Standing out in the Crowd - Optimising website content
Everyone is interested in Search Engine Optimisation for their website these days. It is therefore becoming much harder to get sites to the top of the rankings. So how do you get your website on to page 1 of Google?
Content is and always will be the number 1 consideration
Under the umbrella of SEO there are a number of "tricks of the trade" and a number of supplementary techniques to drive a website higher up the search rankings. But the most important consideration is and always will be the content of the website. The aim of a search engine afterall is to provide searchers with the best websites relevant to the search. The bonus is that the content of your site is the easiest aspect to understand and the aspect most under your control.
Unique, comprehensive and informative - search factors to consider:
- Search Engines like lots of text and lots of pages, more is better as it suggests the website is more comprehensive and useful
- Search Engines are not very interested in seeing the same stuff as on your competitors sites. They want information unique to you that will make your website stand out above the rest
- The best ranking generally goes to exact phrase matches to the phrases people are searching for but just once on a page isn't likely to get noticed above others
- People like to research and find out as much as they can so web sites offering lots of helpful information tend to attract more interest, engender more trust and rank better in the search engines
- Google in particular is moving more towards providing local search results to local based searches
- Regular content changes to your website help. The search engines see the website as living and changing so they come back more often and tend to reward with higher rankings
Where to start:
- Make a list of the phrases you would like your web site to be ranked well in the search engines
Be realistic here- use the common language of your target audience
- the more popular the phrase the harder it is going to be to beat the competition
- the more general the phrases is the more unlikely it is that your website is likely to be noticed in the crowd
- each web page can realistically only focus on 2 or 3 phrases effectively for SEO purposes (this is a technical issue to do with how the web page content is summarised for the search engine in the Title and Heading1)
- Review your text content and try to ensure these phrases are strongly featured as appropriate to your pages. This may require some minor alterations to your web pages or may require a complete rethink of the whole structure and content of your web site.
- Look for ways of creating content unique to your website (ie different from your competitors)
- Think about additional ways of incorporating search phrases and locations (towns).
Consider- jobs done
- testimonials
- examples of problems people encounter
- advice for people to help themselves
- things to do/not do
- FAQs Frequently Asked Questions
Conclusion:
The aim is to provide unique and comprehensive information on your web pages whilst also looking for opportunities to include target search phrases as much as possible. This doesn't mean just repeatedly adding target search phrases all over your content, remember that your website must be interesting and appealing to people in the first instance otherwise all the Search Optimisation efforts will be wasted as you turn visitors away.
Change is generally good, it keeps your website fresh and encourages search engines to return more often to reassess the site.
Regards
Michael Spencer,
michael@epsilis.co.uk
Epsilis - Web Designers and Website Optimisation Specialists
47 Farthing Drive
Letchworth Garden City
Hertfordshire (Herts)
SG6 2TR
UK
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Making the most of SEO using your website CMS system - Is your Website or Webshop Content Management System Search Engine Friendly? Do you know how to make the most of using it for search engine optimisation or is that something you think is being done automatically for you by the software? If you are just updating your web site and are not thinking about SEO you are missing out on opportunities to get better search rankings for your website.
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