Website Ranking & Content
Search engine optimization is about using your chosen keyword search phrases throughout your website, in your navigation links, tags and content. The purpose is to show your target audience and the search engines that your web site is relevant to the topic you are describing with these keywords. The more relevancy that your site shows, the better your website ranking.
Content is essential – You may have heard the saying that the formula for a successful business is “Location Location Location.” In the world of website ranking and optimization, it’s all about Content.
The search engines see the content in your web pages as an essential ingredient in the recipe concocted by their algorithms for ranking sites.
With that said, it is important to remember that the copy you write for your web site is primarily for your target audience, and secondarily for the search engines.
Your content should grab your target audience by appealing to them, as well as providing the information that they are seeking. Carefully crafted copy containing information relevant to the topic your target audience is searching for when they enter a keyword search phrase into the search engines is an important factor in boosting your site’s ranking in the search engine results.
Whether or not you have an existing web site, you can always revise your copy. Regardless of whether or not you have relevant content, it is good to revise content periodically for several reasons; primarily, by updating your web site, you are serving your target audience by revising and improving the information they are viewing. Secondly, another “ingredient” in the algorithm stew is that the search engines look to see how often you update your site, which provides an opportunity to improve your website ranking.
The challenge is to seamlessly weave your keywords into your copy while keeping it interesting, well written and compelling to your target audience.
Content, Keywords and Search Engines
Using the Pet Bakery keyword research example, upon entering a keyword search phrase, like “nutritious dog treats” the search engine is calculating the number of times each of those words is listed in your content as well as other components of your search engine optimization strategy, such as tags and navigational links. These calculations, among other factors, are used in the ranking of your website in the search engines.
It is important to understand how your target audience is locating your web site. The keyword search phrases that they are typing in might not be the ones you originally thought they would use to find you. It is hard to determine this sort of information when you are first getting started, but over time, as your target audience finds your site, the best way to determine this information is to take a look at your web site logs and see what keyword search phrases people are using to bring up your site.
The logs give you insight into who your target audience is, thus giving you the opportunity to further optimize and improve your website and its ranking over time.
It is a good strategy to distribute your keywords and keyword search phrases throughout the content on your pages, so that these pages have several ways of being targeted by the search engines.
For example, you might have originally thought that “nutritious dog treats” was the keyword search phrase that you were targeting, when the web statistics show that the keyword search phrase people are actually using to find you is “whole wheat organic dog treats.” Your site was ranked with this varied keyword search phrase because several keyword search phrases were distributed among your content, in addition to your featured keyword search phrase on that page and other search engine optimization strategies .
Too Much of a Good Thing
It might be tempting to hide and repeat a keyword search phrase over and over on your web page and trick the search engines into thinking that you have the most relevant web site out there. However, the algorithms used by the search engines are very smart, and if you have too many instances of a keyword, you can be penalized and dropped from the rankings, or even, in some cased booted entirely from the search engine. Once you are booted, re-entry into a search engine is very tricky and complicated.
The Secret Formula
So, what’s the secret ratio of keywords to text in order to have relevant content? There is no direct answer to that one. Each search engine has its own algorithms for placement, and each directory has its own criteria. Both of which are not available to the public. Some say that the first so many words are the most important, some say that you need to have a certain number of words per page and a certain percentage of keywords. However, there are no exact rules or percentages that have been made public.
Search engine optimization is more of an art than a science.
Quality Rules
While you may not have access to the search engine formulas, what you can do is forget about search engine optimization for a moment and write for your target audience from your heart. Those keywords will naturally fall into your content, and if you feel like you need assistance there are plenty of resources and books out on the internet to help you write copy that will assist in the optimization of your site.
Well written copy that is relevant to the keyword search phrases used in your site optimization strategy is one of several important factors for a good rank on the search results page, but not the only one! Another factor that the search engines weigh heavily is your link popularity, which goes hand in hand with having a quality web site. Link Building is the measurement of how many web sites have links going to your web site, and how many of those sites are relevant to the topic of your site. If you have a web site that is easy to navigate and contains interesting, informative content, then other web sites will want will naturally want to link to it.
Regardless of search engine optimization rules, copy and content, keyword relevance, etc., wouldn’t you want to give your target audience the best experience you can offer, and have a high quality site anyway?
