Tag Archives: search

What exactly is good content?

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In SEO, there are a lot of opinions flying around. Theories on keyword density, where to get links, duplicate content, reciprocal linking – all pretty much designed to give you one big headache! However, in SEO, there’s always one thing that’s agreed universally by everyone in the industry…. Content is king!

When I started in the industry, I didn’t understand what it meant. People like to run around saying content is king, but not explaining what it meant. I’m here to give you my outlook on what it means.

You can design and code the most SEO friendly website ever built. Every page title and headline is rich with well researched keywords. You can go out there and get the best links from international websites, even ones that have a pagerank of 10. You can even shine the URL in a light above the city you live in like the Batman sign.

No matter how much you promote this amazing website, there’s just one thing wrong… the content.

Content can mean many things. If you’ve got a good and unique writing style, it could just be a blog post. If you’re creative with photoshop, it could be an infographic. If you’re good at analysing data, produce a graph. If you’re describing a place, take some amazing photos. There’s so many platforms out there for you to turn your information into great content in order for visitors to not only stay on your site, but to link to you and keep coming back.

It’s been proven that most people on the internet don’t have much time. So to make their day a little bit easier, create something that they can digest a little bit easier. A good infographic or funny video grabs the attention much better than a huge paragraph with long words that you can’t even spell! (I realise this content is only words, but in the form of a tutorial, sometimes it’s essential).

I’ve included a couple of links to a great link building infographic as well as a video tutorial on SEO. The only reason I’ve linked to them is because they’re great content. If you can come up with excellent content, there’s a chance of having someone like me linking to you!

5 Free SEO Tools

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Running an SEO campaign can be time consuming. Luckily, there are so many tools out there, both paid and free, that allows you to speed up some of the processes. Here’s a small list of some of the tools I’ve used in the past, but if you want to find more, just have a search in Google.

Google Adwords Keyword Tool

Use this to find out how many people are searching for specific search terms. It’s not 100% accurate, but it can give you a rough idea of searches and competition.

Google Analytics

If you don’t use this for your site already, you have to start! It’s a great way of measuring your traffic. Not only can you measure traffic, but you can see where it’s coming from, along with so many great features.

Google Webmaster Tools

I know I’m using Google a bit much, but they really have some excellent things available for you. Webmaster tools allows you to check the sites that are linking to you, as well as telling you if any of the incoming links don’t work.

Open Site Explorer

Allows you to check your competitors back links (as well as your own). There is a paid for version but the free one allows you to pick out some good link opportunities.

Rank Checker

If you’re in the middle of an SEO campaign, you’re going to want to check your rankings! Rank Checker lets you look up your search rankings without doing it manually, which can be really time consuming. It also produces a report so you can see where you’re improving and where you’re not.

How to use keywords on your site

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Following on from the keyword research post, now I’m going to talk about how you should use your keywords on your page.

I’ve dealt with clients who have been mistaken over what is meant by keyword density. I had a client who wanted to rank for the term ‘self catering’. They once sent me an article to have a look at before they put it on their site. For a 1000 word article, the term self catering was used over 100 times. This is way too much, and didn’t look natural. I’ll go through the ways in which you include your keywords as well as having natural looking content.

First of all, you should have compiled a list of keywords you want your site to rank for. Now you’ve got your list, each page should target different keywords.

Whenever you create a new page, choose 2-3 keywords on the list that are most relevant to the page you’re about to create.

Now you’ve decided which keywords you want to rank for, here are the places you should be using them.

Page title – Try to include at least one keyword (usually the most important one) as the search engines see this as the most important ranking factor.

Heading tags (H1, H2) – Also try including as many keywords as you can in these heading tags.

Images – Use alt text and picture descriptions.

Main content – It’s important to get this right, as keyword stuffing (including the selected keyword too many times) is seen as spam by the main search engines.

If you have a look on the internet, you’ll see hundreds of articles that talk about keyword density (percentage of keyword use) and use 5%, 7% and 10% as ideal figures for how often your keywords are used. I disagree with exact numbers, and just think you should write your content as naturally as possible. At the end of an article, I go back, and if I feel my keywords are underused, I’ll add one or two in, or if I think they’re overused, I’ll take some out. This hardly ever happens, though, as I usually have a percentage of between 3% and 5%, which is fine.

Please be aware that if you’re writing good content and using your keywords correctly, the chances are, you’ll start ranking for less competitive long tail keywords (four to five words), which can be great for targeted traffic.

What is keyword research?

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If you know anything about the SEO industry, you’ll know that a keyword is the term we enter into the search engine when we’re looking for something. Although it’s called a keyword, the term can include multiple words.

Any credible SEO campaign has to begin with some keyword research. The most exhausting thing about dealing with some clients is when they want to rank first for an obscure term, and I’m trying to tell them that there are approximately 0 searches for said term. In order to prove this to clients, I use something called the Google Adwords Keyword Tool.

The tool is free, and it gives you a good idea of monthly and annual searches for certain terms, as well as the competition for them. Although it only shows the Google Adwords (paid search) competition, it’s usually very similar with regards to organic search.

The keyword tool is really simple to use. All you have to do is enter the search term (or terms, as multiple searches can be performed at once) and wait for the results. You’re able to choose which country the searches are performed that you’re looking for.

There are three columns of results – competition, local monthly searches and global monthly searches. Competition is a green power bar. The fuller the bar, the more competition there is for the search term in Google Adwords. Local monthly searches indicates how many searches there are for the term in the country you’ve selected, and global monthly searches is how many searches there have been worldwide.

You’re now able to download these results (either all or selected) into an Excel spreadsheet.

You can now use these results to analyse which search terms would be more effective for your SEO campaign.