Monday, July 4, 2011

Blog Post Layout: Creating Searchable Website Content (Part 2)

A lot of people who don't understand the way web crawlers work to determine what a website or page is about will cram or stuff keywords all throughout a post or site and think that's gonna' do the job. 
But that isn't the real error. The real error is that they should know how human operate (themselves being amongst the human race) and what it would look like to the reader to see a keyword used 12 times inside of a 200 word blog post or article.  Welcome to the second installment of this series!


Blog or Article Title (H1 tags)  Keywords if possible but not forced

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I would say that titles of posts should be build in a way that grabs the attention of the reader and gets them involved in the post.  If you can use a keyword in the title, awesome; if you can't then don't force it

Headers (H2, H3 tags)  Use keywords or variations at the beginning of the headers-NATURALLY!


By using the appropriate tags in the HTML the subheadings will *BLAM!* at reader.  When they scan your post and see these headings with your keywords they will know that your post is gonna' give them something.  Don't disappoint them!

Primary keywords should be used at the beginning of a post.
Secondary keywords should be used once at the end of a post.
You can scatter other variations of your targeted words throughout the rest of the post but NATURALLY!

Example:             

Primary Keyword="Great Coffee"  ["Voted 'Great Coffee' by our customers!]
Secondary Keyword="Fresh coffee all day"   [ Fresh Coffee Served All Day]

Variations to be used="homemade coffee", "flavored coffee", "hot latte"," cappuccino"," iced     vanilla lattes"


Making your Images Relevant to your Site or Post


If you add an image of a steaming cup of coffee to your blog post and it is saved/titled as "image1.jpg" it isn't doing anything good.  Instead, try naming it "steaming_hot_coffee".  

Also, alt tags work great.  This is the description that people will see if they have images turned off on their browser.  Also, the web crawlers will identify with the relevancy of the content on the page.

Length of Blog Post


Usually the least amount of words necessary to convey the message is the right amount.   I think most people would agree that a post of between 400 and 600 words is ideal.  However, a QUALITY POST that shows enthusiasm and is valuable to the reader that is 300 or 900 words is more important!
That being said if you have an idea for a really long post, try breaking it up into to a series—like this one.

Value of  Content to the Reader


Quality first, SEO second.  Provide information and text that will make the readers lives easier, teach them something or entertain them.  They will return and read a blog post that has engages their interest, makes them laugh or teaches them something before they will return because you used appropriate key words.

Thanks for reading the second part of "Creating Searchable Website Content".  Our next installment will be on what to do now that you're blog post is live! 

Please tell me what you think about the series and add any great information that we could benefit from in the comments below!

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