Magic Words Make A Difference

In order for your web page to rank near the top in the search engine results listing, you must know how to write content that is search engine friendly.

You may have a first class, beautifully designed website guaranteed to dazzle your visitors and potential customers. Your site may be an aesthetic masterpiece featuring a wealth of compelling, well written copy that promotes and clearly explains your products or services. But if nobody can find it, they can’t be dazzled by your brilliance and subsequently inspired to spend their money with you. (You must be present to win.) And studies show that consumers won’t try very had to find you - so it’s up to you to make it easy.

According to Jupiter Research, online search is the most widely used method of attracting qualified visitors to your web site. Approximately 82 percent of online shoppers know exactly what they want when they log onto the internet and almost half of them use search engines to find solutions and vendors.

Internet marketing and search engine optimization are now fundamental components of business marketing. With research confirming that the vast majority of searches end within the first two pages of results, prominent placement on the internet’s major search engines becomes critically important. In order for your web page to rank near the top in the search engine results listing, you must know how to write content that is search engine friendly.

Search engines use a concept known as key words and phrases (as found in your page titles, headers, meta tags and your body text) to determine if a particular URL is relevant to what a user is searching for. The proper use of keywords on your site has much to do with your search engine rankings and the resultant traffic. A key word can be one word or a combination of several words which best describe what your web page is about or has to offer. This page is, for instance, targeting the term SEO and keywords.

Here’s where it gets a little tricky. You want your pages to be optimized for high search engine rankings but you also want to tell a compelling story about your products and services. Many web sites overuse SEO copy to the point that the text sounds robotic. Remember that you are writing to real people who have real emotions. SEO is a magical mix of art and science. It is crucial to make your page as relevant as possible. In this case, relevance is a measure of how closely your web page is aligned to what the user is looking for. Simply put, the more relevant your page is, the higher your rankings are. But it must also flow smoothly so your visitors will hang around to read the copy on your site.

How much keyword use is too much? One rule of thumb is that your most important keywords should not be repeated for more than 2% of the total word count. If you have 500 words on a page, keep the keyword count to less than 10. As much as possible, use the keyword or phrase in the heading of the page, in the first sentence of the first paragraph and at the bottom of the page.  Use words with similar meanings because search engines are smart enough to recognize words with similar meanings and variations such as “woman, female, feminine etc.”

In each page, focus on one or two keywords but not more than three keywords so that the theme of your site is easily recognized by the search engines. If you hire writers to develop the content for your site, make sure they are well-versed in SEO tactics.  

So how do you determine the best keywords for your site? Start by asking yourself the following questions:

• What are you offering to the marketplace?
• How are you communicating to the marketplace?
• How many people are searching for your product/service?
• How are they searching for it?
• What quantity and quality of competition are you up against?

If you are not completely comfortable writing SEO content, hire a professional writer to do it for you. Your web host is your best source of information on how to optimize your site. Talk to your hosting company about your goals and how the right keywords can help you discover the marketing magic you are looking for. Magic words are not just for magicians anymore!