SEO: To Optimize or Not To Optimize

SEO: To Optimize or Not To Optimize

Every day it seems to be something new being offered via the many websites at our fingertips. Have you ever wondered though where all that content comes from? SEO and SEO marketing has become one of the biggest marketing techniques that have taken over how people promote their businesses and also how they earn income daily. This article will break down the many techniques to this intricate form of writing.

What is SEO and What Does it Mean?

SEO, which stands for search engine optimization, is a useful and priceless process of funneling organic traffic to your website by the many search engines like Bing, Yahoo, and Google being the most popular. The goal of SEO marketing is to outrank the competition. Simply put, for an SEO content writer or website owner the ultimate end result is that their website ranks number one on any search engine result. This process is also referred to as website optimization.

Ok, so what does that mean you ask. Let’s take for example you want to get some information on a certain dog breed. When you type your information into the search bar, your expectations are that you find the best information possible about that breed correct? Once that information is entered what happens next? You have a list of websites that populates to choose from right? So out of that list of let’s say five websites, which would you click on first?

If your answer is the first website on the list you are following along. Simply put, that is the goal of any SEO content writer, you want your website to rank number one amongst any search result. To do this though, there is a certain, you might say algorithm that you must follow in order to be noticed by these search engines before they will start to direct potential consumers to your website.

With that said, SEO marketing is very specific. You do not want just any traffic, you want to be certain that the traffic coming to your website is quality and organic traffic so let’s break down what that means.

Quality Traffic:

If people are not really interested in your services, or what your website is about then you will not hold the interest of that visitor. This can and will hurt your websites standing with Google and other search engines. Before traffic is directed to your site by Google, first they want to see that people are interested in your content and to do this, the analytics must show that people are spending time on your site. Plainly put, your mission is to attract genuine traffic to your website.

Organic Traffic:

Simply put, any traffic that is free is organic. This free traffic is possible by the SERP’s, or, “Search Engine Result Pages”. These are listings or the end result that the search engine yields when responding to a keyword search.

Keyword Research

As an SEO content writer, you can’t write good content if you do not know what consumers are searching. A keyword search is done by the consumer, keyword research is done by you, the SEO marketer. Keyword research is done by researching which keywords are being searched the most and by how many people. A popular platform that is used by many SEO professionals to find this information is Kwfinder.

Doing keyword research effectively also shows Google and other search engines that you understand SEO and how it works. This is another very important and necessary step to get that organic traffic that you want to your website. But before any Keyword research can yield positive data, there are some essential questions that you must ask to get the best results. Let’s use wine for example as a keyword search of a potential consumer to understand what questions you must ask to target your audience correctly through your SEO marketing.

  1. What type of wine is being searched the most?
  2. Where are the potential consumers located? The US? Internationally?
  3. What is the reason for the search? Are they looking for a new brand?
  4. When are the searches taking place the most? Fall? Christmas? Monthly?
  5. How are those potential consumers searching?
  • Are certain words being used?
  • Are certain questions being asked in the search? If so what are they?

Now that you know your consumer, you will be able to research that data and provide the best information to cover their needs. Therefore, if your SEO marketing outline is done correctly and there is enough keyword density in your content, Google may rank your website highly and pick your site to send that wine connoisseur to. This will ensure you more organic traffic, recognition of your website which in turn provides the potential for growth and also an extra income.

Keyword Density

Relevance is key and in the world of SEO content writing and SEO marketing relevancy is the only thing that matters. As we have learned, keyword searches are the bread and butter in SEO, so it is important that we incorporate these keywords in the content for the best website optimization.

Keyword density is described as the number of times a specific keyword appears on a webpage versus the total amount of words on that specific page. In regards to SEO, keyword density is a great tool to determine the relevancy of a webpage based on the keyword density.

A common mistake that is made by many is thinking that there is no limit to the number of keywords that can appear within a webpage. This is a huge mistake that could cause your site to be penalized by Google for what is called keyword stuffing. The rule to keep in mind is to keep your keyword density at 1-3 percent, anything over that is bad practice and could cause your site not to rank

Calculating Keyword Density

So how do we calculate this? It may sound complicated but it’s really simple and with tools like Yoast, it’s a piece of cake. First, you want to decide what percentage of keyword density you want for your webpage. Remember, keep this number between 1-3 percent. Let’s use the example of 2 percent keyword density for the keyword wine for a 500-word webpage article. The formula that you would use is 2 (percent) x 5 (number of keywords) =10 ÷ 500 (number of words in article ) = 0.02 x 100 = 2%

This formula will determine how many times you need to use that keyword without overusing it. So, for this example, we know that the keyword wine would need to be used at least 5 times to have a keyword density of 2 percent. Let’s say you wanted 3 percent for the same 500 words. The formula would be, 3×5=15÷500=0.03×100=3%

With that said, sometimes you may need to do a little math to determine how many words you need to keep it within the percentage you want, for example. For a 1000 page webpage article at 3% keyword density, let’s start with 15 keywords for this article… 15×3=45÷1000=0.045×100=4.5% So with this example we see that we are in danger of keyword stuffing. 15 keywords is a little too many so let’s back up to about 10 keywords for this article, 10×3=30÷1000=0.03×100=3%

In conclusion, figuring out the number of keywords needed to keep you within your 1-3% range is simple but may require some simple mathematical skills if you do not have the appropriate tools in place. However, for the best website optimization, this is an important rule to follow.


