You’ll hear it over and over again. Content is king, when it comes to
aiming for success with search engines. Indeed, that’s why the Periodic Table Of SEO Ranking Factors
begins with the content “elements,” with the very first element being
about content quality. Get your content right, and you’ve created a
solid foundation to support all your other SEO efforts.
Content Quality:
More than anything else, are you producing quality content? If you’re
selling something, do you go beyond being only a brochure with the same
information that can be found on hundreds of other sites?
Do you provide a reason for people to spend more than a few seconds reading your pages?
Do you offer real value, something of substance to visitors, anything
unique, different, useful and that they won’t find elsewhere?
These are just some of the questions to ask yourself in assessing
whether you’re providing quality content. Do provide it, because it is
literally the cornerstone upon which other factors depend.
Below, some articles on the topic of content quality from Search Engine Land, to get you thinking in the right direction.
Content Research / Keyword Research For Seo
Perhaps
the most important SEO tactic after creating good content is good
keyword research. There are a variety of tools that allow you to easily,
and for free, discover the ways that people may be searching for your
content.
You want to create content using those keywords, the search terms
people are using. That effectively lets your content “answer” them.
For example, a page about “Avoiding Melanoma” may be using technical
jargon to describe ways to prevent the most dangerous type of skin
cancer. If people are searching for “skin cancer prevention tips,” then
writing in the wrong “language” might cause search engines to skip your
content as a possible answer.
Create content that speaks to what people are searching for, that
uses the language that they themselves are using. Our guide below points
you to a variety of tools that will help:
Content Words / Use Of Keywords
Having done your keyword research (you did that, right?), have you
actually used those words in your content? Or if you’ve already created
some quality content before doing research, perhaps it’s time to revisit
that material and do some editing.
Bottom line: if you want your pages to be found for particular words, it’s a good idea to actually use those words in your copy.
How often? Repeat each word you want to be found for at least five
times or seek out a keyword density of 2.45%, for best results.
OK, that was a joke. There’s no precise number of times, and even if
“keyword density” sounds scientific, honest, even if you hit some
promised “ideal” percentage, that would guarantee nothing.
