The ABC’s of SEO – Page Content

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In terms of SEO, simplicity is the key to successfully optimizing your site. Always remember to use strong keywords early in the text when writing page content. Craft your sentences to assist the search engine in finding the relationships between your keywords. Also, weave phrases and keywords into subsequent sentences.

But beware of repeating keywords unnecessarily. This is known as “keyword stuffing”. When search engines encounter these unnecessary repetitions, they consider them spam.

But the most important consideration to remember when crafting page content is that it will be read by people – not just by search engine bots. Once you’ve written your copy, let it sit for a day or two, and then come back to it. You’ll be amazed at how many things you can find to improve in the copy. And remember how great you thought that copy was only a day or so before? Also, read it aloud. How does it sound? Does it really say what you want it to? Does it make sense? Have you over-used keywords and keyword phrases? Another good practice is to let a second set of eyes scan your work. You may feel hurt by any critical remarks, but they’ll only make your copy better.

Also, pay attention to the anchor text that you use in internal links. Spiders examine these when they read the site, and these links are later related to search queries. The use of applicable keyword phrases in the anchor text is a basic practice in SEO. This technique is used to solidify the search engine’s understanding of the relationship between terms used in the links and pages on the site. For example, I might say, “You may also want to read the informative web articles about the fundamentals of SEO, by John A. Doe.” Here, I established a link with the keyword phrase “fundamentals of SEO”. I might also employ terms like “SEO basics” or “SEO for beginners.”

Remember, content simplicity is the key when it comes to SEO. You want to make the site easy to find and easy to follow. Moreover, you want to ensure that it is easy to read for both search engine spiders and human beings. The content should be well written, cover the content well and include relevant links. Although it takes a little bit of extra time an effort to consider SEO when building your site, it’s well worth the effort. The payout is increased search engine visibility, increased site visits and more conversions.

This is a guest post by Paul Estcott, who set up his own Company in March 2011, MBiz Inc.

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