How To Improve Your Site Design With User-Friendly SEO Copy
As a website owner there are two main things you want for your website: traffic and visitors. You can have the most beautifully designed website but without some good SEO-copy to support the design, search engines and consequently, people will not find you.
In this post, we’ll explain some basics of SEO and then list out 5 tips that you can use in order to improve your site’s content in order boost rankings and make your site even more visually appealing. So let’s start with the basics and then get into some more high-level concepts.
SEO 101
Search engine optimization (SEO) is the methodology that website owners use to bring their websites more traffic. Every website that is returned in a search engine result is there because of an algorithmic reason.
A search engine looks at various characteristics associated with a website or web page and ranks it. Two key ranking factors search engines use to position websites and web pages are keywords and links (or backlinks).
Search engines use backlinks to judge the popularity of different websites. In the old days of the web, the website that had the most backlinks associated with a given keyword won a top ranking for that keyword. Websites with fewer backlinks were given a lower ranking. Nowadays, quality and relevancy of backlinks as well as quality and relevancy of content are far more important than quantity of keywords which is why “Content is king”.
Making SEO content user-friendly and properly writing content for SEO purposes is about making the content look natural. SEO consists of a variety of techniques, some of them are considered to be ethical (white hat SEO) and some unethical (blackhat SEO). An example of an unethical technique is called keyword stuffing. Just as a anti-spam email security solution defends your inbox from being clogged by unwanted spam, Google now punishes sites that stuff lots of targeted keywords into poor content.
In order to help you create high-quality user-friendly copy here are 5 tips to keep in mind:
Content Length
To walk the fine line between search-ability and usability, length is a key element. This factor will vary depending on the type of website being optimized. In all cases, the minimum word count for any single block of text is 250 words. Note that this is the minimum word count.
Generally, the more words, the better. Longer content pieces tend to get ranked more often and higher than shorter pieces. In some cases, long content pieces push interactive features like categories “below the fold,” that is, below the area that can be seen without scrolling downward. For usability purposes, these categories must stay above the fold, and in this situation, content should be kept short.
Paragraph Size
250 words may be the minimum, but they must be organized into sentences and paragraphs. On the Internet, people like to read things quickly. Long paragraphs that are not broken up into sections are not read. A common phrase on the Internet is “too long, didn’t read.” The rule is no more than three to four lines per paragraph, which usually comes to two sentences. Sometimes a paragraph needs more than this, but keeping them within three to four lines greatly enhances readability. In dire straits, five lines is the absolute maximum.
Headers
Headers are short phrases that separate different sections of text. Headers help to structure the content and give it flow. Creating sections in the content by using HTML header tags makes it easier to read. Users can apply themselves to smaller portions of text. More importantly, headers can tell search engines that multiple keywords are being used in the same piece. This may result in each section being ranked higher for the different keywords.
Keyword Density
This is a critical part of SEO. Keyword density is a measure of how often a given keyword appears within the content. This metric is the difference between legitimately using a keyword and engaging in keyword stuffing. Keyword density can be expressed quantitatively as a percentage rate. The conventional wisdom on this score says that the keyword density of any given keyword should be between 2 and 5 percent. Unfortunately, even a 3 percent keyword density may seem strange to readers. It makes the content seem robotic and unnatural. To solve this impasse, use HTML devices called header tags to insert extra keywords into the piece.
Bullet Lists
A bullet list is an excellent way to compromise between searchability and readability. Bullet lists can be used to insert extra keywords without making the keyword density seem odd. These lists are usually found at the beginning of the content. Each list must have two or three sentences immediately before and after the list.
Use these 5 tips and your content will be driving in all kinds of new traffic with your new and improved site.
