There are lots of things to consider when writing content for your website. Arguably the most important aspect is successfully deploying your keywords.
Once you have completed your keyword research and analysis, you need to deploy your keywords into your site content. The main thing to remember is that this content is intended for a human user, not the search engine. This means that your end content should be readable, and definitely NOT written for a search engine robot. David Viney (a well known SEO expert) states:
The acid test is if it reads well for a human user. If it does and follows the three basic rules (prominence, proximity, and density) then the search engine spiders (robot browsers, also known as crawlers, or Googlebots on Google) will love you. If, alternatively, your keyword stuffing would make a user laugh (or cry), then you are running the very real risk of failure.
The three basic rules for deploying your keywords, as mentioned earlier, are:
- keyword prominence
- keyword proximity
- keyword density
Keyword prominence, in the absence of HTML markup, refers to how words at the front of the analysed text is deemed more important than text further away from the front. Consider these two page title formats:
- Company name - Service
- Service - Company name
In terms of prominence, the first title puts the prominence on the company name. If this was the only factor involved the site would rank higher for the company name, and vice-versa for the second title. Additionally, keywords should be included within the following elements:
- pages titles
- heading tags
- body content
- ALT tags
Page titles and h1 tags have the greatest onpage ranking, as does the first paragraph of your body text. The ALT tags are arguably of much less value, however we would recommend using every opportunity to include your chosen keywords.
Keyword proximity refers to how close your keywords that make up your keyphrases are to each other. It is not always possible to have your keyphrases written out and still have good, readable content. However, where possible these keywords should be kept as close together as possible and preferably in the right order.
Keyword density is the remaining factor search engines use to determine keyword importance. The aim is to have a density of around 2-4% for each keyphrase - anymore than that and your site will start to look suspicious (appear as a SPAM site to a search engine robot) and you could be penalised for keyword stuffing. To check your keyword density there are many free tools available on the web such as this one:
Additionally, you should try and get 100% density in important elements such as your h1 titles. Consider these 2 titles:
- Huge selection of mobile phones
- Mobile phones
If the keyword is “mobile phones”, the first title has a density of 40% compared to the second which has a density of 100%.
SEO content writing is a specialised skill, and you often have to strike a balance between how far you optimise your content for search engines and how readable the content is. For static pages we would recommend using an SEO content writer or consultant, as this can make a big difference to your site traffic and conversions.
