SEO Tips to Up Your Page Ranking - Part 1
By Carl Chambers, Chambers Copy & Content
1. Content is King
“Content is King” is one of the most overused expressions in SEO, but it’s a cliché simply because it’s true. In fact, content isn’t just King – it’s King, Queen, Prince, Princess and all the rest of the content royal family. Time and time again, Google states that its web crawlers love unique and compelling content. There’s no mystery to it, the No. 1 way to improve your website ranking is to is to give robots and people what they want – original, engaging and useful content. Get the words right and the rest – inbound links, improved page rankings, untold wealth (fingers crossed) - will follow.
2. Keep Content Fresh
OK, so now you know that Content is King, you need to keep the content ticking over. The best way to keep improving your page ranking is to keep adding fresh, quality content. And don’t ignore the content you’ve already got – if facts and figures are out of date, refresh it to keep your site as relevant as possible. So get into the habit of regularly updating your site with useful and original copy. And if you’re adding pages, don’t forget to update the sitemap.
3. Keywords
Good SEO includes identifying relevant keywords or key phrases for your site (check out Google’s keyword tool), and then incorporating them into the content, headings, tags and page titles.
However, don’t overuse keywords. A web page with too high a density of keywords not only makes for a bad reading experience for humans, but also runs the risk of being ignored by web crawlers, which may consider the page to be spam.
In the early days of SEO, you could pepper a web page with keywords and get away with it. In my first SEO job, unused text space on web pages was filled in with keywords, but in the same colour as the page background so as to appear invisible to readers but not to web crawlers. These days, such ‘hidden text’ tricks are easily sniffed out so don’t try it.
Keywords are important, but the best approach is to let them appear naturally and unobtrusively within good quality content. It’s also ok to use synonyms, plurals and abbreviations, as search engines associate these keywords with each other.
4. Scannability
As most readers scan web pages rather than read them word for word, you need to employ certain tricks to help direct eyes to your page’s key points, such as...
- Brief, descriptive headings
- Emboldening or italicising key points
- Bullet or numbered lists wherever appropriate
Scannability doesn’t just help readers find what they’re looking for, by emphasising the keywords, key phrases and main points, you’re also helping web crawlers to latch on to the most important bits.
It’s also important to immediately let a visitor know they’re on the right page, so write clear and descriptive main headings (preferably one that includes your main keyword for the page). Likewise, use clear and descriptive sub headings.
The first paragraph should tell the reader what the page is about, and try and get your main keyword near the start of the first sentence of the opening paragraph. There is also a school of thought that recommends that your key information appear above the fold on a page (the visible part of a web page when you first arrive at the site). However, as today’s web users are pretty used to scrolling down to read what’s below the fold, it’s now quite acceptable to have a reasonably deep page. That said, don’t forget to clearly mention what your page is about at the top, along with any great special offers or deals.
Try and stick to one topic per page – this will help robots to correctly index your page. If a page has more than one topic, consider breaking it up across multiple pages and then cross-linking them.
Avoid huge paragraphs. Dense blocks of text can be off-putting to a reader, so why give them an excuse to leave your page. Try and keep paragraphs lean and concise.
Next: SEO Tips to Up Your Page Ranking - Part 2
Need fully optimised, unique and compelling content for your website? Contact Chambers Copy and Content to get a quote.