A Shop With No Sign

Can you imagine walking down a street and coming across a shop without a sign and with nothing displayed in the window?

Would you pop in to take a look around on the off chance it might have something you want or need?  Unlikely!

Well if the words that you’ve written for the home page of your website don’t include your Most Wanted Keywords (MWKs) it’s  like owning a bricks and mortar shop that doesn’t have a sign saying Butcher, Estate Agent or Hairdresser and the chances of you getting to page one of the natural search engine listings are dramatically reduced.

You probably won’t make it even if you pay for a search engine ad!

If you don’t include your MWKs on your home page and you then try to buy search engine ads for those phrases they won’t be displayed no matter how much you try and bid!  Google will give your site a low quality score as it will deem your site irrelevant to the term you are bidding on.

So how do you include them and let everyone know that your ‘shop’ is open for business.

There are some strategic places within your site’s content (ie the words that you write for it) where you can place your MWK’s that will really help your search engine rankings.  It’s so important that you make these changes to your site as without them you may as well have a shop with a sign that says “Closed” on the door.

You may have heard the phrase “Content Is King” when it comes to website search engine optimisation, if you haven’t then let me explain.

Search engines send out little snippets of software (often called search engine spiders or robots) which index or record web pages by jumping from link to link.

Each time they find a new page they record it, decide what it’s all about from the text on the page and other factors and then add it to their huge list of indexed pages (back in 2008 Google had already found over 1 trillion web pages!)

These spiders can’t read text that is within an image, so the words that are on each page are very important, this content must be unique, useful and include your Most Wanted Keywords in the exact format that people use when they are performing a Google search.

Google uses a formula of factors which helps it decide what a page is all about.  This formula or ‘algorithm’ changes fairly frequently to take account of changes and trends, to constantly improve the relevance of the listings they display and to keep on top of the clever people who manage to find ways to manipulate the results using dodgy or simply unnatural tactics.

A recent change means that they are now taking far more notice of new and fresh content.  Google wants the results it displays to you to be the most up to date as well as the most relevant, so regularly adding new and well optimised articles, posts, news and views to your site has become more important than ever.

So where are the best places to include our Most Wanted Keywords in the content of our sites?  Here are my top 5:

 1. The Headline

Most Content Management Systems (CMS’s) enable you to add a headline which updates the H1 metatag within the code of the site (using a good CMS means you don’t have to know how to do this manually, it just does it for you).  This tag is one of the first places a search engine will look to determine what a site is purporting to be all about.

 2. The Subheader

Adding a subheader within a good CMS will affect the H2 tag and is also very important for SEO.

Examples of effective use of H1 and H2 tags;

Headline (H1:) e-Vis Web Design Surrey

Subhead (H2:) Let our Web Designers based in Surrey Transform Your Website

NB: Just adding a bold headline to your copy doesn’t do the trick, you have to make sure it has been placed within the H1/2 tags – if it’s not clear in your system how to do this, check the help pages.

 3. First Paragraph

Include your Most Wanted Keywords in the first paragraph of your content and then sprinkle it lightly throughout the rest of your copy.  You musn’t overdo it, too much repetition is spammy and will do you more harm than good.  You’re always writing for humans not search engine spiders.  So use the phrase only once or twice for every 2-300 words of content.

 4.  To The Images

When you add an image to a page using a good CMS is should give you the option to add a descriptive ‘Alt Tag’ this is the text that will show up if for some reason someone’s browser cannot display the image itself and it’s another place to include your MWK:

Ie:  A website designed and built by e-Vis Web Design Surrey

When you add a new image using a good CMS it will usually prompt you to include a description in the Alt Tag box.

5.  Anchor Text Links

You can make your MWK’s anchor text links by highlighting and making them bold and then adding a link from them back to your home page or another relevant page.  Search engines place greater value against bold/highlighted text and of course they follow links (unless you tell them not to).  By using your MWKs in this way you are once again reminding Google that your page is all about your Most Wanted Keywords.

Ie “For Web Design Surrey, talk to us”

Your ‘index’ or home page will always be the most important ‘store front’ page whether your site is a shop or not and so it should always be optimised for your top Most Wanted Keyphrases.

But it’s worth knowing that if you use your content effectively not everyone will enter your shop through the ‘front door’ or home page.  If you optimise other pages for less important and less competitive keyword phrases (also referred to as ‘long-tail keyphrases’) you may find you start welcoming a stream of interested customers fairly quickly through an entirely different ‘doorway’

To sum up, make sure all your content is unique (ie not borrowed or plagiarised from anywhere else without full acknowledgement and a link back), useful and includes your Most Wanted Keyphrases.

The web is all about finding solutions to problems, so by keeping your site a fresh, useful resource that is clearly focused on your customer’s most frequent search queries, not only will they come back time and time again, but the search engines will too.

Your Marketing Goal For The Week

Make sure you use your top Most Wanted Keyphrase throughout your home page, particularly in the headline, subheader and body text.

Check that your Content Management System is adding the appropriate H1 and H2 tags to the headers.

Highlight one or two of your Most Wanted Keyphrases, make them bold and add a link from them to other relevant areas of your site.

Finally, tag your images with descriptive text that includes your MWK (ie the alt tag).

Goal Complete!

Take Control of Your Site

If you cannot edit your site independently then please do speak to us about adding the e-Vis CMS to it.

Our Content Management System lets you quickly add new pages of fresh content and helps you search engine optimise them as you go.

You can keep the existing design and layout of your site, go for  a quick refreshed look or a complete redesign, the choice is yours.

Visit e-Vis Web Design Surrey for more details or call 01932 701432.