Creating
Keyword Rich Pages
By 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/t.cgi?1135&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!
Article by Sumantra Roy. 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/t.cgi?1135
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/t.cgi?1135&newsletter.htm
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