Let’s discuss what we must do to prove to Google and other search engines that our meta data and our actual content match up.
What is Content Optimization?
This is simply making sure that you are talking about the keyword you are trying to rank for. For instance, lets say you are trying to rank for the keyword “how to swim.” If you don’t actually say, “how to swim” on you website at all, then how is the search engine going to know that you are talking about that? It can’t. The only thing it might be able to pick up on is synonyms, but that probably won’t increase your chances that much.
How to Prove You’re Talking about Your Keyword
There are several methods of doing this. The first is what we discussed in our Meta Data post, telling the search engines directly. The second obvious thing to do would be to mention your keyword throughout your page. What are some other things you can do? I have made a list of common good practice methods to emphasize your keyword on a particular page. Our example for this is “how to swim.”
- Put an image on your page that has alt text similar to your keyword – Your alt text could be “swimming” or “how to swim.”
- Put Headers of value H1 and H2 on your pages with keywords inside them – If your page is taking about “how to swim,” it would only make sense that the title for your page would contain that.
- Make the URL contain your keyword – For instance, you would want your URL for “how to swim” to be www.blablabla.com/how-to-swim/. To the search engines, it would make sense that the domain name would have those keywords.
- Underline or bold a keyword where appropriate – If you think there is a part in your post/page where the keyword mentioned would be helpful to the user, go ahead and underline and/or bold it.
- Put synonyms of your keyword on your page – This is also very important. This should happen automatically most of the time if you are talking about a certain subject. Search engines are checking this to make sure content is not spam. For instance, “swimming for beginners” would be a great synonym for our keyword.
This is the basic list of things to show that you are talking about your keyword. What I advise you to do is to just write for the user and then go back and edit some of the text to have your keyword in it. You don’t want to come across as a spammer, to the search engines or the user.
On Page Optimization Complete, Now What?
Now that we have discussed what it takes to prove to search that you are talking about a particular subject, the next thing to do is prove that you are an authority on the subject. In our next post we will discuss off page optimization. In this step, you will learn how links to your website count as votes for your website. It makes sense — the more people like something, the more they will talk about it or mention it to their friends or on other websites.
– David P.