Content optimization is one of the single most important aspects of ranking your website on the search engines.
While there are many factors that will help get your website into the top positions, it is your content that will sell your product or service and it is your content that the search engines will be reading when they take their "snapshot" of your site and determine where it should be placed in relation to the billions of other of pages on the Internet.
There are aspects of the optimization process that gain and lose importance. Content optimization is no exception to this. Through the many algorithm changes that take place each year, the weight given to the content on your pages rises and falls. Currently incoming links appear to supply greater advantage than well-written and optimized content. So why do we believe it is so important to focus on the content optimization?
In web marketing, the goal is to build and optimize a website that will rank well on the major search engines and, more difficult and far more important, hold on to those rankings through changes in the search engine algorithms.
While there are many characteristics of your content that are in the search engine calculations, there are a few that consistently hold high priority. These are:
- Heading Tags
- Special Text (bold, colored, etc.)
- Inline Text Links
- Keyword Density
Heading Tags
The heading tag is software code used to specify to your visitor and to the search engines what the topic of your page is about.
There are rules to follow with the use of heading tags that must be adhered to. If heading tags are not used properly, you run the risk of having your website penalized for spam.
Special Text
"Special text" in this case, is any content on your page that is meant to stand out from the rest. This includes bold, underlined, colored, highlighted, sizing and italic. This text is given weight higher than standard content on your page.
Bold text, for example, is generally used to define sub-headings or to pull content out on a page to insure the visitor reads it.
Search engines have been programmed to read this special text as more important than the rest of the content and will give it increased weight.
Inline Text Links
Inline text links are links within the text of your content. For example you may link to a past article you have posted within a sentence that refers to that article.
Like special text this serves two purposes. The first is to give the reader a quick and easy way to find the information you are referring to. The second is to give added weight to this phrase for the page on which the link is located and also to give weight to the target page.
Most people believe that “inline” text links are given more weight that a text link that stands alone. If we were to think like a search engine this makes sense. If the link occurs within the content area then chances are it is highly relevant to the content itself and the link should be counted with more strength than a link placed in a footer simply to get a spider through the site.
Keyword Density
"Keyword density" is the percentage of your total content that is made up of your targeted keywords.
Knowing that search engines operate on mathematical formulas tells us that that each website is ranked based on an optimal number associated with it that will give your content the greatest chance of ranking success.
With this in mind there are three points that you should consider:
- Since you probably do not work for Google or Yahoo! or any of the other major search engines, you will never know what this optimal number is.
- Even if you did know what the optimal keyword density was today, optimal keyword densities change over time. You will be chasing smoke if you try to constantly have the optimal density.
- The optimal keyword density for one search engine is not the same as it is for another. Chasing the density of one could well ruin your efforts on another.
So what can you do? Your goal here is not to sell to search engines, it is to sell to people. I have seen sites that have gone so overboard in increasing their keyword density that the content itself reads horribly.
If you are simply aware of the phrase that you are targeting while you write your content then chances are you will attain a keyword density somewhere between 3 and 5%. Stay in this range and you will rank well across many of the search engines. Remember, write quality content, word it well and pay close attention to your phrasing and you will do well.
To learn more, please contact us at (303) 357-5757 or Toll Free at (877) 432-2322 ["877-4-DBC DBC"] or email us at dbc@dbcdigital.com