Ten Tips on Writing Search Engine Friendly Content

chillibreeze writer — Kadambari Singhania

How to write search engine friendly content? This is a question asked by most website developers these days. Should they hire the services of a professional SEO (Search Engine Optimization) consultant and pay lots of money to optimize their site? If yes, then how do they ensure that the SEO consultant is not a scam artist?

In fact you don’t need to put down a hefty sum towards professional Search Engine Optimization. Following some basic rules while building your website will increase your chances of ranking high on search engines. Listed below are ten main tips on writing search engine friendly content for your sites.

1. There's nothing like a "free-lunch" in the world!
You have got to work hard for everything in life, including getting a good page rank with search engines. So, don’t try to fool the search engines by resorting to "keyword stuffing", "link farms" and "cloaking". Search engines have their own reputation to maintain by providing accurate search results. So they don't like it when people try to trick them. Using any dubious methods might get you penalized or even banned from search engines.

2. Good content and Fresh content.
Content is the golden keyword here. Visitors will keep coming back to your site if they find what they are looking for, in an easy-to-glance, well-presented layout.

Hence it is important that your website should have unique and/or specific content, relevant to what your visitors are seeking. Return visitors will eventually link to your site. Having lots of inbound links, especially from highly ranked sites, is great for search engine rankings.

A good thumb-rule to follow is to have at least 200 words of keyword-rich textual content on your page in order to attract the attention of search engine spiders; anything less than that is not really favored by the spiders.

Make your text easy to scan at a glance by using bulleted and numbered texts, headings and bold text. Also make it a point to keep updating your web content on a regular basis; fresh content is as important as good content.

3. Descriptive Page Title tags.
Be sure to include enough information in the title about the content of your page. Not doing so, is a sure way to lose visitors no matter how good the content or layout of your site. A good title has two advantages:

Search engine spiders read through the page title tag to determine the keywords on which to index your page. So, for example, if I want this page to be listed in the search results for "search engine friendly content" and "Search Engine Optimization", I could use a title like "Ten tips to write search engine friendly content - An article on Search Engine Optimization".

People usually bookmark the sites they like, and if later on they can't make out by the title of the page as to what that bookmarked link relates to, they will delete it from the list and there go your chances of getting return visitors.

4. Meta Keyword tags Vs. Meta Description tags.
Meta keyword tags are more-or-less obsolete now. Search engines don't rely on these tags nowadays because they have been relatively easy to manipulate by spammers. They are really not worth the effort anymore.

Meta Description tags, on the other hand, can still be of use as the contents of this tag are used to describe your site in the search results listings. Make sure you provide an accurate and specific description of your site because this is what will make the user decide whether they want to click on your website link or not.

5. Proper Heading tags.
Use real heading tags to mark your headings on the site. Don't just increase the font-size and give a different color to mark a heading. Also, avoid using images or other non-text objects as headings. The heading tag plays an important role in determining what keywords should be used to index your site, so make the best use of them.

6. No Frames.
Most search engine spiders are not able to read frames. So try to avoid using them as far as possible. If you must use them, make sure you have enough body text within a <no frames> tag too. And even if you use some workarounds to allow the search engines to crawl through the frames, then also it will create a problem for your readers who land on an orphaned webpage from your frame-based site outside the frameset. There will be no navigational links on this page and will confuse the readers unnecessarily.

7. Images, Flash and multimedia content.
Images, flash objects and any other multimedia content are read by the spiders as blank space on your page. So always try to include all text tags wherever possible. The goal is to provide keyword-rich text to the spiders, relevant to what your site is about.

Images, flash objects and any other multimedia content generally take time to load. So, as far as possible, try to keep this into account. You don't want to lose your readers just because they can't upload your page on a 56kbps modem!

8. Spelling and Grammar.
Run your content through a word processor and check it for spelling and grammar mistakes before hosting it on your site. Check and re-check for errors. You don't want to lose your readers by appearing unprofessional and careless after spending so much time and effort in accumulating the content.

Also keep in mind the difference in spelling between American and British English. Colour vs. color, optimisation vs. optimization, etc. And while it is not advisable to deliberately misspell words, if such words with multiple spelling constitute an important part of your keywords, you can always include a kind of glossary listing the most common spelling variations on the page.

9. Keyword density.
Keywords are those important terms and phrases which the users put in the search boxes of various search engines. These are the words which, when included appropriately in quantity and quality throughout your webpage, determine its positioning in the search results. These are the basic guidelines that can be followed in terms of keyword density:

Keep in mind what your site is all about. And then include as many relevant terms as you can among the keywords. Do not fill your pages with phrases that are searched for frequently, but have nothing to do with your site.

Keep in mind your target audience. Consider the kind of phrases they are likely to use as search strings. Make sure you include enough of those phrases in your content. A quality audience makes a repeat audience.

Once you have zeroed in on the keywords you want to use, just include them (or as many of them as possible) in the page title and also in the first few paragraphs of the article. It is best though to spread them throughout the main content of your text without disrupting the flow of course.

Keyword stuffing, however, should be avoided at all costs. One, the search engine spiders consider it spamming and two, the readers don't like the same words popping up at all odd places without context. The key is to maintain a balance--your webpage should be dense enough with the relevant keywords appearing frequently in the article, but it should not appear "stuffed" unnecessarily either.

10. Good Web Site Design.
Browser Compatibility: Test your site on different browsers like Internet Explorer, Mozilla, and Opera etc.

Sounds and Pop-ups: Sounds and pop-ups only irritate and distract users and should be avoided where possible.

Site Navigation: Appropriate navigational links and a site map must be provided. Care should be taken not to have any broken links on your site.

Make Your Text Easy To Read: Avoid using dark backgrounds and light text colors. Don't use fancy fonts that the reader's browser might not support.

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Kadambari writes forchillibreeze.

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