Content Search Engine Optimization (SEO)
On-page content is the most important part of your web site. Sure, Google relies heavily on incoming links to rank well, but ultimately it will be your web site content that makes or breaks your business on the Web. Content should be written for your visitors or customers, not search engines. That said, keep in mind Yahoo! and MSN rely more on the relevancy of your content when ranking websites than Google does. Your keywords should be well researched and used in prominent areas of the page text such as in headings (h1, h2, h3, etc.), bold statements, near the start of paragraphs, in anchor text, and in the page title. NEVER stuff keywords or hide them in text the same color as the background. This can lead to being banned outright by search engines.
Q: What's the deal with keyword density? Is there an optimal percentage I need in my content?
A: The myth about keyword density has been around for a long time. Do any old search on Google and plug the top sites into a keyword density tool. You will see a large fluctuation in percentage between all the sites there - shouldn't that answer the question? There are hundreds of factors that go into Google's algorithm - search engine optimization is not as simple as finding a "magic" number and inserting keywords to adhere to that. Naturally written text for your visitors is the rule of thumb. If you walked into a store to buy a blue shirt and every second sentence out of the salesman's mouth was "blue shirt this", "blue shirt that", wouldn't that get annoying? Same goes for selling on the Internet. If it's obvious you're referring to your main product or service, do not repeat it over and over.
Q: I hear meta tags are obsolete. Should I even use them anymore?
A: In some cases, the description of a web site in the SERPs (search engine result pages) will be taken from the description meta tag. But it's doubtful any search engine is weighing content from the description tag heavily to calculate rankings. The keyword meta tag is obsolete with Google, but Yahoo! appears to still look at it. The bottom line: it's OK to include them, but meta tags should not be the most-important part of on-page SEO.
Any company that tries to tell you any other meta tags are important is lying. The only tags that serve a purpose are those required by Google Sitemaps, Yahoo Site Explorer or MSN's Webmaster control panel for authentication. In some other cases, a directory might require you to add a special tag to confirm that you are the owner of the web site with direct access to the server.
Revisit, robots, author, or other meta tags do not serve a purpose.
Q: But what about the title meta tag?
A: There is no title meta tag. Let's stop perpetuating this misinformation right here and now. The title tag is a tag unique unto itself. It got confused with meta tags somewhere along the way since they both go in the <head> portion of a web document. That's the only thing they share.
Q: Ok, then how important is the title tag?
A: Very important! We've seen jumps of full pages or more in the SERP's due to inserting a keyword once to the title tag of a page. The title tag is very powerful for search engine optimization. There is no magic number of keywords to use in the tag, but just make sure that the tag accurately describes the content of that particular page. It does no good to include your business name or a generic tag line across all your pages' title tag.
It's also helpful to keep in mind that the title tag will be the title of your listing in the major search engines. It's what customers are going to see first when finding you on the search engines.
Q: Should I make sure my HTML passes W3C validation?
A: The W3C validator can help ensure your site is free of errors that could prevent search engine robots from crawling your content, as well as making sure your content is properly displayed in the user's browser. In terms of markup directly affecting search engine rankings, there is no truth to this. 9 out of 10 web sites on the Web today don't pass validation, so there's no sense in penalizing almost every site out there.
Q: If I update my site every day will my rankings go up?
A: To say that this is the case across the board is a common misconception. There are millions of web pages several years old that maintain very high rankings. It just depends on what people are searching for. If your search query is about the recent troubles of a celebrity (ie. Michael Jackson court appearance) then daily news sites will have the most relevant information. The Wikipedia entry on MJ's appearance will rank high simply because it relates to the search term. There can frequently be a mix of fresh content and stale content in search results.
For visitor purposes, it might help to have a "last date modified" notation somewhere on a web page if it's important for them to know content is updated frequently.
Q: Should I copy content from around the Web to beef up my own site's content?
A: While this can likely result in copyright infringement, the other downside is that if it isn't unique content it will rarely help your own site's search engine standing. Chances are that the existing web page with the content will be deemed more valuable by search engines since it's been around longer than yours and likely has incoming links and popularity already. Search engines generally don't like duplicate content and will elect to simply not list what they deem the "less important" version.
It's always a good idea to write your own unique content! Hire a professional copy writer if you like, or write something yourself. Just keep it on topic and make sure you spell check. Writing your own content, or keeping a blog, can also result in developing a positive reputation within your industry and in the eyes of your customers.