In How to Do Search Engine Optimization (SEO) in Worcester, MA - Part 1, we talked about how Dallas Cowboys fans still shouted, "We're number one!" last season even though they clearly weren't. Many web firms will claim that they'll make your website "number 1 on Google", but this is an empty promise. We discussed how Google has the last say on who is number 1 and that there are some rules to follow if you want to climb the ranks.

So, how can relevance, keywords and structure help your website climb the Google ladder and get in front of more customers? We'll examine each of these areas in detail.

Relevant to Your Customers

Write content for humans, not for robots.

Many business people today are searching for products and services on the Internet. However, the products and services they're looking for address a specific problem. In Keith M. Eades' book, The New Solution Selling, he uses the word pain a lot. "No pain, no change," he says. "Pain flows throughout the entire organization." Yes, usually, when a business user is searching for something on the Internet, it is usually related to some pain in their business.

You are sure to have success if you create content on your website that specifically addresses your customer's pain. You might say, "But if I don't put product- or service-related keywords on my website, then how will customers find me?" This is a great question. Check out keyword co-occurrence. (That in another article.) Don't forget, Google heavily weights your PageRank based on the popularity of the page. How do they measure popularity? The number of times it has been viewed AND the amount of time spent on the page. People spend more time reading content that is beneficial to them.

Keyword stuffing--let's not do that and say we did

So, if someone visits a page on your site and they spend 5 minutes or more reading the entire page because it really speaks to their pain, then you've won the popularity vote. So, to answer the keyword question above--When you write about a solution that really speaks to your customer's pain, you will inevitably include keywords that are related to your product or service and those will get indexed by Google. Once you've addressed their pain and established the right solution in concept to the visitor, pitch your product or service at the end of the web page as a tie-in to the solution.

Write content for humans, not for robots.

How to Use Keywords Properly

I'm so glad that you're reading this article on search engine optimization (SEO). It's very important to your success in search engine optimization (SEO). Search engine optimization (SEO) is the essence of attraction marketing on the Internet. It's so important to Google, which is a search engine. Optimization is key. The first step to successfull search engine optimization (SEO) is...

You should put your targeted keywords in the title tag only one to two times

Ugh! It was annoying just writing that! This blog post will probably get penalized for that. It's called "keyword stuffing". It's bad because (1) the search engines will penalize your website for it and (2) your site visitors will hate it and they'll leave your site. Additionally, they won't link to your site, but that in another article. So--keyword stuffing--let's not do that and say we did.

First things first. Use a tool like Google's Wonder Wheel or Keyword Tool to find out what keywords people are using to find the products and services you offer. Then, use those keywords several times in your content, but just don't overdo it. Think of your neighbor and what he would think if he read it. Would he say, "This is weird. Why are you saying the same thing so many times?"

As an example, take a look at this post. I'm hoping to attract people that are looking for help with search engine optimization. With the exception of my keyword stuffing example, you don't really see the keyword "search engine optimization" a whole lot in this article. That's because I'm addressing the pain first. At the end of the post, I'll talk about how aimtheory's SEO services can provide the solution to relieve the pain of the customer. Maybe you are that customer.

Remember, write content for humans, not for robots.

Why Structure is Important for SEO

This section will get a bit technical. You may already have some knowledge of HTML. I'll try to keep it as simple as possible.

We're going to discuss three key elements of your web page, the title, the description and the content.

A web page's <title> tag is one of the things that Google looks at. The title of the web page appears in the title bar of your web browser. For example, the home page of aimtheory.com has the title of "Recent Internet Marketing Projects | Web Design in Worcester, MA".

You should put your targeted keywords in the title tag only 1 to 2 times and it shouldn't be too long, as in more than 68 characters. (There are varying opinions on this.) Don't stuff! The title tag for our home page looks like this:

<title>Recent Internet Marketing Projects | Web Design Worcester, MA - aimtheory</title>

The meta description is what Google uses to show searchers a little bit about your website. 

Again, the description should be relevant to the page. The keywords in the description of the page should match the keywords in the content body of the page. Here's how our meta description tag looks.

<meta name="description" content="aimtheory is an Internet marketing firm based in Worcester, MA providing web design, search engine optimization (SEO), email marketing and online advertising services. We provide the same, fair pricing for everyone with measurable results." />

Finally, the content must also be relevant. Notice how the keywords in the content body of our current home page match the description and title.

We like to keep our home page short and sweet and do most of our SEO through the blog. Normally, a good article that will attract traffic is up to 500 words long.

Getting back to the structure of the content: Try to insert your target keywords toward the top of the content and not too many times. Including each keyword up to 6 times is an acceptable standard. Also, put <strong></strong> tags around the keywords in appropriate places when you want to emphasize it, but don't go crazy. The strong tags do improve SEO. Remember how I used strong tags in my "keyword stuffing" example? That's a good example of how not to use them.

Make SEO Easier

Now that we've covered effective techniques to improve your search engine rank and follow the rules, we've got to employ them. Doing so requires quite a bit of legwork, especially if you have as many as 100 pages on your site. There would be a lot of HTML to edit.

A content management system, like Drupal, can remove a lot of the legwork. It removes the need to edit HTML. When you edit a web page in Drupal, you just enter your description into a field that is specifically for that, instead of having to edit the HTML. It structures content properly so that the search engines can consume it with ease.

Most of the websites we've designed for clients are built on Drupal and they have experienced a significant increase in PageRank due to the ease of management and structure.

If you would like us to help you improve your rank on Google or want to know more about a content management system like Drupal, please contact us or check out our SEO services for more information.