The first thing that most website creators and article writers want to do is to absolutely target certain keyword and key phrases to attract potential customers to their website. Unless of course, they are only thinking of paid traffic like PPC or Adwords.
In any case, targeting key phrases and keywords on your site through search engine optimization (SEO) is not only essential but absolutely crucial these days for any successful online business and website.
However, research have suggested that only 7% of websites on the Internet employ any SEO whatsoever. That few…hmm… most possibly because nowadays we see existing branded brick-and-mortar businesses, wanting a web presence, employ only website creators that just slap up visually appealing websites with Flash animation but lack the crucial skills in search engine optimization.
These offline businesses think they can replicate their influence and brand online… although they may have appropriate offerings, alas without SEO, if Google can’t find your site, no users would either.
Keyword prominence and relevance
Let’s look at some Google guidelines. The top 25% of the page and the very bottom of the page are the most important in any web page.
This is not to say everything in between is ignored, but, what Google wants to see is how we give prominence to the keywords and phrases by which we are looking to be ranked. Therefore, from what I know, don’t therefore, waste the top of your website with a lengthy introduction to you site or topic but get right into your keywords being quoted, in Title tags, in first 50 words of an article.
The bottom of the page is important. I don’t read this quite by SEO gurus. Does your site include navigational options that allow the user to continue navigating your site or each web page is tapered off with half-hearted links to privacy policy and a copyright statement?
Google seems to be looking to see if our site is providing yet another reference to a say an authority site of equal relevance and prominence.
The H tags
And finally, how do we use the H tags? If we don’t try to abuse the system (by tagging every subject as H1) then, H tagging keywords and phrases is a way to tell the search engines that this header is worth paying attention to – possibly it’s like making a sentence bold; it gets noticed.
In fact, you may think that bolding or italicize you keywords will attract Google’s attention. It may to visitors of your site, but Google and other search engines are basically looking for H tags, and our job is to list them in order or relevance. So, H tag in order of ranking: H1, H2, H3 and so on.
If we are promoting a product on our website, we should remember always to put the most important keywords and phrases (including brands) within the first and second paragraphs of the article. Use links to allow the user to click on some or all of these keywords to learn more… If not, rework the text so that it appeals to both the human user and to Google.
Finally, I do not claim to be an SEO expert, but it looks like these standard guidelines are there for us to capitalize. This article talks about on-site SEO properties. In the next article, I may talk more about off site link building for increased SEO ranking of a website.
Tags: keyword, phrase, search engine