Phase 3: Body Text and Modifiers
As the text of the webpage is important when it comes to making a site friendly for users, it is important to write using a natural and flowing style, making sure to include keywords and phrases (and their variations) in wherever and whenever it makes logical sense to a human visitor to the site.
Be sure your text is appealing and interesting and not just an exercise in trying to squeeze in as many keywords and phrases as possible. However, do consider that you might get a boost in the rankings by including primary search terms in the first paragraph.
Also consider that use of the modifiers discovered in Chapter 5 can be more important than the exact placement of keywords.
Phase 4: Content Creation
Many of you will discover when mapping out your keyword strategy is that there is not enough content on the site to support the use of all the keywords in your strategy. This suggests the obvious: more text is required for the site in order to effectively use your keyword strategy as developed in Chapter 5. This should also suggest to you that there is not enough content on the site for your site visitors.
Remember that it is important not to merely duplicate information using the same text over and over again, merely changing a few keywords and phrases. Whatever the search terms are you have decided to use on a particular page, write something original and not overly repetitive.
Level 1: The Home Page
While it is possible to get good rankings from your homepage without developing any text, you will have to pour a lot of time, energy and resources into building links. However, it is preferable to take the time to write some content for the home page.
Level 2: Category Pages
Even if these pages include items such as photos, links and forms be sure to include some original content. Otherwise you run the risk of the spiders looking at those pages as merely duplicate content and do not crawl them any further.
Level 3: Content (Destination) Pages
As many of these pages include ordering forms, or forms for placing reservations, etc. many believe there is not reason to include original content on these pages. However, this is a golden opportunity bring you additional traffic from search engines if you would only take the time to include some content, being sure to use appropriate search terms and when possible links with keyword rich anchor text.
Website User Generated Content
Website user generated content can include forums, reviews, comments, etc. and are great at creating a lot of fresh content for your site. This interactive element to the site is not only great for the interest level of site users, but can create a lot of keyword rich content.
Guidelines for Search Engine Friendly Design
Here are a few basic rules for creating web pages that are “search engine friendly”.
Frames
Search engine spiders do not like frames and you should avoid them.
Flash, QuickTime and other Plug-Ins
While search engines can now read and index websites using Flash, they cant really trust what they find in the sites since there is no way for them to determine what text exactly is visible to users of the site. Therefore, creating an entire website using Flash is not a good idea.
It is okay to use some Flash, QuickTime or other Plug-Ins but only do so selectively on your HTML pages.
JavaScript
While there has been some experimentation by search engines with reading JavaScript, it is best to assume it is invisible to them and it should be avoided for the most part, except when used sparingly on HTML pages.
HTML Validation
In most instances warnings should be ignored and errors corrected when running your code through an HTML validator.
Image Maps
Image maps can be useful in designing a page, but search engines to not follow them, so do not waste any time on them expecting them to navigate those maps. Also be aware that like with images, there is no way to include anchor text.
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