How to Optimize your Website Content for Higher Search Engine Rankings?

Optimizing your website content involves a number of steps which include the use of appropriate page titles, headers and links or anchors. But in my opinion the most important is deciding what keywords and keyphrases to use in the main page elements. Choosing appropriate keywords and using them correctly is one of the most important factors when addressing Search Engine Optimization. The most important use for keywords, contrary to popular belief is NOT in the “keyword” meta tag. Most Search Engines including Google have been ignoring keywords for along time when indexing websites for search, this does not mean that one should not be using your keyword meta tags, however one must not rely heavily on them for search rankings. Remember the Title tag and the Description meta tags are also important as the first paragraph that a potential visitor will see when looking at your site listing in a search engine.

Keywords should also be specific to your business and reflect the terms and phrases that your website visitors actually use to search for you. It is crucial to target keywords and phrases that are unique to your specific business and sets you apart.

Here are some tips for choosing and using keyword phrases:

• Optimize each of your pages seperately for a set of unique keywords or keyword phrases
• Choose phrases that visitors to your site would realistically use to search for your site, service or product. Avoid using business or industry jargon thatthe potential visitor may never search for
• Optimize for “long tail” phrases (more specific v/s general) rather than shorter phrases that are ususally more competitive for example if you have a specific running shoe product (i.e.Forrest Gump Running Shoe) you should optimize for that phrase first rather than trying to optimize for the highly competitive phrase “Running Shoe”
• Consider your individual good or services that might help you stand out in search
• Consider regional terms and geo locations.
• What keywords are your competitors using? Analyse where they have placed the keywords in their content (i.e Title tags,headings, page descriptions,anchors) and how they rank in search engines.
• Always ask yor customers and get feedback from them as to what phrases the would use to serach for you, your products and services.
• Give your pages time to rank. Don’t expect your well optimized pages to rank well immediately. Ther are many factors that affect the rate at which optimized pages increase in rankings for specific keywords and phrases, including the age of the domain and how often your site is crawled.
• Once you have determined your keyword phrases and allowed time for them to be indexed in the search engine continue to re-evaluate them. This is where Web Analytics becomes very important. Use your Web Analytics to determine which keywords are doing well for you, which are falling and how they are performing in serach engines.