Current on-page best practices
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Given all the recent talk about over optimization, when was the last time SEOMoz updated the on-page report card tool?
Rand wrote an excellent piece on Perfect On-Page Optimization (which is great, and thanks) in summer 2009. Is that still best practice 3 years later (and post-Penguin/Panda)? If not, has the SEOMoz on-page report card tool been updated to reflect current thinking for on-page best-practices?
I know the higher level concept is "write for humans, not for bots" but if you can do both (and not create an unreadable seo-frankenpage) then why not? Does getting an "A" grade wreak of over optimization now? Should I use the key phrase at the start of the title, h1, and strong (or bold) elements on a page? Should have an image with file name and alt text equal to (or containing at the start) the key phrase?
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Great idea! That would make our job a lit easier.
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Thanks Mike! That's a cool idea. No plans for anything like it as of now, but we'll definitely keep it in mind. Thanks!
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Ok. Thanks.
Kind of related feature request: For off-page factors, like backlink profile, it would be nice if OSE grouped the anchor text of backlinks into categories to give you a rough % of these:
- exact match
- variations of exact match
- brand
- variations of brand
- url + variations of url
- random (click here, visit, etc)
So we could see at a glance (for a given keyword) if a page had an unnatural looking (over optimized) backlink profile.
You could also integrate this with your Report Card feature... in addition to giving a grade for on-page factors, it would be cool if it could give you a grade for off-page factors. If that's too hard then just put the functionality into OSE.... Thanks.
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Hi Mike,
We have actually been working on updates to this recently which we plan to add in along with quite a few other updates later this fall. That said, things didn't change too much. We made some updates for clarity of a few issues and the importance of some things has changed a bit, but for the most part I agree with Steve, the fundamentals hold true.
Thanks!
Miranda
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That stuff is the fundamentals which still hold true in my opinion... the report card never encouraged over-optimization and the stuff within it is still relevant today in my opinion. An A Grade is certainly not over-optimized... really the whole over-optimization thing has been around for a long time it's just there's a lot of buzz about it at the moment, but when it comes down to it, it's still just the same stuff but maybe a little stricter... so as long as your not keyword stuffing, etc... or breaking any of the other old rules from back then, then you're still not breaking them now
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