As most of you know SEO stands for ''search engine optimized.'' A website is search engine optimized when it ranks high in search engine results after people do a Google search where they fill in key words that are relevant to that website.
The business value of a website is directly proportional to how high it ranks in key word search engine results. Search engines list sites top to bottom in order of relevancy to any given key word or set of key words. The goal is to have your website place among the top ten results. The closer to the top of the list your website is in search engine results, the more likely it is to get clicked on and score a visit from a prospect.
You can't paste a list of key words on each page of a website and hope that a search engine will rank it very high. Search engines are smart enough to spot those techniques and discount them. The key words you use on each page must be carefully woven into the copy. They should be evenly distributed throughout, not just at the beginning.
Here is a list of best practices you can follow when writing web pages:
Focus on your audience first. Think about the people who will use your website, as well as the people you want to land on your website. Consider their interests and their state of mind as they fill a key word or a set of key words into a search engine. Think about their age (in some cases the size of font can matter), whether they are more likely to be men or women, the level of their education, their life situation and their attitudes, values or beliefs. (For example, are they stressed? Financially secure? Relaxed? Enjoying themselves?)
Write each page so it engages your audience. Web writing is no different from any other kind. It is supposed to provide meaningful content that informs and educates your readers so they feel they have gotten great value. It is also supposed to be your content, not someone else's. If you think you can copy from competing websites and change up one or two words and get away with that, think again. Your competitors routinely do Google searches on their own key words in order to assess their rankings and look at their competitors' websites. If they see content that is similar to theirs on your website, you may find yourself the recipient of a letter from that company's legal department. Make certain your content belongs to your company, sounds like your company and uses your key words. Make certain it is consistent with your brand and speaks to your website visitor in the voice of your brand.
Keep a key word list and sprinkle those key words on as many web pages as possible. The key word list comes from what you offer your website visitors, but it also should be a result of what your website visitors are looking for when they visit your site. That's why it is so important to begin by focusing on your audience, your prospective visitors and their state of mind as they perform a key word search. At the same time, remember this: When you Google your key words, you had better pull up your website or your competitors' websites. If the websites those searches pull up have nothing to do with your industry or service offerings, you should re-think your key words.
Make every website page different. Search engines and people are smart enough to realize when a website uses the same content on two or more pages, even when the heading is different. They ''mark off'' for that. So don't do it.
Boost rankings using key words in various ways. Place key words in:
- Headlines
- Italicized words
- Bullet lists
- Opening sentences
- Conclusions
- Related links
Improve rankings by using different forms of key words. Use verb present participles or past tenses of verbs. For example, if one of your key words is ''engine design,'' consider using ''When designing an engine…'' and the phrase, ''…a well designed engine…'' in the copy.
Think of your site as part of a community. Link your site to other logical sites and encourage the owners of those websites to link to you. Logical sites might include industry groups that your company belongs to or expert sites, for example, the sites of authors and other experts in your field. The more links of this kind that a search engine detects in a website, the higher it will rank it in its findings. Think in a new way. It is not just you vs. your competitors; it is you and your company as part of a connected community.
Finally, optimize your writing for search engines by optimizing it for prospects. If you get the impression that ''all this key word stuff'' is just for search engine rankings, then I haven't been direct enough: The true purpose is to provide best value to the people who you want to visit your website; best value in the form of valuable content, content that is valuable to them.
Tune in next month when I review another how-to-write book.
