Writing Content with Search Engines in Mind
This is a short introduction for web site owners on writing content for search engines.
Website content has to be written for two purposes. It has to be pleasing to the human eye and serve the requirements of search engine crawlers. While humans read the visible text displayed in a browser, search engines consider only the code behind the site. Before you start writing the text for your website, think of words and phrases that describe your business. These words and phrases will be your keywords.
1. Keep it short and simple:
Search engines use the text on your home or index page to rank your site. Think of ranking as getting bonus points. The higher the bonus points, the higher your site will be listed in a search. Keep this text to about 150-200 words.
2. The first sentence is important
Some search engines use the first sentence (or two) as description of your site in their listing. Tell visitors right away what is unique on your site so that they click on your link. Sentences like "Welcome to my site." or "Thank you for taking the time to visit my site" don't do the trick.
3. Use of keywords
Search engines rank your page by keyword weight. Keyword weight refers to the number of keywords appearing in your text. Concentrate on one or two keywords per page. Each page can contain different keywords and the text can be optimized for them. A good ratio of keywords to text is ~5%. Don't try to use any tricks by writing "invisible text" (white text on white background). This is considered "keyword stuffing" and will be penalized by search engines.
4. Improving Relevancy
Use keywords in paragraph headings. Some search engines consider those keywords more important than others. Use the keywords early in your text to increase prominence and thus relevancy.
5. Keywords and keyword phrases
In addition to single keywords, you can use several words together which then is a keyword phrase. Use the keywords and the phrases throughout your text. For example, "children's science books" can also be used separately as in "children", "science", and "books." However, if you only have "children's books" as keyword phrase, don't break it apart by using "children's science books" in your text.
Although there is no guarantee for search engine placement, (unless you pay for your placement) you can do a lot to improve your odds.