Archive for August, 2008

The Essentials Of Keyword Planning

Remember the web in the old days? You could cram in a bunch of keywords at the bottom of the page regardless of grammar, and pretty much devoid of any aesthetic sense, and search engines ate it up. It’s probably a good thing those days are over because websites have become a lot more professional. That still doesn’t mean that people are using keywords to the best of their advantage. In fact, because it is much harder to write keyword-targeted content, many site owners avoid the issue.

This is good news for anyone looking to improve their page ranking. The market is wide open for people who use an effective keyword strategy. The main issues are both quality and quantity. A few pages of keyword-driven content just aren’t going to do it anymore. If you’re really looking to improve your search engine ranking, and ultimately improve your sales, you have to provide dozens of pages of content.

To do so, you need to first research keyword strategies employed by competing businesses. Type in the most obvious keyword for your industry. What comes out in the top ten? What have those sites done to achieve that ranking? Keyword planning tools will tell you the popularity of certain keywords, but you should do some brainstorming on your own. Try and think every possible permutation of a possible search, including misspellings—even for easy-to-spell words.

Each search engine will provide keyword planning tools, potentially for a fee—you can check the keyword relevancy in Google, Overture, Yahoo, and others. It’s not a bad idea to check how keyword popularity compares in different search engines. You should be looking at potentially a hundred or more keywords—though this can vary according to the site. If a site sells a variety of different products, or provides different services, you’re going to be able to multiply that keyword list.

Each keyword list should be tailored to a specific demographic. Once you have the keyword list together, it is time to optimize content so that the site provides relevant content surrounding that list of keywords. The most important part of content optimization is the title. What this means is you should title the article with a specific keyword in mind—the HTML link for the article is vital for page rank. This keyword should then be repeated in the article—but not so much that the text becomes unnatural or, worse, unreadable.

If that’s the case, you could risk the site being banned by search engines outright. In addition to keyword popularity tools, you should also use keyword density tools for your site’s content. If the keyword density is too high, the site could be red-flagged as offering unnatural, inorganic content. All of these issues are core to keyword planning.

For more information visit: The Essentials Of Keyword Planning

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Increase Your Rankings With Custom Content Solutions

There is a mantra in e-commerce that content is king. Content isn’t just a way to inform visitors coming by the site, it’s a way to draw in those ever-present mechanical insects, search engine spiders. The key to knowing if you’re making nice with search engine spiders is if you have a good page rank: Google page rank is the holy grail of search engine ranking.

Page rank and content go hand in hand. There is a misconception that the number of links coming in to a site is the main thing that determines page rank. While links are obviously important, content is vital as well. In fact, they are intrinsically connected. If you have quality content on your site, more sites will link to you as a respected authority on a given topic. If those sites have a good page rank, it can only help elevate the page ranking of your site.

First though, you need to create articles that are worth reading. A poorly written article with legions of typos and inaccurate information isn’t going to fool web surfers or search engine spiders. Poorly written content full of keyword-jamming and other outdated SEO techniques are going to be virtually ignored. In the age of Web 2.0, web content needs to have a purpose. Only web content that is useful and informative will help a website move forward in the rankings.

This is easier said than done, however. Many small, medium, or large business owners are not professional writers. Furthermore they just don’t have the time to write quality, custom content. Merely cutting and pasting someone else’s content is not the best solution. New and updated content is important to keep a site relevant and fresh, it might amount to hundreds of new articles. Site owners just don’t have the time, patience, or even the skill.

The hardest part about getting a good page rank may be writing the content itself. As a result, outsourcing custom content is common. It is as integral to setting up a website as web design. There are a number of content writing solutions available. Make sure to find a content writing company with a qualified and talented stable of writers who have the ability to write on a variety of subjects.

Quality content will keep people on the site. It has been shown that the longer a web surfer stays on the site, the more likely it is that he or she will make a purchase or become a repeat visitor. Customers and clients trust a company with a site that is well written and informative. As the vast majority of web surfers use search engines to find products or services, it is necessary to have both quality content and a good page rank.

or more information visit: Increase Your Rankings With Custom Content Solutions

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