Ten Top Searchengine Optimization Tips

Picking the right keyword phrases, it is said, is the Holy Grail of the success of your website. It is your keyword phrases that drive your search engine positioning for the people who search for and answers to their needs. Your keyword phrases also drive your content and links, as well as your viral marketing. If those keyword phrases are the Holy Grail, then content and links are the king and queen. Even with viral marketing, your aim is to drive people to your web site with those phrases. Once they get to your web site, it is within the web site that you use your content to take your customer from those keyword phrases all the way to the action step.

Here are some basic steps for making that content work:

As a general rule, in site design, your keyword phrases should be problem to solution. People search on the problem, not the solution. Spin your content from these problem-oriented keyword phrases.
Structure your web site so that your web site is in categories and even subcategories, and then use the proper keyword phrases for the entrance page of each category and subcategory. For example, if the web site is for a pet store, your primary categories might be dogs, cats, fish, birds, and so on. And then, for each category you support, have subcategories. Under each subcategories use separate pages with keyword phrases based problem to solution: choosing the right food, choosing the right toy, should I declaw my cat, and more.
You should have about 400-500 or more of words of text content on a page.
Images, video, Flash, and JavaScript do not drive the search engines. Use these to draw the user, but remember to keep plenty of text on the page. Use ALT tags and CSS wherever possible to drive search engines.
Know your audience. What is their social-economic profile? Use the vocabulary of the people you are trying to reach, target your message to the audience and their needs. Target for your audience, not the search engines.
Write to draw an emotional response from your audience.
Optimize each page for the search engines but keep your user as the primary target.
Use a variety of content to enhance the user experience: FAQs, tutorials, video, pointers to offline resources. Try to engage the user in an interactive process: polls, games, blog comments, and more.
Use stories, stories, stories. If you are selling widgets, have people give their testimonies (stories) on how the widget solved their problem.
Subdivide your page with headings and use related keyword phrases in the headings.
Remember to give that call to action. Often I see great content on a web site only to find they never ask me to do anything.

Improved search engine positioning

Creating Content that Works