Creating
Keyword Rich Pages
Teacher:
Sumantra Roy
Once you have established the
keywords for which you should optimize your site for the search
engines, it is time to figure out how you can get a high ranking in
the search engines for those keywords. The solution is to create
Keyword Rich Pages (KRPs) - pages which provide good content and in
which a particular keyword is repeated a number of times so that the
page gets a top ranking for that keyword.
This article is focused on how you
should create these KRPs. I am assuming you have a working knowledge
of the different HTML tags like the Title tag, the Meta Description
tag, the Meta Keywords tag, the Heading tags, the Alt Tag etc. If you
don't, just go to http://www.utoronto.ca/webdocs/HTMLdocs/NewHTML/htmlindex.html
for a good introduction to such HTML tags.
Now, let us assume that your
company sells packaged tours to Australia, and that you are targeting
the keyword "travel to australia". Here's how you create the
KRPs:
The Title Tag:
The first and most important tag to
consider is the Title tag. You should always begin the Title tag with
the keyword that you are targeting. Also remember that the search
engines are going to display the Title tag while they are displaying
the results of a search. Hence, you need to make the Title tag
attractive to humans as well.
Here is one Title tag that I may
have used: "Travel to Australia and discover its scenic beauty". Have
a look at the Title tag - it uses the keyword right at the beginning
and also tells people how beautiful a place Australia is.
Of course, all Titles need not be
like the one I used. The Title that you use depends on the subject
matter of your site. However, you should follow all the general rules
that I have outlined here.
Meta Description Tag:
The Meta Description tag is used by
many search engines to provide a short description of the page that
is listed in the search results. Hence, like the Title tag, it is
important that the Meta Description tag be keyword rich as well as
attractive to humans.
The rules for the Meta Description
are more or less the same as those for the Title tag. However, the
content of this tag will generally be longer than that of the Title.
Here's what I may have used in the Meta Description tag:
"Travel to Australia - We take care
of all the details of your trip so that you can travel with complete
peace of mind."
Note how this description repeats
the keyword and also the benefit that it stresses - it says that the
customer will be able to travel without having to worry about the
intricate details of the trip - you will take care of
them.
Meta Keywords Tag:
The Meta Keywords tag has become
less and less important as far as search engine optimization is
concerned. In fact, you can get top rankings without having anything
in the Meta Keywords tag at all. However, just to be on the safe
side, you would want to include some keywords in the Meta Keywords
tag. You should also include some of the common upper/lower case
variations of the keyword. The rules for the Meta Keywords tag are
pretty simple - don't repeat any keyword in the Meta Keywords tag
more than three times and don't repeat any keyword one after the
other. Here's what I may have used in the Meta Keywords
tag:
"Travel to Australia, tourism,
travel to Australia, Down Under, TRAVEL TO AUSTRALIA"
Note how I have introduced
"tourism" and "Down Under" just to separate the different instances
of the keyword.
Body of the page:
Now we come to the actual body of
the page. Begin by getting hold of a nice (but not too large) picture
which is applicable for the page that you are creating. In the
present case, I might include a picture of the lotus shaped Sydney
Opera House. Place this picture at the top of the page. In the Alt
tag for the picture, just mention your target keyword once, i.e. the
Alt tag would be "Travel to Australia". You can include other words
in the Alt tag, but it should start with the keyword you are
targeting.
Once you've put up the picture, it
is time to create a Heading for your page. Use the H1 tag to do so.
Again, in the H1 tag, mention your target keyword once, i.e. like the
Alt tag for the picture, the H1 tag could be "Travel to Australia".
Again, like the Alt tag, you can include other words in the heading,
but the heading should start with the keyword you are
targeting.
Now it's time to create the actual
text of the page. The way you create the text of your page would
depend largely on what you want the visitor to do after reading this
page. In some cases, you may simply want the visitor to go to the
home page or another specific page in your site after reading this
page. In this case, you should write the text in such a way that the
visitor is attracted to the page that you are targeting. You would
also want to provide links to the home page or the specific page that
you are targeting at strategic places in the KRP. Or, you may want
the visitor to click on the link to an affiliate program that you are
a member of. In this case, you would stress the benefits that the
visitor gets by purchasing the product or service that the affiliate
program is selling. You would also want to provide links to the
affiliate program at strategic places in the page and/or at the end
of the page. Whatever it is that you want your page to do, there are
some general rules to follow:
1) The first thing to remember is
that some search engines don't recognize the Meta Description tag.
