On Page SEO Intro – Content
Because of the power of backlinks and social media in the major search engine’s algorithms, on-page SEO is often times neglected. Yet, while it may not have much power without backlinks and social media, it does have quite a bit of power with them—how much power depends on how well optimized your page is. And, since this is the year of the penguin, anything you can do to compete is needed to rank competitively.
Theme and Content
Before I get to the technical aspects of on page SEO, I have found that it’s an effective first step to create a theme for your website based on the keyword(s) that you want your webpage to rank for.
Example: If you want to rank for “movies”, you would want to build your content, HTML meta tags, header tags, alt tags, et cetera, to center around that main keyword.
In order for your content to be unique and natural, think about your clients, not Google or the bots—in other words, don’t load up your content with your keyword(s); if you make your content personal it will be unique, and that’s what the major search engines are looking for. If I was attempting to rank for “movies” and put that term in the content 50 times, then it would be obvious that I was just optimizing for a robot.
Believe me, these bots are sophisticated enough to pick up on associated words and synonyms; plus, adding diversity in your content won’t bore the piss out your readers.
Note: Adding italics, bold, and underline is a good idea for clarity as well.
The last step in writing your content is to reread your content for spelling errors and to see if it makes sense. I can’t count how many times I’ve published something and been embarrassed by bad grammar or spelling errors that Word hasn’t picked up. Also, I’ve been amazed at how much my content has just been pure drivel with paragraphs that had nothing to do with the whole of the content. It’s not necessary to be an English major, but just make sure it makes sense.
Conclusion
- Think about people, not bots
- Style your content with personality, not wiki-sounding (unless you’re a resource)
- Center your content around your keyword(s)
- Don’t stuff—use associative keyword terms
- Reread for spelling errors and clarity
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