May
31
You’ve selected key words and phrases to boost your web traffic and SEO (search engine optimization). So now what?
In the “old days,” that is, before 2003, SEO specialists simply stuffed as many key words into a web page as possible. This often created pages unintelligible to humans, but search engines liked them just fine.
But then Google changed its search parameters to focus on natural word use patterns. Today, sites that are “key word dense” are filtered out in favor of more readable sites.
That’s great news for marketers who actually want to communicate with readers. It means that the right readers can more readily find relevant sites, find the information they seek, and, hopefully, become customers.
So where do you place key words to attract the right customers?
Page content – Looking for the big secret as to where to place key words to attract the largest volume of qualified readers? Write your content to appeal to your readers’ interests. Yep, that’s the secret. Use the AIDA formula: get Attention, create Interest, build Desire, and call your reader to Action. After you have written your content, go back through it and look for places where you can add more key words and phrases without comprising readability.
Page titles – You probably know that each of your web pages has a title. Search engines “know” that too, so they search those titles. So each page title on your site is a great opportunity to draw people right where you want them which, hopefully, also happens to be right where they want to be. You can also embed key words in your page title’s HTML (HyperText Markup Language). Speaking of which…
Meta tags – Meta tags are key words in the HTML code of your website. They are seen only by search engines. Due to Google’s efforts back in 2003, search engines no longer treat meta tags as natural word usage, but they still see them. So use them.
With your written content and meta tags ready to go, what about photos and video? Good question. Search engines do not “see” these when they rank your site. But there’s a way around that. Stay tuned.