Content for SEO
The web is full of awful looking sites at the top of SERPs and full of totally slick looking sites that no-one will ever see. This is because content is king.
The content on your web pages will make or break your success online. Your content is your capital - whether it be a product, a service, the novelty of your opinion; it is the net in which you will catch your fish.
It is no secret that sites are indexed into search engines by what are essentially text-reading robots. Your code is still very important and the robots are getting more and more sophisticated but the basic truth is that they will read your content.
With this in mind:
Be Focused:
Don't stray from the theme or idea or key phrase you have chosen for your page. If another idea suggests itself, link to it and put it on another page.
Be Explicit:
Refrain from implications, short-cuts and assumptions in what you write. Where you have the opportunity, spell things out; take the longer way round. Remember to write for the lay-person as well as the expert.
Be Relevant:
Again, stay on message, keep to the themes of your page.
Be Helpful:
Share your expertise. Rather than telling people how great you or your products are, try to demonstrate it.
It can also help to include helpful out-bound links to words, phrases, ideas, bodies, corporations or references that might help your reader.
Be Nice:
Give stuff away. Consider freely offering advice, information, trial versions, newsletters, podcasts, vodcasts, white papers, RSS feeds and so on to your visitors.
Be Aware:
Keep in mind at all times who you are writing for and what you are trying to convey to them.
Design Is Dead
The message is the convenience (not the medium)
What do you stand for? Do you provide the most direct way to information? The fastest? The most detailed? The most trusted? Figure out the DNA of what you offer, and strive to be the best at delivering it.
To this end, the visual design of a web site is largely irrelevant beyond a certain point.
So long as your design is good enough to portray an appropriate level of professionalism or trustworthiness, and has a navigation structure that makes sense to your visitors, the rest is, from a Search Engine Optimisation viewpoint, unimportant, because it is the content that will drive people to your site, not the design of your company logo or that delicately corporate shade of gray you use for your backgrounds.
Content SEO Checklist:
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Aim for a bare minimum of 200 words of textual content per page. Don't be afraid of any kind of maximum number of words, but try to ensure you stay "on subject" and if something else starts to suggest itself on a page, consider making a new page or section to keep the current page focused.
- Try to keep your content hierarchy neat - H1 > Intro > H2 > Content Block 1 > H2 > Content Block 2 etc. Think of your page content as a well presented word doc or presentation.
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Don't cram your keywords. Write naturally about your subject matter - if you have focused your content themes well enough, the your keywords should come out naturally. Remember that you are writing for people first. Robots are just trying to emulate them.
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Keep your content nicely spaced out - the weary constantly browsing internet eye likes nothing less than a big daunting chunk of unbroken text. It has not escaped my attention that the venerable BBC web site sticks to a one sentence per paragraph rule for it's news stories - while this may be a bit much, remember that an eye will often be drawn to space on a page.
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Please check your spelling before you upload your work. Grammar would be nice too but we'll take good content over anything else.
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Be nice - it has been alleged that search engines will frown on excessive crude or vile language or racial slurs. Regardless of whether this is true or not it is nice to be nice to each other, and often hard to attract customers with obscene profanity.
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Make a site map listing all the pages on your site.
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Make an xml site map for Google, Yahoo, Live.
- If you have an actual business, make sure you make frequent but contextual references to the location or locations of your business
