Page Content

Your page content is by far the most important factor in providing what a searcher is seeking, and certainly an important factor for a search engine like Google.

This particularly applies to any page that are hoping will appear on first page of the search engines.

1. Choosing a Search Term.
 

• Decide on the search term that is going to be the source of visitors to the page, e.g. "big blue balloons".

• This is referred to as your keyword or keyword phrase, or search term.

• In Sept 2004 a Google systems engineer stated that 50% of the 200 million search terms each day, were unique in that nobody had searched for that phrase before. A remarkable fact. Use your imagination when choosing your search terms.

• Remember that each page is a distinct information site for search engines, and that you should only really aim for one search term per page.

2. Page Title.

• If you are a manufacturer of "big blue ballons", you might decide that the page title should be "Big Blue Balloons For Sale".

• However, if your chosen keyword phrase, and the part you play in that keyword phrase, is not clear, it is worthwhile giving considerable thought to the words to be used.

3. Page Heading.

• Start the page content with a heading that contains the search term. Not only is this of obvious value to a visitor, who is not yet sure that your page contains what they are seeking, but also for Google.

4. Page Content.

• Write the page with lots of interesting information, but don´t stuff the page with keywords.

5. Page Size.

• Keep your home page down to the absolute minimum in size. Definitely under 30k. 15k is better. Bear in mind that some visitors will still be on dial-up. We have come across a page of 800k. which could take over 3 minutes to load.
  Remember that Google only indexes the first 101k of a page.
  We have declined clients with an existing site, on which the page to be SEO'd was over 150k.

6. Importance of a Site Map.

• If you have a complex site, it makes sense to give visitors a site map.

• Regardless of the complexity of your site, you are advised to provide a site map for Google. If it´s good enough for Google, it´s good enough for the likes of you and me. Check out the Google site map system as well.....Google Tools 

7. "I have tried all that, and am still nowhere to be found".

• The Google algorithm is said to have over 100 factors, of which page content and links from other quality same theme pages are the most important. The mathematics involved is fairly mind blowing for all but serious mathematicians.

8. Latent Symantic Indexing.

Provide the visitor with the information they are seeking. If you page is about cooking, the text should contain details of the many points that a cook would expect to see. Use Roget´s Thesaurus or subscribe to WordTracker to find a variety of words that are used in your theme.

The work to produce the ideal page for Google is referred to as on page search engine optimisation. In March 2003, we abondoned the idea of spending any time on this, other than LSI. These on page factors can be beaten by the off page factors for Google described in links. Without links from good quality pages, your page will have difficulty in being highly ranked for a competitive search term.

CAUTIONARY NOTE: Make sure that you understand the Google philosophy on the tricks that some webmasters use to try to cheat, and that can result in being banned by Google.

ADVISORY NOTE: Read carefully the Google Webmaster guidelines.