These search engines will often simply take the first few lines of
text in the body of your page and display that as the description.
Hence, you must ensure that the first few lines of text in your page
are attractive to human beings.
2) Ensure that as many sentences as
possible in the page contain your target keyword once. The keyword
shouldn't just be placed on an ad hoc basis - the way the keyword is
placed in every sentence should actually make grammatical sense and
the repetition should be such that your human visitors do not feel
that you have deliberately repeated a particular phrase throughout
the page. This is not only important from the point of view of
ensuring that your readers don't get a bad impression of your site,
but also from the point of view of search engine optimization - the
search engines may penalize your page for spamming if they find that
you have randomly repeated the keyword throughout the page. Also,
while repeating the keyword in the page, try to repeat the keyword
once near the top of the page and once near the bottom.
3) Make sure that your paragraphs
are not too long - each paragraph should be no more than 3 or 4
sentences long. This is because people on the web simply don't have
the time or the inclination to read long paragraphs.
4) Try to ensure that the page
contains links to other pages with the keyword being present in the
text under the link. This can often lead to a higher ranking for your
page.
5) If possible, link to other pages
which have the keyword in the file names. This can again lead to a
higher ranking for your page.
6) There is no hard and fast rule
regarding the total number of words that should be present in the
KRPs. As a rule of thumb, try to ensure that there are between
500-600 words. However, if the number of words falls a bit short of
or exceeds this limit, don't worry too much.
Once you have created the page,
ensure that the name of the file in which it is saved contains the
keyword and that the individual words of the keyword are separated by
hyphens. In this case, the name of the file would be
travel-to-australia.html. This will get you a higher ranking in the
few search engines which give a lot of emphasis on the keyword being
present in the file name.
Now that you have created the KRP,
you cannot simply upload it to your site and submit it to the search
engines. This is because the search engines take a rather dim view of
pages which only contain outgoing links to other pages but do not
contain any incoming links from other pages. The search engines may
penalize sites which have such pages.
What you should do is to provide a
link to these KRPs from the home page of your site. Now, you don't
want people who are seeing the home page to actually follow these
links to the KRPs - you only want the search engines to follow these
links. However, you can't create links with hidden text (i.e. text
with the same color as the background color) in your page since the
search engines will almost certainly penalize or even ban you for
doing this.
What you should do is to create a
small transparent gif image. Then, name this image with the same file
name as the name of the KRP you have created. Hence, in this case,
you should name the image travel-to-australia.gif. Then, add this
image to the end of the home page and have it link to the KRP. Also,
you should explicitly set the border of the image to 0 (add border =
"0" to the img tag of the image). Otherwise, when you get the image
to link to the KRP, a border may be visible. In case you don't want
to create your own image, I have created a sample transparent gif
image for you - you can get it from http://www.1stSearchRanking.com/download.htm
That's it! When you want to target
another keyword, create another KRP for it, make a copy of the image
that you created for the first keyword, rename it to the file name of
the new KRP, add the image to the home page and then link it to the
new KRP. Repeat this process for every keyword that you are
targeting. Once you have created all the KRPs and once you have got
the home page to link to each of them, upload all the KRPs and the
gif images to your site, and submit your home page and each of the
KRPs to the search engines. When you are submitting these pages, to
be on the safe side, make sure that you submit no more than 1 page
per day to any search engine - otherwise, you run the risk of some
search engines ignoring some of the pages you have
submitted.
Follow all the rules that I have
outlined in this article and you can soon see your search engine
blues disappear for ever!
About the teacher:
Sumantra is one of the
most respected search engine positioning specialists on the Internet.
To have Sumantra's company place your site at the top of the search
engines, go to http://www.1stSearchRanking.com/
For more advice on how you can take your web site to the top of the
search engines, subscribe to his FREE newsletter by going to
http://www.1stSearchRanking.com/newsletter.htm |
