Search bots love fresh content and there is no exception here. This is why content optimization plays a major role in any SEO campaign. The point to be noted here is that content optimization is not a solitary process and involves the optimization of the webpage as a whole. This means content optimization can be defined as the optimization of the on-page content in correspondence with other factors like title tags, Meta tags, alt tags, web page URL, domain name, and internal links.
The Process Of Content Optimization
1.) Keyword Research
Keyword analysis plays a major role in optimizing content and is basically the first and more important step. In a narrow sense keyword research involves researching and finding keywords that people use in a day-to-day context to search over the internet. Hence keyword research should help a person locate all variations of keywords that people use for searching (a particular product/service/information).
There are many free as well as pay-and-use tools available over the internet that can help in effective keyword research. Some popular ones are overture and word tracker. Wordtracker is a pay-and-use tool that offers real user search statistics from many meta-search engines like MetaCrawler and DogPile.
2.) Keyword Analysis
The next step after thorough keyword research is keyword analysis. Keyword analysis basically involves finding the right keywords from a bunch of available ones. This involves analyzing the most effective keywords that can generate traffic and at the same time are easy to optimize for.
At the end of the day, keyword analysis should give access to a set of keywords that are actually used by people and at the same time unique enough to generate highly targeted traffic. A keyword analysis is an extremely important step as wrong keywords can make your SEO efforts in vain.
3.) Using Keywords On A Webpage
When optimizing for content the webpage as a whole needs to be taken into consideration. This involves the on-page content along with title tags, Meta tags, alt tags, and the page URL. For on-page content optimization, the first and foremost step is to find out the keywords that matter most. After this is estimated the keywords are spread out inside the content in the most natural manner. Search bots give more importance to keywords placed in the heading tags and within the first few lines.
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A minimum of 200 words per page and proper spreading out of keywords is considered best from the optimization point of view. One must also ensure that the keywords are used naturally within the content. This is important from the usability point of view. To achieve this you can even break up the keywords without changing the order.
Important Things To Take Into Consideration For Content Optimization
Location of Keywords
The location of keywords inside the content is very important. In basic search, bots tend to give more importance to keywords that are placed within the heading tags and those that appear within the first few lines. Some search bots also give importance to keywords that appear at the end of the content. Also, search engines place much importance on keywords that appear in bold and italics.
Checking keyword density
Keywords must be used properly and not exceedingly which could lead to search engine spamming. Most bots today can easily identify pages that are filled with keywords and can even penalize them other than drop their rankings. This is the reason why it becomes extremely important to manage the right density of keywords on a webpage. Keyworddensity.com offers a particularly useful tool to analyze keywords.
Increasing Keyword Importance
Keywords that appear in bold or italics are given more importance by search bots. Also, keywords that appear in the heading using heading tags are given special importance. Search bots also give importance to keywords that appear in links and at the beginning of a webpage.
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