The content placed on web pages and websites is unlike any other content in the world. Serving a dual purpose, online content is there to (1) get website visitors to find the information they were looking for in the first place and (2) to raise the web page or website ranking within search engine results. This dual purpose requires a special style of writing known as search engine optimization, or SEO.
SEO, or search engine optimization, is exactly what it sounds like. Optimize content placed online to make it look more search engine friendly. To better understand SEO, you need to take a closer look at how these search engines index the pages of a website.
Web crawlers or robots navigate the Internet just like a person would. They first search for websites that are frequently updated with new content, and then filter through the Internet by reading and indexing the pages of many websites. When the robot reads a specific page, it checks all the words on that page. The focus remains on the top of the page and the bottom of the page with a quick glance through the middle parts of the content. What the robot is looking for is repetition. Word repetition is at the heart of SEO.
A keyword or keyphrase that represents the website should be placed repeatedly throughout the website’s words, articles, meta tags, and descriptions. These words are the ones that will be captured by the robots and the basis of SEO. The more the words are “read”, the higher the page will appear in the search engine rankings.
This may seem like a very easy task to accomplish. Why not just fill an entire page with the same keywords over and over again? Well, according to most search engine bots, content with too high a percentage of keywords can be considered an attempt to manipulate your rankings and mark it as SPAM. It is not a good thing for the web page or the website. So how much is enough?
Generally speaking, web content should have keyword density, the number of keywords placed within a written or written article, ranging from 2 to 5 percent. These keywords should be placed within the copy naturally, maintaining the informative nature of the article or piece of writing.
SEO is an art; there are more rules, tricks and tips for this art than any other on the internet. One can be sure that everyone who knows about SEO tactics and search engines also knows that everyone is trying to optimize their website, which in turn makes the battle fiercer than ever. The more pages on your site with a keyword density of 2 to 5 percent, the better you will rank with those bots.
Learning to write SEO content for the web takes time and practice. In order to speed up the process, there are plenty of SEO writers available to outsource any and all web content projects you may have. These outsourced writers are SEO trained and can provide that perfect keyword density every time.
So whether you decide to outsource to optimize your website or try it on your own and learn all about SEO and search engine rankings, this is definitely a strategy that is worth the efforts and/or cost and will reap benefits for the duration of your website.