StGermaine.ca » Search Engine Optimization

Writing Google Friendly Content

Ryan St. Germaine — Thu, 28 Jan 2010 22:08:13 +0000

Writing content that is unique and relevant to your target audience should always be your main goal when creating a new blog post. Never sacrifice the quality of your message just to improve your search engine optimization. Fortunately, many of the things that make your content Google friendly also make your content better.

Use these guidelines to write Google Friendly Content

One Page/One Topic: Remember that Google likes clear and simple content. As long as your content includes relevant highly ranked keywords, you give your page a good chance to be indexed highly by Google.
Include text with image & video posts: Google’s search algorithm can’t ‘read’ pictures and videos, so by adding text you enable Google to ‘read’ your blog. This text should also incorporate the use of appropriate and relevant keywords.
Relevancy: Google places value on relevant content, so simply using the right keywords is not enough. The keywords used in your website should also be in line with the content the website provides.
Uniqueness: Unique content stands a better chance of featuring highly on Google as opposed to duplicate content. To ensure that your website features highly on Google, try not to accept content on your blog that has already been published on other websites.
Backlinks: This refers to the external links that lead to your website. Having backlinks from reputable websites is always a good idea to make your website Google friendly. This can be done using article marketing, video marketing, social networking and social bookmarking. When it comes to article marketing, websites that feature highly on Google include Ezinearticles, Hubpages, WordPress, and Squidoo. Backlinks from video websites such as YouTube also work favorably.

Keyword

Keywords play a very important role in the ranking of your website. Remember that the higher the keyword density, the better the website will rank. Evenly distributing keywords within the website, while also incorporating the main keyword in the title is also something that Google looks upon with favor. However, when it comes to keyword usage, don’t compromise the website’s content in order to stuff the page with relevant phrases.

Consistent Content

Google loves fresh content – the more frequently you update your content the better. This includes aspects such as regular blog posts, posting podcasts and adding video. The more you update your site, the more your site will be updated by Google .

Get Help From Google

A great thing about trying to make your website Google friendly is that you can actually turn to Google for help. Google provides all its registered users with free tools and guidelines to help them develop Google friendly content. All you have to do is register with Google (for free), and then go through the ‘webmaster tools’ section.

Use descriptive keywords in titles

Ryan St. Germaine — Thu, 28 Jan 2010 00:42:00 +0000

Optimize your titles for Google Search by using descriptive keywords or phrases that clearly describe your blog post. To further optimize, use the same keywords from your title in the URL and throughout your post to show consistent use of keywords. Google looks at the page titles, URLs, and blog post content to determine what the blog is about. In order to drive more traffic to your blog, choose terms that get high search volume on Google.

To research descriptive keywords and phrases, visit Google Keyword Tool and Google Trends.

These tools provide details on:

What the public is searching for
How much competition there is for a certain keyword or phrase
How many searches are done monthly for a certain keyword or phrase
Other keyword phrases related to your topic that have a high search volume

The more you understand about how your target audience searches, the more likely you are to succeed in optimizing for quality keywords. To develop a list of keywords for your blog, use these tips:

Keep your keywords highly relevant to your blog
Choose keyword options that have relatively low competition
Make sure that there is relatively high search volume for your keywords or phrases

Using Internal Links Within Content

Ryan St. Germaine — Sun, 26 Jul 2009 15:39:00 +0000

An Internal Link is a link on your blog that points to another page on your blog. Creating internal links helps increase the pages viewed by each unique visitor to your site. It also helps search engines to navigate and index all of the pages on you blog. Here’s how:

Internal linking increases page views by enticing visitors to read related articles. For example, at the bottom of this post, you’ll see a list of posts related to the one I’m writing now. When you click these links, you’ll go to another post on my site.

Here are some additional ways to increase the amount of internal links on your blog:

Link keywords or phrases in your posts to other posts on your site
Use a sitemap
Use Categories to create links to your most relevant content
Break up longer posts into a series of posts that link to each other
Create a monthly blog summary that links to all of the posts you created that month
Create an FAQ section

Search engines use internal links on your website to crawl and index pages. When you link to a page using relevant anchor text, Google will associate that page with the keywords you use. For example – if you link to a page with the phrase “dog grooming” and the page you link to has the keyword phrase “dog grooming”, Google will assume that the page is about dog grooming. When you have a lot of internal links along with inbound links pointing to your blog using a keyword or phrase, you will rank highly when someone searches for those words or phrases on Google.