The other day, I wrote about the basics in driving content to your web site. I mentioned that you should be optimizing your site – particularly your content and the code around your content – to help increase your rankings in Google and other search engines. You could get obsessed with creating only content that is relevant today, right now – but then you wouldn’t necessarily have a focused or niche web site. Or you can follow these little tips whenever you have an article idea or when adding a new product to your web site.
Is the title relevant to Google?
What if I named this article something like: “Things You Should Know About” or some other generic name? Google would have no clue, other than the content in the article itself, that this article is relevant to SEO. If you like to have snappy titles (albeit my example wasn’t that snappy), then consider installing an SEO plug-in or module to your content management system. Ensure that your title and url is relevant to people who are searching for you.
Run a search through Google Adwords Tool
Whenever I write an article, I take a look in the Google Ad Words Tool. I think about what search terms someone might enter to potentially find my article. Sometimes this effort doesn’t take much. On VancouverMom.ca, I frequently write profiles on stores. So it’s been easy for me to dominate search terms on stores and products that are searched by people living in the Vancouver area. Search for Lusso Baby, for example, and I’m currently the number one result in Google (at least to users living in Vancouver anyway). Other more generic articles – like guides and how-to content – might require some finessing, which brings me to my last point.
Pepper your articles with the words that people are searching for
Today on VancouverMom.ca, I published an article on Child’s Own Studio, the company of a mom who makes custom soft toys based upon your child’s drawings. While putting the finishing touches on the article, I went to the Google Adwords Tool and found that certain search terms around “customer stuffed toys” are searched more than others. “Custom soft toys” produced not enough local data. But other terms produced higher results, so I simply changed it in the article to be “custom toy softie” or “custom stuffed animal”. When you employ this technique, however, you can use it at the risk of making the writing seem article. Be creative and use your discretion.
These simple techniques can help improve your success at ranking better in Google. Good luck!
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Some good points here Christine! For keywords research I would also recommend a free tool from SEO book – http://tools.seobook.com/keyword-tools/seobook/
Cheers, Helen