Straightforward SEO: How to Write Content That Search Engines Will Find Interesting

Straightforward SEO: How to Write Content That Search Engines Will Find Interesting

According to the National Small Business Association, improved search placement results in more exposure to targeted visitors, yet few small business owners really understand how to execute a successful search engine optimization (SEO) campaign. As Andy Jenkins, creator of the online business forum Stomper Net, puts it: "Your website rating is decided, in large part, by the quality of your content - it must be both attractive to your visitors and digestible by search engine spiders."

It's a question of substance

Jenkins identifies two essential strategies that will assist you in cooperating with search engines and providing them with the kind of beneficial information they are looking for.

At all costs, avoid duplicate content

When pages on different domains are highly similar, search engines will identify them as "duplicate content" and place them towards the bottom of the search results page. In their standard index, one page will be included, while the other will be consigned to their supplementary index, where none of its worth will be expressed. This is sometimes an issue for e-commerce companies that offer a large number of identical things.

It's likely that certain design components on each page of your website are consistent, such as your navigation bar, header and footer, and if you have any unique messaging on the page, such as "In Stock" or "Money Back Guarantee." For your product descriptions to avoid being included in the supplementary index, you should make an effort to provide at least as much unique information in your product descriptions as there is in the permanent template layout of your webpages. To put it another way, if you have two hundred fifty words of recurring information on each page, you should also have at least two hundred fifty-one words of fresh and distinct content on each page as well.

For those who find it difficult to write intriguing, funny descriptions of their items, it may be beneficial to consider manifesting your text in some sort of ownership. For example, if you're selling a package of tortellini, speak about how easy it is to prepare, how delicious it tastes with pesto sauce, and how nice it is to share with your family at the dinner table. You're communicating with your consumers, discussing the advantages of utilizing your product, and staying out of the quagmire that is the supplementary index at the same time.

Latent semantic indexing should be implemented

The algorithms used by search engines have become more complicated over time. Optimizing your text is no longer only a question of stuffing it full of keywords: "This pasta site is the greatest pasta site for the pasta lover's pasta demands," for example. In fact, using the same keyword or phrase over and over again may raise red flags and may even lead your site to decrease in the search engine rankings.

The engines have mastered the art of recognizing the links between a large number of words. For this reason, in order to score highly for a keyword, you must speak about topics that are related to it, which is referred to as "latent semantic indexing." For example, if you're attempting to rank for the term "pasta," you may include information on carbohydrates, marinara sauce, fusilli, linguini, and other pasta varieties. It is OK to scatter "pasta" throughout your material, but make an effort to include terms that are latently connected. You're creating material that will be fascinating to the people who will read it, as well as pleasant to the search engines that will rank it.

Tip: To identify keywords that are unintentionally connected to your keywords, do a Google search with a tilde in front of the term - for example, "pasta" or "pastasauce." You'll get results that include latently related terms (for example, noodles, recipes, Italian, etc.).

Despite the fact that search engines update their algorithms on a regular basis, the fundamental principles of SEO stay the same. It is not necessary to engage in game play or attempt to deceive search engines in order to appear in their results. "The engines want to provide people with the information they're looking for," Jenkins advises. As a result, if you build a user-friendly website with strong, useful information, you will be successful – period.