subject: Building Web Page Content That Search Engines Like [print this page] Building a company internet page or blog post message in a clear and concise fashion is of course essential to attracting internet traffic. However it is also important to arrange your content in such a way as to communicate to the search engines, what the site really is about. Search engines look for page titles, header tags and anchor links that are consistent with one another and relate to the topic your page is about, so consistency is the main idea to setting up your page.
What is the best or most SEO-Friendly way to compose the page? Keywords are naturally the most important element and should be used in consistent form in the title, headlines, text and if possible - the page URL. Assembling these keywords and phrases into a cohesive and understandable page may seem more difficult that it may appear. However a consistent use of keywords can greatly help the search engines understand the content of your page.
Prior to building your web page, it is useful to consider keywords and plan how you will incorporate them into your page. Once you've chosen your keywords for a given page, produce content that not only supports your value proposition but also uses the keywords. This can be a little tricky, but here is a quick process outline and a couple ideas.
Title Tags This might be the easiest way to incorporate certain keywords into your site. Titling your page using a keyword phrase rather than your company name is essential though. If possible, also use your keywords in the URL for your site. Unless you want to attract users that already know who you are and what you do, why would you want to use the company title to attract readers? Instead, use something like "furnace repair in Seattle" rather than John's HVAC as the title of your page.
Always include the name of the town, city or area when setting the page title. Geographic identifiers are frequently used by folks searching for goods and services in a particular area. So composing a page title similar to "automatic jackrabbits of Indianapolis" would help identify your company as a purveyor of automatic jackrabbit goods - whatever they might be.
Setting the Headlines - Making the headlines or the text contained within the 'h' tags consistent with the title is also important. These should use the same keywords and if possible, they should be in the same order. This is important to establish prior to designing your page because some headlines won't fit nicely into certain tabbed page designs.
Composing Content - The search engines try to distill the actual page content, but as they are not exactly human, they look for certain elements within a body of text. Specifically, they look for your keywords placed within the content. However this gets a bit interesting if your keyword phrases can't be easily used in conversational language.
Use the bold or 'b' tags around instances where your keywords and phrases appear within the page text. These call a little extra attention to the phrase. When the engines come through and analyze the page content, headlines and titles and find your keyword phrases present in each area, they will be fairly confident that your page relates to the topic described by your keywords.
Content Style - After coming up with a basic page design and keyword plan, you are ready to install your text. Writing for internet readers is just a matter of keeping a conversational tone to your composition, so it is important to avoid overuse of keywords or keyword phases. Search Engines are also on watch for overuse as well. Still, it can be challenging to work in keyword phrases to the text, so you will need a bit of creativity to make this seem conversational.
For example, a furnace repair service in Dayton, OH using the keyword phrase "Furnace Repair in Dayton" might then use a sentence such as "Furnace repair companies in the Dayton area have long known that" The keywords 'furnace,' 'repair' and 'Dayton' are all included in the lead sentence. A Chicago company that provides "Epoxy Flooring to Chicago industrial customers might work this phrase into the lead sentence. It might then look something like "Epoxy Flooring contractors in the Chicago area install hundreds of industrial floor systems." For searches containing keywords that are included in title, headlines and text, your page will be much more likely to appear as a result.
As text composition may not be every business owner's strength, these simple tips for on-page optimization provide proven ways to improve the way search engines will view your page. And if the search engines understand what the page is about, you are then in a position to begin competing for traffic.
