Creating unique or original content is key to your long term SEO success. Your content is what visitors will use to judge value and one of the key elements that search engines use to rank your site. Whether or not you end up on page 1 or page 100 is largely dependent upon the quality and relevance of your content.
KEEP IT REAL
While you should keep search engine optimization principals in mind when writing your content, the key building long term rankings is to write your content for people, NOT search engines. Your content should be naturally flowing and provide an enjoyable user experience. DO NOT write content just for search engines.
COPY CAT
Avoid duplicate content! When you write you should avoid duplicate content. Duplicate content is exactly what it sounds like-reusing content that is already indexed on the WWW (world wide web). Duplicate content can adversely effect your search engine optimization efforts. Of course, the most obvious way to avoid duplicate content is to WRITE YOUR OWN! If you do not have the time to to create lots of original content, you can use tools on your site to allow for user generated content. Whatever your approach, you want your content to remain fresh. Pages that stagnate are visited less and less often by google. The longer a site stagnates, the less important it becomes.
FLIP FLOP
While it is true that you should write content for people and no for search engines, you should still use proper keyword density throughout your web pages. Each page should be optimized for no more than a handful (or less) of keywords. At the same time, you want to be sure not to inadvertently repeat non target keywords. By using tools to maximize optimal keyword density, you can use a considerable number of target keywords throughout your pages without compromising the naturally flowing feel of the writing.
LSC
There are two other important principles to keep in mind. First, search engines cannot read text contained within images. So it is important to use tags, alt tags and also to use the terminology within the body of the created content. You can and should still use images, just remember, search engines can’t read text contained inside the image. Second, there is another powerful technique to keep in mind: Latent Semantic Content (LSC). This involves using keywords that are related to your target keyword(s) in order to enhance the relevance of your page. For example, if your target keyword is “Gillette,” you can also use words like “shaving” and “razor.” This will enhance the relevance of your page for your target keyword “Gillette.”
IT WAS ALL FOR NOTHING
It is important that when you begin to learn SEO and build a foundation for yourself that you learn these proper techniques. These core principle’s have held true since the beginning of google’s appearance onto the search scene. But we are still talking about computers. Like all computers they follow programming guidelines-regardless of how advanced those guidelines are. Like all computers, some of the rules can be bent, others can be broken. In order to break or bend these rules, however, one must learn some very advanced techniques. If you become a regular reader of my blog, there will be many examples contained within where I may seem to completely violate some of the “rules” I discuss within. It is important that you realize there is much more going on behind the scenes when something like this occurs. Simply violating a rule or guideline without understanding the advanced principles which allow for it WILL be extremely detrimental to your website.
OK YOU’VE BEEN WARNED!
If you already have an advanced understanding of SEO and would like to learn some of these more advanced (rule breaking) techniques, feel free to contact me directly and we can talk. Keep in mind, I do not teach what is commonly referred to as “Black Hat” SEO. Black hat SEO simply does not yield long term favorable results. They are tricks-like a street magician’s sleight of hand, it is an illusion that will not last. Black Hat techniques may work for a short time and may even work really well for that short period, but all the work will be for nothing when google closes the loophole (and they will).
Thanks for taking the time to learn your craft! In my next SEO article I will discuss communities. Please comment and share this if you like it and REMEMBER: There are NO stupid questions!