Content! Content! Content!
Print This Post
May 25, 2009 by Steve Peachey
Filed under Books, Content is Best
Why do search engine spiders and visitors come to your site?
I can say it one word… CONTENT! Good Quality Content is what people and search engines are looking for.
Some folks believe the flashier their site is, the more enamored their visitors will be. And to a certain extent that is true… for about 8 seconds. If the spider and visitor doesn’t find what they want real quick… they’re gone. You certainly don’t want that… You want to keep your visitor’s attention for as long as possible.
Bling on a commercial website is pointless, and it could end up costing you rankings, visitors and money. Leave the bling to those who do not care about generating revenues.
Our job (one of those nasty 3 letter words) is to provide good quality, relevant content that both the search engines and visitors are looking for. Good quality and relevant content should be your number one SEO technique, because it has a tremendous effect on search engine rankings, many people new to Internet Marketing overlook this marketing strategy.
So What’s The Fuss About?
If you’re a Newbie (a Beginner) to Internet Marketing and to making money online… then the answer may not be so obvious and that’s OK.
The reason why the Web is such a great resource is because of the good quality content in documents that is posted where all can see. Information that other people are searching for. And the search engines direct humans to the place where they can find the CONTENT that is most relevant to their search… that makes sense doesn’t it?
It’s a pretty easy equation… The more relevant content that’s in your article that the search engine finds… the more useful that information is going to be to the people looking for it… and the higher your rankings for the search engines, means the more visitors the search engines will send your way.
It’s a win/win situation and I believe is a fair one too. There’s no point rewarding mediocre to bad information with monetary benefits. I sometimes object to the methods and criteria that the search engines uses… but I have no control over that. Please allow me to recommend a very good resource book at Amazon.com for you called Content Rich: Writing Your Way to Wealth on the Web, despite the hyped up title… it really is an excellent “How To” book.
There are lots of SEO techniques that you can incorporate into your articles and eBooks to help boost your rankings and that is important… but it takes a back seat to good quality content.
How would the search engines and visitors react if you had a page (or several) on your site that only had SEO Keywords… no real information or content? Would your visitors get the idea real quick that you are not concerned about good quality content… but search engine rankings?
The search engines recognize that too… and it will cost you.
What Do You Do?
Most of the non commercial sites do not care about SEO and that is true among many commercial sites too… to a certain extent. However that attitude is rapidly changing for the company or individual trying to realize financial success with their site. They realize that search engines are a vital component to driving traffic to their site.
However SEO is a field of study in itself and it can be very daunting to the person just entering the prospect of incorporating SEO techniques into their writing and internet business. Allow me to suggest a resource book if you’re just starting out or wanting to learn about SEO. It’s called oddly enough… “Search Engine Optimization For Dummies” … who would have thunk it?
Follow This Lead and it will take you to Amazon.com where you can buy the book for yourself and read the reviews…. If you’re serious about making money online… you definitely need this book on your desk.
There’s always the option of hiring a professional to do your writing and that is perfectly OK, in fact, if you don’t have the time to write the articles your site needs… perhaps outsourcing is your answer. But you must be very careful in what criteria you use to choose and who is going to do your writing.
- You can hire a Professional writer that is good at writing content that will promote your business… but maybe has no search engine appeal.
- You can hire an SEO expert whose writings have no human appeal.
A careful balance must be struck.
I have a suggestion and you can take it or leave it…. when you are visiting your competitor’s sites and you run across some articles that strike you as being the good quality content you want for your site…
- You take that article and rewrite it in your own words and make improvements to it
- You can email that site and ask permission to post it on your site…. be sure and give credit where credit is due.
- You can ask them if they have content writers they could recommend. But, don’t even hint that you are a competitor.
If you choose the first one… Do not simply cut and paste and change a couple words here and there…. being a Copy Cat will hurt you financially and legally… it’s called stealing.
There are more options that I would encourage you to take a look at…
In the above we discuss places where you can buy articles that you have rights to resell and the dozens of places to find prewritten articles…. Finding relevant content doesn’t sound so difficult now does it?
TRY THIS…
There are non graphical browsers like Lynx… (you can down load it here) that will display your page with no pictures… it will also pull your hard work to pieces. Not really… your files stays very much intact… It just gives the appearance that it’s messed up. Now you have a good idea of how search engine spiders look at your content…. They don’t care what it looks like… they care about how it reads.
They’re also looking at your image ALT tags and Title tags for links, and more. So when you see your work through the eyes of a spider…you will see the importance of ALT tags and Title tags.
Where you place the content within the code is also extremely important. Search engines regard the text near the top of your page to be the most relevant and gives it a higher ranking.
Some people use HTML tables to get the look they want, but you can do the same thing using CSS2 (Cascading Style Sheets 2.0). The benefit of using CSS2 for SEO is that you can place your important content anywhere and it’s SEO friendly.
How About Those Links and Keyword Density?
Links are important because they connect the visitor to relevant content on other pages and search engines love them.
But there’’s a catch…. you don’t want your visitor to leave your site to visit your competitor.
So you use the Car maker example. You design “A” brand cars, you want to create a resource for your customer but you don’t want to send your customer to the guy who designs for “B” brand cars. But you could provide links and information on the best fuel for “A” brand cars or the best after market products for “A” brand cars… even though you have no interest in the other products… Your visitor might. But because you are talking about them and linking to them… your relevance and rankings go up. Not bad… eh?
But let me stress… there has to be relevance. For example… Car designers and fruit stands are not relevant to each other…. so don’t try it.
- Develope and operate a good linking strategy… if you have good quality content, people will come back.
- Make sure your text and your links are relevant to each other and that they are relevant to the Title of the page.
Keyword density is part of good quality content too….
and you can be sure the search engine spiders are looking at it.
What is Keyword Density? To put it simply… it is the number of keywords within a document.
For instance: If your document had 100 words and 4 of those words were keywords then the keyword density would be 4%.
Everyone has their opinion as to what percentage keyword density should be and it ranges anywhere from 4 to 10%.
Please use a lot of caution with this… You don’t want to keep repeating keywords several time over just to be loading your document with keywords… because spiders see this as Spam and can ban you from their index.
Keyword Proximity is like a partner with Keyword Density… and it refers to how close the keywords are to the top of the document. It’s not going to look favorable for that document if the keyword is mentioned once at the bottom. You should mention it fairly early in the document.
Lastly, Honesty First is always the best policy. Good ethics will carry you through… no matter how much the search engines change. And honesty will always go far with people.. you want people to trust you and your site and once they do… they will come back! There is NO substitute for Truth.
Conclusion:
- If you use a non-graphical browser like LYNX to view your site… you will begin to understand how search engines see your site. Dont be dismayed if it looks like someone took a bomb and blew it to pieces… your files have not changed… it’s just the way search engines see it. Use that info to YOUR advantage.
- Make sure your content is as high in the code as possible.
- Always link to other relevant resources as much as possible… your page becomes a valuable resource itself when you do this.
- Pay close attention to Keyword Density and Key word Proximity. Don’t forget to get your copy of SEO For Dummies and Content Rich: Writing Your Way to Wealth on the Web for your desk (or bookshelf)
- Be Honest… DON’T SPAM or steal. Don’t do it if you’re not sure if it’s right or not.
Here’s to your success… Bless you and Be Prosperous.
Copyright © 2009 Steve Peachey
Permission to reproduce this article is granted if it is without modification and in it’s entirety.
Related posts:
