Current on-page best practices

[scanlin]

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?

[SteveOllington]

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

[Miranda.Rensch]

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

[scanlin]

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.

[Miranda.Rensch]

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!

[ypl]

Great idea!  That would make our job a lit easier.