Writing for Search Engines.
Many people doing search engine optimization often overestimate the value of keyword density. Sure you want to get your keywords in the articles, but after you get them in there a couple times, that is enough. Do not put the keywords in there to the point that your article sounds like spam.
Also, if you do not focus on using your exact phrase, it opens up your website to getting more traffic from long-tail keywords. If you do not remember, long-tail keywords are keywords that contain multiple words that are more specific to the exact kind of search. Instead of the keyword being “wedding djs,” a long-tail keyword would have the phrase “wedding djs in maryland.” Since many people write in the same manner, if you just write your content exactly how it comes to mind, you are very likely to come up with some great long-tail keywords naturally. Another advantage of not forcing the keywords into your site is this way your readers are more likely to return to your site because of the quality content. It also makes it more likely that other websites will link to your site.
Now would you want to receive a birthday card that looked like this?
This was the perfect example of what NOT to do when writing for search engines. Some people cram their keywords into their articles to many times that is does not even make sense. This can cause some serious problems. Articles like these can be flagged as spam and be taken completely off of the search engine results pages.
Your writing style is another way you can rank well in the search engine results pages. Mix up your keywords phrase in order to get ranked in many different long-tail keywords. Instead of saying “djs in Maryland” a whole bunch of times, switch it up and use other phrases, such as “Maryland djs.” If your writing sounds like it was done by a human instead of a robot, it will help you with your rankings. The search engines are looking for high-quality information to put at the top of their rankings. What you want to do is make your article read like a newspaper, opposed to something written strictly for SEO. Google is pretty smart when it comes to identifying unique, quality content.
It is very common to underestimate the power of linking out to other sites. This does not mean providing links only to sites that also link to yours. This is called a link exchange and if the search engines become aware of this, your site can be dropped in the rankings. Try to put quality links on your page where they fit in naturally. This will improve the quality of your site and can also increase the page rank. Having broken links on your page can also hurt your page. Is is a real turn off to visitors and can cause them to leave your site immediately. Also, people are very unlikely to bookmark your site if it is full of broken links. Additional to that, when you submit your site to directories to build links, your site may not be approved for the directory submission if it has broken links. They will sometimes run a program that views your site and checks all of the links to make sure they are not broken. You do not want your directory submissions to fail, because backlinks are possibly the most important aspect of building the seo for your website.
Many times when a website is built it can immediately get ranked in Google, sometimes even ranked on the first page. Then after a week or so, the pages will disappear from these rankings. This is often referred to as the “Google Sandbox.” If you keep putting fresh, unique content on your website, you will climb out of this so-called sandbox within a week or two. You can compare the Google Sandbox to a probationary period for your website. After a week or two passes with Google’s spiders crawling through your site, there will be no problem getting your high spot in the search engines rankings back.
Remember, search engine optimization is very important, but if you are sacrificing the quality of your content in order to optimize it more, then you are not doing a service for your website. You are depriving your business of return customers and your content can look like spam and get lost in the Google rankings.
