Make Your Web Content Search Engine Friendly

Lately I’ve been noticing a lot of website operators who are missing out on a very important opportunity whenever they post a new article or new content to their websites. Sure the new content may be very informative, and well written, but it often neglects one crucial nuance unique to writing for the internet: search engine optimization.

Most new visitors find a site from search engines like Google, Yahoo and their brothers. Your job, whenever you are adding new content to your site, is to make it easier for these search engines to find you and lead visitors to your site.

Hopefully, you all ready have a list of keywords your visitors will be using to look for your site when they start their searches at the search engines. (If you don’t, you have a lot of work to do before you are even at square one. I would start by looking at your competitors’ websites and identifying the keywords they are using).

Once you have your list of keywords, You can use them each time you write new articles or new content for your website.

• Place the list of keywords in front of you each time you write new web content. Whenever appropriate, salt these words into your article. For example, if your site is selling an instruction video on improving a golfer’s golf swing, and your key words are, “better swing,” “longer distance,” “increase distance,” or “improve your swing;” then you will want to scatter these words and phrases throughout the text of your article.
  
• Use sub headings whenever possible. Search engines seem to pay particular attention to headlines and subheadings, even more than to regular text. So don’t pass up the opportunity to use your keywords whenever you have a headline or subheading.
  
• Search engines do not read graphics, they only read text. Very often your carefully-placed keywords are wasted in the midst of a graphic. When this happens, the search engine skips right over it and fails to record its existence. Many highly skilled web designers are simply not aware of this. Their strength is designing nifty-looking graphics and artistic lettering. Unfortunately, there has not been a search engine made with an appreciation for art. Search engines only read text.
  
• Incorporate links to other relevant sites. Particularly sites that utilize your chosen keywords in their names. Not only do useful links make your site a valuable reference for your visitors, the search engines also pick up those links and the keywords in the other sites’ names.
  

Now whenever you write an article for your website, you can also use it to attract the attention of the search engines, and by extension, new visitors. As long as this new content is within the same general theme as the rest of your site, you should have no difficulty salting the new content with the very same keywords you are using to establish your site’s identity.

Good luck! Now go forth and get visitors.

COPYRIGHT © 2005, Charles Brown