Writing Search Engine Friendly Content
Some people think that writing search engine friendly content is a mystery. Not at all. As a matter of fact, I just did so. I would like this page to rank in the search engines for “writing search engine friendly content”. So, I mentioned this in the title of my article (the first tag the search engine reads), and I also mentioned the term very early in the article. I could almost end the lesson here, but let’s go a little deeper.
If you research the topic of writing search engine friendly content, you will find different opinions on keyword density and content placement, but in the end the best policy is to write naturally, just make sure to include the term in the title and copy of the content.
The most overlooked area of content enhancement is the idea that more is better. I don’t mean longer articles on a page, but rather more pages of content. We often recommend what we refer to as supporting documents to our clients. For example, if you wish to rank for a term like Funeral Flowers, it helps to have a few articles on your site about funeral flowers. This tactic will help provide relevant cross-linking on your own site, and help search engines see that your site contains great, relevant content about that term.
The most common questions USWeb gets from our clients about content is “how much do I need on a single page?”. As a policy, we tell our clients that you want to have at least 150 words, if you are trying to get that page ranked for a term. The truth is, you will see that many sites rank just fine without having that amount of content on the page. Despite some people’s philosophy, the page content is not the only factor in determining the relevancy of a page for a specific search term. Search engine like Google and MSN are very smart at figuring in numerous factors in determining their search results.
Make sure your content is unique, visible and relevant. Include the term in title and at least once or twice in the content. Provide supporting documents to increase the relevancy even more. That’s the big secret of writing search engine friendly content.
September 4th, 2007 at 3:55 pm
Thanks for an informative article. I actually found this article searching for what you had predicted in the first paragraph. One thing I don’t find mentioned in many articles as far as content length is concerned is whether or not the general layout and navigation should be included in this. I have sites for example that have over a hundred words just in the navigation and basic layout of the page (i.e.: what’s found on almost every page).