Search Engine Results: Far More Than Keywords
February 14, 2012
Most folks who market using the Internet in any way are familiar with the use of keywords. In fact, many believe that by putting in as many keywords as possible they will garner a higher position on search engine results (SER). They are very wrong.
Search engine optimization (SEO) should be left to a professional; otherwise you run the risk of your results being buried around page 1,251 of the search engine results. Overusing keywords is known as keyword stuffing. Keyword stuffing sometimes makes copy almost unreadable and content on the page is often ignored. A click to your page will not generate an income-producing action if you have keyword stuffed. Not only do the search engines frown on this practice, but potential customers and clients think of keyword stuffing as nothing more than Internet-based spam.
SEO is a tactic to get a potential client to your page and then perform an action. The action can be clicking through to your website, purchasing something or signing up for a newsletter.
For SEO to be successful, keywords should be blended into copy that is engaging and original. If one of your keywords is “bike,” using word modifications such as “biking,” “biker,” or “bikes” etc. gives you variety in keyword use and doesn’t bombard the reader with the word “bike.” Just be sure to include the word variants in your tags. Another strategy of SEO is the use of photos, clip art, video and sound. Not only do these mediums enhance your page content, search engine crawlers are unable to see or hear them. Thus, the robots read the tags and the information in the tags is taken at face value. Here is your opportunity to include keywords that will be indexed without accusations of stuffing, without ruining your content, and provide a more interesting page to the reader. Click-through rates are known to be higher on media-rich pages.
Location information is vital. If your business is near a landmark, name it. If it is in a particular neighborhood, state it. This technique enhances your SER. When the landmark is searched, your business might be included in the search results or in the “nearby” area of results. If you own a dry cleaner business in Sacramento that is near historic Old Sacramento, you might mention something like: “Serving Historic Old Town Sacramento and neighboring area for 25 years.” You may pop up on Old Town Sacramento searches, but more importantly, you will show up for a search such as “Dry cleaner, Old Town Sacramento.” Along these lines you should also have your business listed on Google Places. There is no charge and the interlinking to your website raises your SER.
SEO experts also advise Internet marketers that to be successful, content must always be relevant and current. News from three months ago on an electronics website is not going to engage as many people as a story about what is happening at present and why or what will happen shortly. Stale content kills click-throughs.
Remember in the not too distant past when you looked in the Yellow Pages and the first company you would find for almost any heading was ‘AAA’ Something? All those guaranteed the Yellow Page Advertiser placement at the top of his section. The advertiser always was in first place in a keyword search. What the first letter of the alphabet did for Yellow Page advertisers in the last century, is the same as what professional SEO writing can do for you on the best marketing platform available in this century—the Internet.
While I mostly agree, I have seen old articles and news pages continue to generate traffic for many months or even years. I think the real key is to have content that people like and that is well-optimized. Yes, fresh content is best, but isn’t that more about it’s originality than it’s freshness…?
And I hate to see people so strongly discouraging people from the practice of keyword-stuffing. Doing so may push them towards over-optimizing for one or just a few keywords.
What I would like to see people recommending is to use as many scored keywords as possible on each page, but also with the instruction that your content MUST also follow general rules of good English usage. This not only limits how many keywords and phrases are used, but also removes any concern over keyword density, since the density of good English content should not be a worry, right?
I think these instructions make it more possible for the average webmaster to effectively optimize their site when hiring a skilled but expensive SEO is not really an option.