You have two masters on the net. The first master is your reader. The second master is the search engine. Both are equally important. The first will come back if he likes what you write; the second will keep sending you traffic if you catch its attention.
The question is: how do you get into the good books of search engines? No one knows the right answers. However, over the years some understanding has happened as to how search engines rank web pages.
You too can take advantage of this learning by doing the following:
# Tip 1: Use concrete keywords:
Please make sure that you use proper nouns in:
Headlines
Body copy
Picture captions
Keywords, also known as tags, make indexing easier for the search engine. The search engine can decide whether the report is about Rahul Gandhi or Narendra Modi. The same is true of Rajasthan Royals. When used as a team name, all reports about Rajasthan Royals will be indexed together. However, if you try to be clever and write that Royals are all set to take on the challengers then the search engine will be confused. It will not know if the story is about royalty or about a cricket team.
# Tip 2: Select your keyword carefully
Your keyword will deliver results only if people search for it. For instance, Congress President Sonia Gandhi is popularly known by her first name. It is unlikely that people will search for her as Mrs Gandhi; you should therefore use Sonia or Sonia Gandhi as the keyword.
People also search for phrases. They may search for the best refrigerator or the cheapest airline or best tourist spots in India. When you write your copy, you must decide which phrase on the subject is likely to be searched most. Build your copy around that keyword or keyword phrase.
# Tip 3: Pay attention to keywords density
Don’t make the mistake of peppering your article with keywords. Search engines are suspicious of articles that are littered with keywords. The reverse too is true. If the keywords have not been used sufficiently the search engines may miss them completely. The keywords density in your article should range from 1 to 3 per cent.
# Tip 4: Create search snippet for each report
If you see the search page, you will notice that every listing has two elements. The first is the headline; and the second is a brief description of the article. The two together are called the Search Snippet. You must make sure that you write a brief description for the search engine. This should be around 140 characters, and must motivate the reader to click on the search listing. The search snippet must include the article keyword (s).
# Use keywords in the front
A good way to draw the attention of the search engines to the keywords is to use the keywords at the start. For instance, you can start your headline with the keyword; you can place the keyword in the first sentence of your first paragraph; you can insert the keyword at the top of your search snippet.
# Tip 5: Include keywords in the Page Title
The Page Title can be the same as the headline; or you can ask your programmers to create an option for a separate Page Title. In either case, your Page Title, whose length should be between 40 to 70 characters, must include the article keywords. The Page Title is the first element on the page that the search engine scans. You must make sure that it notices the keywords.
# Tip 6: Include keywords in the page url
A good practice is to tell your programmers to include the headline in the page url or the page address. When you do so, the keywords used in the headline automatically become a part of the page url.
# Tip 7: Include keywords in the alt tag
The photograph is always related to the story. If the story is about Nainital lake then the photograph too will be about the lake. You need to bring this point to the notice of the search engine spider by inserting the keywords Nainital lake in the alt tag.
# Tip 8: Outbound links
Outbound links reflect the confidence of the writers. They are like a signal that I-am-not-afraid-of-directing-my readers to related stories. Search engines appreciate such transparency and honesty. You will be rewarded if you guide readers to related stories through text or image hyperlinks.
Leave a Reply