Optimizing your web site for content

November 19, 2003

When a company or individual needs to rank high in the major search engines, a number of important steps are necessary in planning a good content strategy. To be really efficient, a good corporate web site needs to effectively communicate the content it offers its visitors.

That content should describe the topic, information sections and the purpose of the site. Visitors will want to come to a company's web site more than once if the content it offers exactly matches the topic or subject of their initial search query.

Experience has taught us that good, relevant content always prompts users to visit time and time again, thereby generating additional, quality traffic. Traffic isn't everything- you also need targeted traffic to be really effective in your optimization campaign.

Good, detailed content that is on-topic and relevant to search is the actual heart of any good corporate web site. Studies have shown that visitors leave a site if the vital and essential information they are looking for is not available.

This might surprise some of you: a very visually appealing site, rich in graphics or flash multimedia technology will suffer tremendously if the right content is not available. There is an old saying in real estate which most people hear everyday: location - location - location. In search engine optimization (SEO), our saying is: content - content - content.

As you would expect, content is king and should be the core element on which every web site should be constructed to yield maximum ROI.

As for the subject of search engine optimization, the actual content of a company's web site forms the integral building block in effective and powerful optimization processes. To accomplish priority search engine positioning, you need lots of quality content. Most major search engine crawlers and spiders can now judge a web site by the content it offers.

Basic steps involved in content management
First, let us explain what exactly constitutes search engine-friendly content. Effective SEO begins with the right keywords and key phrases that have to be on-topic and have to be relevant to the web site. If a web site is well optimized but for the wrong keywords, it will bring in large quantities of traffic, but that traffic will be totally useless to that web site since it will be off-topic and non relevant.

The first step is to carefully identify the most important keywords and key phrases and making certain they are included in the body of the text and marketing copy at least three to four times, without sounding repetitive. These keywords and key phrases must be relevant to the topic of that particular page and needs to carefully describe what the page is all about. Additionally, never put more than one keyword or key phrase on more than one page, unless you really have too.

If you have three important products or services to sell on your web site, make certain you create and optimize these three separate pages for each of your three main keywords and key phrases you have identified, using WordTracker. Effective SEO begins with accurate identification of your exact keywords and key phrases and you need WordTracker to properly achieve that important goal.

Begin your first paragraph by writing those keywords at least twice. Today, most major search engines rank a particular web page by looking at the keyword density, which is the number of actual keywords per page and the keyword frequency, which is the number of times a particular keyword is repeated in that same page.

If you make certain you have sufficient keyword frequency levels and keyword density, it will greatly improve your chances for much higher search engine ranking and positioning, not just in Google, but most of the other major search engines too.

How to get better keyword density & keyword frequency
In order to achieve powerful keyword density that will position your site above those of your competitors, focus on your most important keyword or key phrase for each single page and carefully scatter these keywords and key phrases along the length of the page, concentrating with your keyword placed at the very beginning of the page.

To better achieve keyword frequency, repeat the selected keywords and key phrases about three to five times within the page. This simply means that each keyword should appear at least three to five times in that same page. Other important factors involved in professional SEO are keyword positioning which is the exact position of the keywords in the page. Today, many major search engines don't spider the whole page but usually just the first few lines.

As noted above, it is a great idea to place keywords or key phrases at the very beginning of the page, as search engines would be able to rank that page higher if they are found early in the crawling process.

Another important element to consider is keyword proximity, which is better defined as the distance between two keywords or key phrases. You should always keep in mind the importance of keyword and key phrase proximity while carefully writing the content for your web site.

One powerful SEO technique that I use everyday is to place useful and meaningful text hyperlinks to the internal or external pages of the web site. It our my experience that most of these text hyperlinks boost your search engine rankings by a very large factor.

On that very subject, utilization of navigational links across the web site will have a powerful impact in gaining priority search engine positioning. Try to incorporate keyword text as part of the link text itself. Having text hyperlinks in each web page also adds to the overall link popularity of your web site.

Importance of content formatting
In its very essence, any web page is composed of titles and/or headings, which should basically resume the content or topic of that particular page. One of the most powerful SEO techniques in use today is to include these headings in the header tags as H1 or H2 (HTML tags), as almost every major search engine carefully looks for these important header tags. You should always have at least one H1 or H2 header tag at the top of every page of your entire web site!

Additionally, you should format the text in your pages by including formatting tags like bold and italic. These tags are heavily weighed by most search engines and should largely increase your chances of priority search engine positioning above your competitors.

You should stress your most important keywords and key phrases by including them in format tags as described in my preceding paragraph. For example, if your keyword describes the title or the specific name of an organization, you should always highlight that name using the bold tag. An alternative is to use the italic tag wherever you feel it is appropriate.

Conclusion
Always remember that for maximum search engine optimization and positioning, the actual content of your whole web site and they way it was put together will actually determine your search engine positioning and the ranking you will finally achieve. Additionally, various important factors like the formatting of your text, keyword density, keyword proximity, keyword frequency, keyword positioning, and finally link popularity are all important and will usually determine if in fact you will be placed above or below your most important competitors.

Remember that content is king and should be the core element on which every website should be constructed to yield maximum ROI. Isn't that what SEO is really all about?

Article written by Serge Thibodeau,
President & CEO,
Rank for $ales
Copyright (c) Serge Thibodeau 2003

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Rank for $ales strongly recommends the use of WordTracker to effectively identify all your right industry keywords. Accurate identification of the right keywords and key phrases used in your industry is the first basic step in any serious search engine optimization program. The keywords you think are the best may be totally different than the ones recommended by WordTracker. Click here to start your keyword and key phrase research.

        

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