One-Page Quick SEO Optimization
Today I had to make some updates to the Archdiocese of Saint Louis' Leadership page. While I was making the updates, I noticed a pattern on the page that was very ineffective in terms of giving proper keyword metadata to Google for page links.
For each leader in the Archdiocese, there was a link to "Read more..." at the end of the leader's description. Google and other spiders take that 'Read more' text and expect it to mean something, so they give a little weight (but not much) to the words 'read' and 'more' when searched in tandem with content on the page the words link to.
However, to give Google more context, and to let our pages get a tiny bit of extra link juice, I linked the names of the leaders directly to their pages (instead of 'Read more' referring to Archbishop Robert J. Carlson, now 'Archbishop' 'Robert' 'J' and 'Carlson' refer to him!):
<a href="/archstl/page/archbishop-robert-j-carlson">Most Reverend Robert J. Carlson</a>
Then I set all the 'Read more...' links to rel="nofollow":
<a href="/archstl/page/archbishop-robert-j-carlson" class="readon" rel="nofollow">Read more...</a>
This tells Google that it can disregard the 'Read more...' link, and lets Google instead use the more contextually-sound link (with SEO terms built in).
Comments
It is always good to make contextual links... for instance, link like this:
"Archbishop Carlson is a leader in the Archdiocese of Saint Louis"
And not like this:
"Archbishop Carlson is a leader in the Archdiocese of Saint Louis. Click here for more info."Notice the linked words? They mean something to Google.
Advancing the faith.
Great tip!
When one page has two links to the same page Google generally counts the first link and disregards the second when passing link juice and evaluating anchor text -- so you definitely made the right choice with this change.
It looks like you've optimized most of the leadership images using alt and title attributes to show the full names (nice!), but you might want to double check because a few, such as gardin_sm.jpg, look like they still have the file names in that field. Every bit of extra data gives Google another clue so it's worth making the change.
Thanks for catching that! I will get that fixed soon.
Advancing the faith.
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