Use Our Free SEO Tools to check your
Search Engine Optimization results
Content is King and will be for a long time! The Web content is an area most people try to optimise and have mixed results with. Content is what the site visitors come to read or view, so firstly write the content for the visitor.
If we go back and look at our Example Page everything between the <body> tags is the page content. Content is all the Text, Images, Flash and other Media that makes up a web page.
Header Tags such as <h1>, <h2> and <h3> should be used and used correctly. If we consider that every page should have a Header (h1). The <h1> is a good place for describing your content and an opportunity for another keyword. Following your <h1> header, you should have your first <p> paragraph </p> tags.
The first paragraph of your text on each web page is probably the most important. If it was not important it would not be first! It seems that the SE's rate this higher than the rest of the content so it makes sense to write it carefully. If a keyword is important enough to enclose in h1 tags, re-enforce this emphasis within the first paragraph and use the keyword again.
h2 and h3 tags should be further used as headers to break up large amounts of text into readable sections. Just like the h1 tag, you should follow each use of h2 and h3's with at least 1 paragraph of text. These tags are also useful places for keywords, but consider using them for your secondary keywords rather than the primary ones. As a rule of thumb, use 1 and only 1 h1 tag per page, 2 h2 tags and use h3 tags as appropriate to break up large amounts of text - just like we have in this page.
The next most important tags are the <BOLD> and <em>phisis Tags. If you correctly use these 2 tags to highlight a couple of words or phrases within a webpage the SE's take notice. You probably only want to make use of these tags once or twice each within any given webpage for a couple of reasons. Using these tags excessively would be visually unappealing to your readers, and the SE's would probably see it as being spam! The <u>nderline tag is also another way to place emphasis on some of your text. It tends not to be used as visitors can confuse underlined text with a link to be clicked.
Not eveything on the web is text, and it would be pretty boring if it was! The content on a page can include pictures or other media. Of course, when using pictures or other media always try to at least have 1 or 2 paragraphs of text where appropriate and make use of the alt attribute of the img tag. The alt attribute should be used to describe the media - as the SE's cannot view the picture. This is a place that used to get abused and stuffed with keywords. When writing your alt text, just consider that by spamming the alt tag with 10's of keywords your site would possibly be penalized.
This is an often discussed question when it comes to SEO. It is all about striking a balance. You probably want around 120 words as a minimum so you can ensure you have at least a h1 and a paragraph of 2 to 3 sentences. With this as a minimum, you can probably write something that includes your keyword once within the text and still make sense to your site visitors.
The upper limit of text on a single page is really more about a site visitor. If you capture your readers attention with a well written header and first paragraph, you can probably go up to about 1000-1200 words. An article of this length will contain no more than 3 themes or ideas and provide plenty of opportunity to present your keywords and phrases 3 or 4 times within the text.
There is nothing stoping you having a web page that is longer than the 1200 odd words. Some recent research indicates that the SE's will index at least 200k (filesize) of your content per page before stopping. So, if you need to present a large amount of information and have it indexed, it will not harm your SEO efforts by going bigger.
The page footer is of course the final opportunity to present any of your keywords. Most sites choose to use this spot to place a copyright notice. The smart ones also include the site name and the main keyword that they are trying to target across their entire site.
While the footer is the "last word" on each of your web pages, and could be used to re-enforce the page keyword it is generally better to keep it consistent across your entire site. Keeping the footer consistent is more about your visitors than SEO, but sometimes you should comprimise in favour of visitors and branding.
Finally, when writing your page content, you want it to sound as natural as possible. Your text is always written to present information to the reader first, and SE's second. Sometimes, you will only be able to mention a keyword once or twice within a body of text and not look out of place. The SE's do penalise pages that appear to be made up entirely of keywords. A balance should be to try and have a maximum keyword density in a page to about 5%. This means 1 in 20 words should be your keyword.