Search Engine Optimization for Small Business: Part 3. On Page Content

By: Michael | Published: February 8, 2011 | Filed under: Small Business Advice

Sunshine Suites:New York Office Space

This is a continuation in our series on small business SEO.

Now that you have a rough idea of the keywords that you would like to rank for, it’s time to begin developing content with them.  Let’s look at some beginner notes on content creation:

On Site Text Content:

Every page on your site that is going to feature text should have a substantial amount of it for it to be considered.  Ideally, each page should have 350+ words of text content for the search engines to crawl and index.

Keyword Density:

Keyword density is one of most mentioned topic when discussing content for SEO.  Keyword density is a measure of how often your keyword is used in a given piece of text.  Several people claim to have determined a percentage that search engines look for, though none of this has been proven.  The most agreed upon factors of keyword density are:

>Don’t overuse or “stuff” your keyword into your text content.   Pages that go overboard will be penalized instead of rewarded.

>Don’t worry about any exact percentage.  Ideally, use your keyword in your titles and mention it once or twice in any given text.  Remember the reasoning behind this is just to make sure the search engines know what your site is about.  Repeating yourself over and over isn’t going to give them a clearer picture.

>Read your content aloud after writing it.  If you find yourself repeating the same words in a fashion that’s unnatural, chances are the content is too dense.  Revise the content to focus less on the keyword to improve flow.

>If you want to check what the search engines have determined your site is about, check Google Webmaster Tools for your site: https://www.google.com/webmasters/tools/.  Once your site is setup and crawled, login to see what keywords they have determined your site discusses.  If these are off base, revise your content to make your text better reflect your keywords.  Also, check your Google Analytics to see what searches people are performing to arrive on your site.

Blog Content:

Running a blog on your site is a great way to put yourself in front of your target audience.  Producing content for your target audience in the form of a blog creates several SEO opportunities for your site:

>When you put out great, informative content, it’s not hard to get other sites who appeal to the same audience to link to you.

>The more sites that link to you, the more authority you’re seen to have in the eyes of the search engines.

>This is an opportunity to demonstrate to the search engines that your site is not “static” but rather, “dynamic” and frequently updating.  The more frequently your site is updated, the more likely the search spiders are to crawl your site more frequently.

>Each post is another opportunity to use your keywords and keep the search engines informed of what you’re all about.