Important Tools For a Successful SEO Website

The point of website optimization is to get your website ranked the highest amongst the plentiful competition that is out there. An encouraging point with SEO though is, once you began to use your tools like Kwfinder, you will find out that there are many untouched or at the least, mildly touched niches or keywords. And If done right, you could actually have your own lane based on the keyword difficulty level or KD and rank pretty high with little or no competition.

There are certain ways that Google recognizes your site as more than just an amateur site, and as I stated earlier in this article, there is an algorithm that must be followed for Google to pick up on your trail. Now that you have keyword density down and how and why to use that, keyword research, as well as what SEO marketing is, now let’s look at a few more important factors needed to take your website to the next level.

Header Text

Think of headers as a hierarchy of topics intended to help guide your visitors throughout your site. Header text simplifies your web content for web crawlers to determine the relevancy of the content on your website. This format cannot be ignored in search engine optimization!

Header 1 or H1, is the top and most important header text when it comes to SEO and SEO content writers. We already know through keyword density how many keywords are needed in your content. The Header 1 text is certainly one place that you will want to place one of those keywords or keyword phrases. With that said, stay away from putting your keywords in every subheading. This may put your site at risk for keyword stuffing.

This Header is the web pages title, which is the first place Google and other search engines will look for all those important keywords. This, in turn, allows search engines to separate or put into categories the different content to the many users awaiting information. This is also the header that will pull people in, not only from the direct title but also from the large lettering.

H2-H6 Header Text

The H2 subheading is smaller in size in comparison to H1 and is used to sort things out. Simply put, H2 is used to break the content up in order to make readability better. The ultimate goal is to keep the visitor on your site, reading your content. To keep the attention of the reader, sentences and sections should be short and to the point.

When it comes to the H3-H6 headers, these are rarely used and much smaller in size. Even though these are the least important of the headers, they are still useful. These headers continue to keep order and break down content even further. For example, if the topic is a specific cat breed, let’s take a look at how each header could read to make the content easy to read and understand. We will also assume that from keyword research we know that Maine Coons is a hot topic along with the other topic listed below.

  • Header 1 (H1): Maine Coon Cat Breeds: What You Need To Know
  • H2: Is This The Largest Cat Breed
  • H3: Why Are They So Big
  • H4: Diet and Maines
  • H5: Is There A Danger In Dieting
  • H6: Limitations of Their Diet

As you can see from the above example, H1 is the topic of the webpage, Maine Coon Cats. Next, the hierarchy or the role of each subheading can be seen beginning with H2. The point is to feed off the other based on a similar topic. However, you will probably never get to H4-H6, rarely even H3, but there is a chance depending on the topic. Going back to the above example, H3-H6 fed off of the size of the cat, and the next header would go back to H2 with a new topic with let’s say, the temperament of the Maine Coon.

Backlinks

Backlinks or commonly called hyperlinks or inbound links in simple terms are votes that your website receive from other websites. What these votes do is talk to the different search engines letting them know that your content is not only valuable, but also useful and credible. You can look at backlinks as a citation. When speaking of SEO and SEO marketing, backlinks play an intricate part in website optimization.

Google evaluates backlinks to determine how important a page is so having great backlinks are important. Wikipedia is the goldmine for SEO content writers and is wonderful when it comes to SEO marketing. The reason is simple, Wikipedia is in the ranks of Facebook and Yahoo in terms of being authoritative platforms. Wikipedia is a trusted site for research and is widely used so Google loves this.

If you want your SEO score to soar your main objective should be to strive to get a backlink or a “vote” from an authoritative site such as Wikipedia so the next goal is to get them and other high profile sites to accept your link. Simply put, these authoritative platforms want to make sure that before they give you a good word they want to make sure that your site is worthy and that you know what you are doing in the field of SEO. How do you do this?

  • Knowledge: Make Sure Your Content Is Worthy To Link Back To. If You Are Not A Known Figure, Are You Using References and Quotes To Show Authority?
  • Research!: Make Sure That You Know What You Are Talking About and That Your Material Is Based On Facts.
  • Value: Does Your Content Add Value. Is It Worthy Of High Profile Sites To Take A Second Look At? Is The Content Helpful?
  • Quality: Is Your Formatting Correct? Does Your Site Contain Images? Are Your Headers Being Used Correctly? IS Sentence Structure and Grammar Near Perfect? Are You Professional?

Be absolutely clear! Wikipedia will check for changes made to the content of their own. They have their own on-site “quality control” you might say and are always reviewing content. If any of your links are rejected records are kept of not only the current link(s) but for future ones as well.

For a recap of what SEO is, and maybe to even hear some points that surely have been left out please hit play below!