Ever wish you had a tool that allowed you to see all the major SEO attributes on a website. Well Moz has heard your cries and provided a solution.
The beloved MozBar
This article takes a deeper look into how to use the information the MozBar provides and what to do with that information.
If you don’t already have the MozBar you can download it here.
You don’t need a Moz account to use the MozBar, however, you won’t be able to see the link metrics tab unless you have a paid account with Moz.
Let’s take a look at the first set of web page attributes we see.
On-Page Elements
URL
This is an immediate ranking indicator when it comes to site reliability and security. If the website is HTTPS:// it means your looking at a secure website with a proper security protocol which search engines like.
If it shows HTTP:// it means the website is not secure and is open to hackers which search engines do not like.
Make sure your site has an HTTPS security protocol.
You also want to recognize the handle (E:X website.com/awesome-seo). The URL handle should represent the main topic or category of that page.
Sometimes you will come across a page with a URL handle that has nothing to do with the content or subject of the page. This should be changed to something that will help search engines understand a little more about the page before looking further.
Page Title
The page title should also reflect the main topic/subject of the webpage.
For example the page title of this article is How to Use the MozBar to Study Web Page Metrics.
Meta Description
The meta description should be a clear and concise summary of what the webpage is about.
An optimized meta description should be between 50 – 300 characters. Any less and the meta description will be to short for search engines to express on a search results page. Any longer and the description will be cut off on the results page.
Meta Keywords
An interesting topic in the SEO world. Meta keywords used to be a major ranking factor for search engines to understand the topic of a page. Now, meta keywords hold far less value, if any, to the ranking factors of a website.
H1 (HEADING #1)
The main heading of your webpage. The H1 should be the subject that all the content and following headings support. There should also only be one H1 per page.
H2
Your second heading and all content under it should support the topic of your H1. For example, the H1 for this article is “Using the MozBar” and the first H2 is “On-Page Elements” which is the one of the topics we’re explaining when using the MozBar.
Bold, Strong, & Italic
Yes, search engines do differentiate the type of text on a page. While this may not be much of a ranking factor it’s still important to recognize and implement in your content strategy.
Alt Text
This shows the alt attributes associated with the images on the current page. Image optimization is just as important as the other ranking factors on a website and can indicate major oversight on an under-optimized competitor website.
Make sure all the images on your site have associated alt text and optimized file names.
General Attributes
The main three attributes of this section that are most important to point out are the Meta Robots, Connonacle, and page load speed. Becuase these are attributes we can adjust we will focus on those exclusively.
Meta Robots
Depending on the purpose of a page, there may or may not be meta robots. Commonly referred to meta tags, meta robots are code attributes added to the content to tell search engines how to read or index a particular web page. To read more about meta tags check out are article on how to utilize meta robots on your website.
Rel=”cononical”
Canonicalization is the act of telling search engines and web page crawlers that the content on the current page is a duplicate of another page.
If you take an article written on another website and have it on your own or even if you have the same or similar content on one page of your website and are using it on another page, you will want to indicate that to search engines to avoid duplicate content issues.
If you have a website created on wordpress, check out our video on canonicalization using Yoast.
Page Load Time
Website loading speed has been and probably will forever be a major ranking factor for search engines. You will usually want your web page to load within 3 seconds or your bounce rate may increase significantly.
Link Metrics
Page Authority (PA)
You may have heard this term as well as domain authority before. It refers to a score between 1 – 100 determined by a multitude of ranking factors. Essentially, it’s how trustworthy and likely this page’s content is to rank high on search engine results pages.
Domain Authority (DA)
The same explanation as page authority except from a site-wide perspective. You can think of this as a score that takes all of your pages and combines their authority into one score for the entire website.
External Followed Links
These are links within the content of a page that direct to a website other than the site you are currently on. To read more about external followed links you can check out this article by MOZ. (<– an external link!)
Linking Root Domains
This refers to the number of different domains this page’s content is linking to. If the content on a given page is externally linking to 3 different websites, it would have 3 linking root domains.
Moz Rank & Trust
These are scores generated by the Moz algorithm to determine the likelihood your page has to rank in the search engine results. The score is based on Moz’s best guest of what attributes are most important to search engines when looking for content to share.
Markup
Schema markup is search engine’s “new” way of understanding the content on a web page. Surprisingly, only about 3% of website currently take advantage of schema markup. Structured data markup can be intimidating to those who don’t work with code. We’ve created a simple video guide to applying basic schema to your website.
Tighten Up Your SEO
Each one of these snapshots of information are all ranking factors when it comes to search engines. More importantly, they are the ranking factors that we can control.
By using the attributes given to us by the MozBar to determine how our competitors are utilizing their search engine optimization, we can develop our own SEO strategies that will make search engines happy and will increase our chances of ranking high on the search results page.