It is only natural that webmasters continuously crave higher

search engine rankings. After all, the closer your site is to

the first entry in the search engine results page, the more

chance you have of bringing more traffic to your website.

 

The choice between proper website content composition and

keyword saturation is a continuing dilemma that many web masters

and internet marketers continue to mull over. Should the page of

the site be designed specifically to enhance search engine

results ratings or should the site’s pages contain proper and

relevant content with regards to its existing purpose?

 

To be given a high search result ranking, the website must

contain relevant information or content. This means that you

can’t just jumble keywords together in a haphazard manner. You

need to have quality content written down to describe your

website and its contents. The search engine examines your

website and all that it contains. The search engine will try to

figure out if the keywords contained in your web pages are

relevant to the user’s search parameters. For example, a user

searches for the word “bird”. The search engine finds two

websites with the word bird in it. The first website adds

descriptions and additional information about the word bird.

 

The second website has the word bird, but it also contains other

words like tiger, lion, zoo, seal all jumbled together in no

particular order. Armed with this information, the search engine

uses algorithms to determine which of the 2 sites has more

relevance to the user’s query. In this case, the first website

which has a descriptive article about “birds” is prioritized by

the search engine. In addition to being ranked higher by the

search engine, the user is directed to the first website and

finds exactly what he is looking for.

 

Already, you can see that there need not be a conflict between

search engine optimization and keyword placement.

 

You need to properly define your keywords in terms of

relevance. The criterion for keyword relevance is based on how

you think a searcher will write down his query. If he is looking

for a pair of shoes, will he use “size 9” or “black size 9” or

“Nike”? The best way to figure things out is to be a customer

yourself. Go to a search engine and search for a single specific

topic or product by using different words. Take note of the

search strings you use and how relevant they are to your target.

 

Say, you want to buy a CD of Eric Clapton so you are also

searching for a store to buy it from. Do you type in “buy Eric

Clapton” or is it “Eric Clapton CD”? As a searcher do you

have a specific album in mind? Are you searching for Eric

Clapton’s unplugged album? If so, how are you going to search

for it? As the keywords get more specific, the more relevance it

assumes. This is actually a trade-off. Keywords or phrases that

are specifically relevant to the topic at hand tend to bring in

the correct kind of web traffic that you are looking for.

 

However, because of their specificity, your website will only be

used as a search result if the user’s query specifically matches

your keywords.

 

Writing content is not as easy as jotting down a sentence or

two. Think of the search engine as an artificial intelligence

that needs to know everything. The more it can read, the better

it can judge the relevance of your content. That being said, a

lot of internet marketers write keyword, rich content articles

with a minimum of 400 words per article. To put it in simpler

terms, a search engine is slow to grasp the whole point.

 

To your success,

Murray

 

P.S. Having good content in your website is a blessing not only

for search engine optimization, but also for usefulness to the

person browsing your site. If you can make your site useful to

me, I will certainly return to your site to find out if I can

use something else again. People love useful and convenient

things; even people.