Search engine optimisation is large subject. But I am often asked to give simple guidance so that content creators can improve their website position on Google. Here are some basic tips you may like to follow.
It’s possible to attract more visitors to your website from search engines by fine tuning your website text. This is known as search engine optimisation (or SEO).
The idea is to introduce keywords and phrases onto a web page that people typically type into a search engine to locate the material you are writing about.
... there is a danger of overloading a page with unnecessary words that will reduce its readability.
For example, consider the travel industry. Perhaps a customer wanting a winter sporting holiday in Austria might type ‘ski holidays in Austria’ into Google. So if you have a page on the subject then you would want to ensure that this and related phrases are present in the text.
Getting the balance right
But you may find that there are many such keywords and phrases. So there is a danger of overloading a page with unnecessary words that will reduce its readability.
This is called ‘keyword stuffing’. If you do this, search engines may lower the ranking of the page and push the link to your website further down the listings page. This would result in fewer visitors. So you need to avoid a high ‘keyword density’ relative to the total article word count.
While optimisation may attract visitors, if the articles are otherwise shallow and uninteresting they are unlikely to remain on the site. They certainly won’t recommend your website to others by adding hyperlinks to their own websites.
It’s a fine balance getting SEO right. But if you are writing clearly and carefully, all the important words and phrases may be just naturally present.
Basic guidelines
Here are my basic guidelines. Once your main editing task is complete, check that the ‘primary’ key phrase is present in the opening paragraph and ideally in the headline (if you know HTML - that’s the h1 tag). Also include it in the web page title.
Now see if you can include additional or ‘secondary’ keywords and phrases in the article. Subheadings, captions, image ‘alt attributes’ and links can all be used to place keywords.
Part two of this article for lots more tips: