I think the most important question to ask is who is most likely going to become a customer, visitors to your web site or search engines that visit your website? Seems like a silly question but some web masters get so wound up in the technical they forget that ultimately it’s the real people visiting the web site that really matter.
So what does that mean for content? Here are the five steps to creating properly written content from a search engine point of view:
1. Writing Your Content
Write your websites content as if you were supplying content for any other type of marketing materials. If you usually employ someone to handle your copy writing needs then you should continue that through to your web page. Be sure to keep your content relevant to your product, describe your product or services in well written details while still maintaining a marketing approach to the words. In other words make your content appealing to visitors who will read it and leave them wanting to continue to read it.
When writing your content try to use terms and phrases for your headings and sections that your average customer would use when searching for your products. For instance if you sell computers, try using the term, student laptop computers, as opposed to a brand specific like terms like HP Pavilion dv6000.
2. Optimizing Your Content
There are a few practices to follow in order to optimize your web content. First, as mentioned above use your “search terms” as headings and to make sections in your content. Bullets and lists are excellent ways to provide quick and easy read information about your product or service. Always be sure to include images within your content to provide visual appeal and to break up the white space.
3. The Obvious But Overlooked
Spelling, spelling, spelling. Sounds obvious right? There are millions of web sites out on the Internet that are completely littered with spelling mistakes. You wouldn’t spell the information your business card wrong, so don’t do it on your web site. Spelling mistakes sends a message that most customers don’t want to see. Grammar is also an issue. Sit down and take some time to read your content out loud. Does it make sense? Do you understand it? If you don’t like it – how do you expect your prospective customers will?
4. The Technical
This is a large section that should be an article all on it’s own, but here I will touch on a few basics. The technical aspects of the content of your web page are all behind the scenes. The most important part is using html tags such as bold, heading tags and italics to put emphasis on certain phrases or words. This will help visitors and search engines determine the main content of your page and what is important enough to stand out in the content.
Another aspect of the technical side is making sure your html code, CSS and java script complies to the current standards and is cross browser compatible
5. Links and other information
Finally try and provide links to other websites that provide valuable information to your customer that is related to your product or service but does not compete. This enforces the main subject of your web site and individual web pages.
