results.
“Google, for instance, assumes that every page contains the same baseline HTML elements, so their crawlers look directly for these elements when indexing a webpage and attempting to decode the content on the page,” Duchaine said. “What this means is that every page has the same rules to follow, ensuring an even playing field for all web content. So it’s important that your website’s HTML is following the rules and appealing to search engines as best as possible.”
During the 20-minute video, Duchaine outlines “the rules,” discussing HTML components like title tags, header tags, meta tags and image attributes, as well as page URLs, how page design affects SEO, a linking strategy that will boost your page’s visibility and where to put keywords in your copy.
He accompanies the discussion with screenshots from SAF’s website for real-life examples and bullet points that simplify the process.
Need a primer on search engine optimization before diving in? Check out Duchaine’s previous videos here. You can also find some best practices from SAF members in “Rank and Style,” the cover story of this month’s Floral Management. Read it here.
