Creating Keyword Rich Pages
Creating Keyword Rich Pages
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?1176&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 Author Article
by Sumantra Roy. To have Sumantra's company place your site at the
top of the search engines, go to http://www.1stSearchRanking.com/t.cgi?1176
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