Feed me - Satisfy the Search Engines and Your Site's Visitors With Keyword-Rich Content

Written by Julia Hyde


Search engines love content. Graphics may make your site look great, but a nice picture does not attract a search engine. Or a searcher for that matter. Good, relevant content does.

Search engines aren't all that different from people. When faced with a ton of choices, they want to know which sites arerepparttar best. And,repparttar 127923 best sites arerepparttar 127924 ones that giverepparttar 127925 most accurate and relevant information.

Good content serves three main purposes:

1. Search engines will rank your site higher for keywords and phrases included within your content.

2. Users will return to your site, and recommend it to others

3. Other sites will link to you, which will improve your linking popularity and make your web site visible torepparttar 127926 spiders.

But, how do you get good content? Simple. You write it, or get someone else to write it for you, using keywords and phrases your visitors will actually use on a search query.

Feeling a little hot underrepparttar 127927 collar? Relax. It's not as difficult as it sounds. Anyone can learn to write for crawler search engines. It just takes a little planning, detective work and focus. Ready to begin? Followrepparttar 127928 steps below and you'll be writing like a pro in no time.

1. Determine which keywords and phrases you want to target

Before you sit down to write anything, you'll need to decide which keywords and keyphrases are relevant to your site. One ofrepparttar 127929 best ways to do this is to userepparttar 127930 Word Tracker keyword tracking service at www.wordtracker.com. Word Tracker receives its data fromrepparttar 127931 Dogpile and Metacrawler search engines and estimates search counts for all other search engines based on its market share. You can sign up for a day, a week, a month or a year.

Another good way to find keywords your visitors are using is to look at your site's server logs. These will tell you what phrases people are using to find your site. Some keywords will be too competitive. For example,repparttar 127932 keywords "real estate" will return hundreds, if not thousands of search results, and may not place your site nearrepparttar 127933 top, but "Houston Real Estate" or is more focused and targeted to a particular query.

If you want your site to be included in local and regional searches you may want to design your site with local searches in mind, even if you also market globally. How do you do this? Just include local keywords such as address, city, state, province and zip code inrepparttar 127934 header or footer of your web pages. For example:

XYZ Business Consultant, 3657 Acacia Avenue, Santa Cruz, California 95067. Tel: 408 746 8954. Located close to San Jose, CA.

That way you have a much better chance of getting a first page listing on a localized search.

2. Scatter your chosen keywords and phrases throughout your text.

Let's say one ofrepparttar 127935 keyphrases you want to target is "cotton duvets". You'll want to weave this phrase throughout your copy without making it sound stilted or contrived. Remember, you still need to persuade your prospects to buy your product, so don't be tempted to write paragraphs like this:

The Road to Better Results

Written by Shawn Campbell


A lot has changed inrepparttar way sites are optimized for search engines since last year. For one thing, Google is notrepparttar 127922 only search engine worth looking into anymore; Yahoo has definitely managed to take away some of Google’s oomph overrepparttar 127923 past twelve months. Another important change is thatrepparttar 127924 intelligence ofrepparttar 127925 search engine spiders and algorithms has increased dramatically. So without further ado, I will present you with a standard search engine optimizing process.

Keyword Research

Nothing can be done until you know what your target phrases are. Keyword research must be done to find out what people are actually typing intorepparttar 127926 search engines. For example, do they type in “medical insurance” or “health insurance” more often? Is it worth targetingrepparttar 127927 keyword “dental insurance”? What do your competitors think its clients type?

Keyword research usually begins by askingrepparttar 127928 client what they think are good keywords and by looking at your competitor’s Meta tags and text. You then have to brainstorm to find new and related keywords that were not previously thought of. The use of Wordtracker, Overture, and Google AdWords’ estimates is indispensable. If you userepparttar 127929 “KEI” offered at Wordtracker, don’t fall intorepparttar 127930 trap of giving it too much worth. It is a good tool to help discover keywords that have not been exploited byrepparttar 127931 competition, butrepparttar 127932 really important number isrepparttar 127933 amount of traffic each keyword generates. Finally, create a chart to determinerepparttar 127934 relationship between keywords used. For example, there is no point promoting dental insurance if your site does not offer it. Texts

The next step is to writerepparttar 127935 text. Hire a specialized writer to putrepparttar 127936 text together. Ideally someone who has been trained in Internet writing, Internet marketing, and search engine optimization (SEO), or get advice from professional SEOs, marketing experts, and usability experts. Work withrepparttar 127937 client to get a feel for what is needed forrepparttar 127938 site. Then use all these skill to put togetherrepparttar 127939 delicate balance needed between selling to people, selling to search engines, and makingrepparttar 127940 text interesting/useful to read.

Domain Selection

Oncerepparttar 127941 text is written, come up with a catchy domain name forrepparttar 127942 site. Try to include part ofrepparttar 127943 keyword inrepparttar 127944 domain, and to think ahead so thatrepparttar 127945 domain can be expanded intorepparttar 127946 title. Our site www.gloriousbahamas.com is a good example of a domain with a keyword in it that is catchy and clearly stated. The keyword for that site is “Bahamas real estate”, so having part ofrepparttar 127947 keyword inrepparttar 127948 domain will help inrepparttar 127949 long run.

Title and Meta Tags

Fromrepparttar 127950 domain name, you can then create a title withrepparttar 127951 full main keyword in it (such as Glorious Bahamas Real Estate). The title isrepparttar 127952 most important text onrepparttar 127953 site. The Meta tags includerepparttar 127954 description tag, andrepparttar 127955 keyword tag. The description is whatrepparttar 127956 searchers will see in many search engine results, so it must haverepparttar 127957 keywords in it and, more importantly, it must sellrepparttar 127958 site. Write a description that is objective, not subjective. Zeal has some good advice for titles and especially description writing at http://zeal.com/guidelines/style/site_titledesc/. The keyword tag is done just in case some engines still use it (though very few still do), so don’t pull your hair out over it. Just list 10-15 keyphrases and try not to repeat any single word more than three times.

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