5 things you can do to improve your content for visitors AND search engines

Writing content that is good both website visitors and search engines is not difficult if you follow a few simple rules. By following these rules, you can make sure that your web pages will get high rankings on search engines, and you can make sure that website visitors will like your pages. Here are five things that you can do:

how to improve your web pages

Before you start: it’s about topics, not about single keywords

Modern search engines focus on topics, not on single keywords. If you want to get high rankings for a particular keyword, you must make sure that your whole website is relevant to the topic of that keyword.

It is not necessary to use every possible variation of a single keyword on your web page (for example ‘cheap travel insurance’, ‘cheapest travel insurance’, ‘cheap travel insurances’, etc.). Overusing your keyword that way can even have a negative influence on the rankings of the page.

It is much more important that the content of your website is related to a particular topic. In this example, your different web pages should be related to ‘cheap travel insurance’, ‘traveling’, ‘do I need a travel insurance’, etc.

The more pages your website has that are relevant to a particular topic (and the keywords that are related to that topic), the more likely it is that your web pages will get high rankings for individual search terms and keywords that are related to that topic. In other words, optimize different pages of your website for different search terms and keywords that are all related to the main topic of your website.

1. Include the keyword in the title and in a header tag

The web page title and header tags a strong indicators of the topic of a web page. If your keyword is included in the title of the page shows Google that you think that the keyword is relevant to the content of the page.

In addition, headings on your web page can help you to structure your web page. If you include your keyword in an H1 tag, H2 tag, or another heading tag, you confirm that the page is relevant to that term. In addition, web page visitors can easily see what the web page is about.

It is very important that you do not overdo this! Google likes web pages with a clear structure that are easy to parse. If you use a keyword in five different header tags on your web page, chances are that this will be seen as a spamming attempt. If you must use more than one heading tag (which can make sense in very long documents), use them in the right order (i.e. H1, H2, H3, not H3, H1, H2).

Adding your keyword to the title and a heading tag does not mean that Google will also find the web page relevant to that keyword. It is a good and necessary start, but you have to do some other things to convince Google that the page is relevant.

2. Use your the keyword and related terms in the main content

The main content of your web page also should contain your keyword and terms that are related to that keyword. Again, it is a bad idea to overuse the keyword in the content. Do not repeat the keyword over and over. That is called keyword-stuffing and it will have a negative influence on your rankings.

Write naturally about the topic and focus on the reader. At the end of the day, it’s the visitors who will buy from your website, not search engines.

3. Use a clear web page structure

As said above, Google likes web pages with a clear structure. Website visitors also like web pages that have a clear structure.

The easier it is to parse your content, the better.

Use headings, numbers, bullet lists and other elements that make it easier to parse your web page. The main message of your web page should be clear at first glance.

4. Don’t forget alt tags and meta data

It usually makes sense to include images in your content. If you do so, make sure that the img alt attributes of these images clearly describe what you see in the image. Ideally, these descriptions contain the targeted keywords.

Only include the targeted keywords if they apply to the description of the image. Google is quite good at interpreting the actual content of images.

The meta description of your web page is also important. Although the meta description of your web page is not shown for all keywords on the search results page of Google and other search engines, it can still help you to get the click.

Write a compelling meta description that shows searchers that your web page contains what the searcher is searching for. Web pages with good descriptions get more clicks on the result pages than pages that do not contain descriptions that are related to the search query.

5. Structured data can help

Have I mentioned that Google likes clearly structured web pages? In addition to a clearly structured web page, structured data markup code can help Google understand and rank your web pages better.

While it is not necessary to include structured data markup code on your web pages, they can make a difference for some pages. In addition, web pages with structured data sometimes get prettier snippets on Google’s search results pages. The Rich Snippet Creator tool in SEOprofiler helps you to create structured data code for your website.

Do not use structured data code that is not related to the page in the HTML code of that page. That will lead to problems. Only use structured data code when appropriate.

How to optimize your pages as efficiently as possible

In addition to the things above, there are many other things that influence the position of a web page in Google’s search results. For some search terms, there is a strong correlation between using the keyword in the URL. For other search terms, there isn’t such a correlation.

optimize your web page

The Top 10 Optimizer tool in SEOprofiler checks your web page for all of these factors. If you should include the keyword in the URL of your web page, the Top 10 Optimizer will tell you to do so. If it is better not to do that, the Top 10 Optimizer will tell you to remove the keyword. This is done for all factors that influence the position of your web page.

The Top 10 Optimizer in SEOprofiler is a sophisticated tool that helps you to get concrete advice for your web pages and your keywords. The Top 10 Optimizer considers your individual case and you get tailored advice. If you haven’t done it yet, try SEOprofiler now:

Try SEOprofiler now

Tom Cassy

Tom Cassy is the CEO of SEOprofiler. He blogs about search engine optimization and website marketing topics at “http://blog.seoprofiler.com”.