Content is King

Another important aspect of search engine optimization - your website content. You may have the greatest website design around but it won't help much in SEO if you don't have stellar content.

Search engines analyze all text in your website content, and weigh your content by assigning it a page rank. When search engine users type in their keywords, the search engine algorithms decide which pages to list in the results based on thow well the pages are ranked. How well your page content is ranked depends on several factors:

Importance of Content for SEO

• Content that is authoritative - The best content out there provides all relevant information on a particular topic. So when writing for your website, make sure your content is always informative and of great use to your target market. You don't want people having to look for answers on a competitor's site.


• Content that is unique - Uniqueness doesn't necessarily mean that you'll be making web content for a niche market, but rather writing original content that isn't written by some hack job internet article writer.


• Keyword Density - In SEO marketing, it means having your keywords (the words people enter in the search engine's search box) appear in your content. Naturally, If a person searches information for a particular word or phrase using Google or Yahoo, the search engines will try its best to match the search query by looking at site content having the same keywords. Trying to put large amounts of the same keywords on a single piece of content (also known as "keyword stuffing") is frowned upon, due to the fact that you'd end up that looks too redundant.


• Deliver fresh content regularly - Search engines rank sites highly when they see new content on web pages. Whether its a new product listing, or an editorial on new webdesign practices, its always a good idea to put new content on your site.


• Put linking to good use - It was found that a site that links information to external sites has an effect on page ranking. If your site links to pages from a reputed site with high ranking on the search engines and vice versa, chances of increasing your page rank gets better. Since SEO is a popularity contest, it doesn't hurt to be affiliated with established sites.

Metadata for SEO

• Use tags responsibly - your tags should briefly describe the content of your page and nothing else. Title tags, headers and descriptions should contain your desired keywords sensibly, without resorting to keyword stuffing. Search engines will know you're cheating when you overdo it.


• Follow good programming practices - much like webdesigning for SEO, streamlined code is favored by search engines. Optimize by removing irrelevant code- making pages load faster. You can also help web users to cache some of your site elements by having them as external files.

There are a lot of more in-depth information on SEO out there, and some of them involve using techniques which aim to exploit search engine algorithms. But in general, good SEO practices actually focuses on the needs of the web user in mind. A nicely-designed website with great content for your target market are usually all you need. Information with regards to search engines and how they work should only help you help the search engines index your web site correctly, and shouldn't be exploited.

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