Create and Optimize Quality Content
Interesting sites will increase their recognition on their own
Creating compelling and useful content will likely influence your website more than any of the other factors discussed here. Users know good content when they see it and will likely want to direct other users to it. This could be through blog posts, [tippy title=”social media services” reference=”” header=”on”]A community-type web service that promotes and supports forging connections among fellow users.[/tippy], email, forums, or other means. Organic or word-of-mouth buzz is what helps build your site’s reputation with both users and Google, and it rarely comes without quality content.
Anticipate differences in users’ understanding of your topic and offer unique, exclusive content
Think about the words that a user might search for to find a piece of your content. Users who know a lot about the topic might use different keywords in their search queries than someone who is new to the topic.
For example, a long-time baseball fan might search for “nlcs”, an acronym for the National League Championship Series, while a new fan might use a more general query like [baseball playoffs]. Anticipating these differences in search behavior and accounting for them while writing your content (using a good mix of keyword phrases) could produce positive results. [tippy title=”Google AdWords” reference=”” header=”on”]An advertising service which places relevant advertisements on search results pages and other content. When a user searches for keywords using Google, AdWords advertisements related to those keywords are displayed on the right, top and/or bottom of the search results pages alongside the organic search results.[/tippy] provides a handy Keyword Tool that helps you discover new keyword variations and see the approximate search volume for each keyword (Fig. 2).
Also, Google Webmaster Tools provides you with the top search queries your site appears for and the ones that led the most users to your site. Consider creating a new, useful service that no other site offers. You could also write an original piece of research, break an exciting news story, or leverage your unique user base. Other sites may lack the resources or expertise to do these things.
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Best Practices
[toggle title=”Write easy-to-read text” variation=””]
Ensure your content is well written and easy to follow, without sloppy text or spelling and grammatical mistakes. Avoid embedding text in images; user can not copy-and-paste the text and search engines can’t see it. If you have text as an image, make sure it has a descriptive Alt Tag .
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Organize the content so visitors understand where one content topic ends and another begins. Break the content into logical chunks or divisions to help users find what they are looking for faster. Do not dump large amounts of text on varying topics onto a page without paragraph, subheading, or layout separation.
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Try having new and useful content to keep visitors coming back and bring new visitors in. Do not copy (or even rehash) existing content that brings little extra value to users Avoid duplicate or near-duplicate versions of your content across your site.
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[toggle title=”Create content primarily for your users, not search engines=””]
For best results, design your site around your visitors’ needs while ensuring your site is easily accessible to search engines. Do not stuff keywords aimed at search engines while annoying or appearing nonsensical to users. Do not try to get traffic from misspellings by using blocks of text like “frequent misspellings used to reach this page” as this adds no value to users. Do not use any deceptive technique that hides from user text that you show to search engines.
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Tools
- Google AdWords Keyword Tool
- Google Webmaster Tools: Top search queries (offline http://www.google.com/webmasters/)
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