Content and search engines
Search engines are also interested in your content. Several of them rely on content for ranking web sites.
Research your industry, competitors and most requested search terms. Identify the keywords that are used most regularly by your target audience. They should be used in your title, description and meta tags (that is, tags written in HTML Internet language). Most importantly, they should be used in the actual text you display on the pages. Include the exact phrases you are trying to target.
Look for opportunities to make links out of search terms in your page text. All this will help you to get a higher search engine ranking position.
Aim to target two or three keyword phrases per page. For each of these, two or three word phrases are better than a single keyword. Use different keyword phrases, title tags and meta descriptions for each of the important pages of your web site, to attract a broader range of searchers. If you use the same search phrase in a number of your pages, you will be wasting some of them. Search engines normally only show a maximum of two of your web pages in the results for any one search query.
Add your targeted keywords to the tags (known as alt tags) which give a brief description of images, especially those that link to another page within your web site. Make sure the headings of each page contain the most relevant search terms for your content. The navigation menu can include relevant search terms. Also include them in the text you use in product descriptions. Make sure that the site is easy to navigate and that text with many keywords still makes sense to the average user.
Summary
- Content is important to search engines.
- Include relevant search terms in your content.
- Correctly locate and balance key words and phrases within content.
- Make sure your content is both user-friendly and search engine-friendly.
