| Getting your content right is crucial to SEO and the | | | | publishing. Credibility aside, if you spell your keywords |
| quality of your website in general. It is important to | | | | incorrectly, search engines won't match them with the |
| create content that will be useful for readers and also | | | | correct searches. |
| easy for search engines to match against your | | | | 5. Structure your Article: One long page of text without |
| favoured keyword phrases. | | | | breaks is hard for humans to read and makes it |
| Follow these tips to ensure you are authoring content | | | | harder for search engines to discern the key points. |
| as effectively as possible. | | | | Break your article into either sections with headings or |
| | | | lists. Using h tags or bold allows users to focus their |
| 1. Page Titles: Your page title (html title tag) should | | | | eyes on sections, making articles easier to read and |
| contain no more than 60 characters (search engines | | | | tells search engines to attribute more importance to |
| only display this much in listings) and crucially should | | | | these key words. |
| contain your favoured keywords as close to the | | | | 6. Keyword Density: This refers to the percentage of |
| beginning as possible. An SEOmoz rating experiment in | | | | key phrases that appear in your pages relative to the |
| 2009 showed that best practice formatting should be | | | | total number of words. If you have too high a keyword |
| either: Primary Keyword - Secondary Keywords | | | | | density, search engines may see your content as |
| Brand or Brand Name | Primary Keyword and | | | | being engineered and treat it as spam (and rightly so, |
| Secondary Keywords, depending on how important | | | | as a page stuffed with keywords isn't going to make |
| your brand is (what you use for delimiting the sections | | | | good reading for users). On the other hand, if you don't |
| in the way of pipes and dashes is not hugely | | | | mention the keywords you're trying to have your |
| important). My personal twist on this is to use the title | | | | content found for, search engines won't include them in |
| to represent the hierarchical structure of the page | | | | your preferred SERPs. There's no exact percentage |
| within the site, so: Primary Keywords (article name) | | | | to meet, but it's generally accepted that you shouldn't |
| 2. URLs: Your URL (that is to say, the part after the | | | | go much above 5%. There are many free keyword |
| domain) should ideally be the same as your title, minus | | | | density tools (just enter this phrase into your favourite |
| any stopwords and punctuation (and, for, the etc) and | | | | search engine) around that will check your pages and |
| hyphens replacing spaces. Whether you choose to | | | | calculate the density of words and phrases. These |
| have a category, date or section name in between | | | | can help you strike a sensible balance. |
| your domain and your page title (e.g. meat.com | | | | 7. Remain focused: Don't veer away from the focus |
| sausages/cumberland-sausages.htm) depends on the | | | | of the page and the proposition you set out in your title. |
| structure of your website. Larger websites (often | | | | This will dilute your relevant keyword density and |
| employing 'long tail' tactics) with pages optimised for | | | | make articles hard for people to read. It's much quicker |
| specific multi word phrases are more likely to have | | | | to read a short article than a long one. |
| section names in the URLs, with child pages building | | | | 8. Stick to Text: Search engines have a hard time |
| authority for sections. Blogs on the other hand, tend to | | | | locating content within non text content, so it's best to |
| have a flatter structure. This generally requires URL | | | | use text wherever possible, supporting images and |
| rewriting in the case of a CMS or blog, where a single | | | | charts with alt attributes. Although correctly built Flash |
| template is used to generate many pages. | | | | and some videos can be deciphered by some search |
| 3. Meta Tags: Meta description tags, whilst not | | | | engines, you will reduce the search-ability of your |
| affecting search engine's opinion or contextual | | | | content by encapsulating it all in these media. Having |
| understanding directly, are often used by search | | | | said that, multimedia should not be ignored altogether, |
| engines to determine the phrase displayed to users in | | | | as it adds a more engaging aspect to your website |
| SERPs. Your maximum meta description length should | | | | and livens content, but it should compliment text based |
| be no more than around 30 words or 150 characters. | | | | content, rather than replace it. |
| As with page titles, this sells your page to users, so it's | | | | 9. Write Content Regularly: Content should be updated |
| important that it quickly captures users' attention and | | | | regularly, to keep it current and relevant. Search |
| concisely sums up the the essence of your page | | | | engines will attribute greater importance to websites |
| content. Meta keywords tags are not given a great | | | | that are seen to update content regularly than those |
| deal of weight when it comes to search engines | | | | that stay static. With 'real time' search becoming ever |
| calculating relevance. Having said that, it's worth | | | | more present in SERPs (Google's blog search and live |
| including them, as every little helps. Try to stock to 10 | | | | content from partnerships with social media sites |
| to 15 words or short phrases that sum up your page | | | | & news feeds being good examples), writing |
| content, with most important words first, without | | | | content that matches topical news results will lead to |
| repeating keywords, which is unnecessary and will | | | | being features in more results pages. |
| most likely be seen as spam. | | | | 10. Put Users First: Search engines are built with |
| 4. Spelling and Grammar: It's important for your | | | | increasingly complex logic to provide users with the |
| credibility with humans and search engines alike to | | | | most useful, relevant content for their search. It is |
| practise good spelling and grammar. Many WYSIWYG | | | | therefore increasingly difficult to engineer results using |
| editors in CMSs and blogs have spell checks, so use | | | | 'black hat' tactics. Your best bet for long term success |
| them. If your editor doesn't have spell check, paste | | | | and high rankings is therefore to create content that is |
| your article into Word Processing software before | | | | genuinely useful for users. |