Content. Whether it’s copy and images, PDFs or whitepapers, it’s the one thing that all websites need in order to attract visitors. It’s also the one thing that everyone thinks they can do on their own – after all, how hard is it to write a few hundred words or load an image to your site?
Problem is, the Internet isn’t a “Field of Dreams” and just because you build it, doesn’t mean they will come. Without understanding how to develop your content to best maximize search engine performance, who’ll know to ever read it, watch it or download it?
While we can’t cover everything you need to know to be a content development expert (whole careers are built on this) these 5 simple tricks will help get you on your way.
1) Plan your keyword/phrase before you begin
All to often people sit down and start writing out content or designing a graphic before fully considering what keyword/phrase they are going to use to attract their audience. Worse yet, they think that slapping 20 keywords into a meta-tag will make up for it.
Clients are often surprised to find out that all the copy they wrote, infographics they built, etc. are targeted to a keyword with 5, 10 or 20 searches a month. Do your research ahead of time. Not only does this allow you to craft copy, title tags, alt tags, etc. to make best use of the keyword/phrase but it can give you powerful insight into how often the word comes up in search. Are 100 people searching for this a month or 100,000?
2) Make use of H1 tags
H1 tags are one of the easiest, most effective ways to let Google, Bing and your readers know what the copy on the page is about. Think of it like a title to a book, the more engaging the title, the more likely people are to read it.
H1 tags are also one of the first places search engines look for keywords, and with a proper H1 tag you can ensure that Search Engines not only understand what the page is about, but the titles support the keyword/phrase of interest to your audience. Both Google and Microsoft consider the lack of a relevant H1 tag as a major negative mark for SEO.
3) Name and tag your images
It’s not uncommon to see images named “pageimage1.jpg” or “topimage2.gif”. Sure, if you are designing the page/site it might make things easier for you, but neither Search Engines nor people will understand what the image is about if they find the image on their own.
Google, Bing and other Search Engines will index images making them available based on keyword search. If you have a great image for “Mom’s Tomato Soup” featured on the recipe page for “Mom’s Tomato Soup”, wouldn’t you want it to come up when someone searches for Tomato Soup recipes?
By simply changing the name of the image from topimage2.gif to tomato-soup-recipe.gif, and adding an alt tag for “Mom’s Tomato Soup recipe” you’re helping to improve your overall SEO efforts.
4) Don’t chase too many words
I know, I know – your recipe page for Mom’s Tomato Soup is so good, you want everyone to read it. So what do you do? You load up on keywords; tomato soup, soup, tomato soup recipe, soup recipe, recipe, tomato, etc.
Problem is, now search engines don’t really know what your page is about. Even worse, Google and Bing ignore keyword lists like this in favor of a singular keyword/phrase. That’s OK though – what this really ensures is that you are focusing all your content on a specific keyword/phrase so when people do find, they really find what they are looking for. By providing searchers more specific responses to their query your helping provide quality content.
5) Be serious about what’s on the page
This doesn’t mean your content has to be serious, but it does mean you should take it seriously. Do you have a page with only 15 words? That’s all you could say about the subject? You don’t even have any images, PDFs or other content? If you aren’t serious about providing users with the content they want, then how can they take you seriously?
In a world where information is at our fingertips and there, are 3.5 billion searches per day, if people can’t find what they want on your site they’ll just go elsewhere. Not only that, but Google and Bing consider copy volume a critical component to proper SEO. Without enough quality content, the Search Engines won’t bother to rank your pages.
In summary
1) Plan your keyword/phrase before you begin
2) Use H1 tags
3) Name and tag your images
4) Don’t chase too many words
5) Be serious about what’s on the page
Putting these to use will provide you with a game plan to producing content that not only makes SEO easier, but provides a quality experience to your site viewers.
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