Do Search Engines Like Your
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I thought writing web content would be easy
I've been a professional writer for 20 years. My writing has been good enough for movie audiences and magazine readers.
Surely, I thought, it'd be good enough for people cruising the internet.
And it was. But here's what I didn't realize. There's an internet audience just as important as your website's visitors.
The search engines.
Without the search engines, there's no cost-effective way to attract visitors.
Search Engines ==> Visitors
Most people set out on internet entrepreneurship operating blindly. After all, you can put up a site with barely any effort or expense.
Write some web content, wait for the visitors to come. Right?
Wrong. They don't come. Your site is out there, but no one finds it.
The first time I put up a site, that's exactly what happened.
So there are about a gazillion sites out there merely existing. After all, when you use a search engine to find something and it returns, oh, say 77 million pages...
How many of those pages do you check out? The first three? Maybe even the first thirteen?
Writing web content with search engines in mind
I hate the feeling of not knowing what I'm doing. Of being in the dark.
That's why I was so excited when I stumbled across the company I launched this website with.
It's the only webhosting company I know of that holds your hand through the writing process. And when you write web content for the 'net, you need that hand-holding.
You see, I know how to write for people. But I didn't know how to write for spiders.
("Spiders" are the automated surfing software that cruise the net for the search engines, determining which sites are worth ranking highly.)
There's a lot of advice available on the web about search engine optimization. Tons of people are trying to make a buck by telling you what they think you should do to get search engine respect.
A lot of it is very gimmicky. A lot of it is very "after the fact."
In other words,
Now that you've written your website and it's getting no traffic, let's figure out how to tweak it and see if you can't attract a few more visitors.
What the company I use does...
They're there even before you start writing, so that Search Engine Optimization is integrated into your web content from the beginning. Here's maybe the most valuable thing they do:
That's ESSENTIAL. Thanks to this company, I know that "children's literature" is a popular search term. I know that "kids' literature" isn't.
Once you know the popular search terms, you can write a page designed to attract search engine attention for that particular search term.
That's how successful websites are built. Chances are, that's how you found me.
(Was I on page 1, or page 264,000?)
Once you know the popular search terms...
You're ready to write a page. This company is right there for me as I write my web content. I load a first draft of a page into the Search Engine Optimazation engine, and it tells me if my popular search term:
- appears properly in the page's Title and File name
- in the Description and Headline
- appears often enough (or too often) in the text
- appears the right number of times in links
Yep. Believe it or not, those are the kinds of things that search engines consider as they rank websites and web pages. (Those and a whole lot more.)
When the Optimization Engine finds problems that are likely to keep me from ranking highly, I fix them right there.
Q: Steve, it sounds like you're saying that to build a successful website you have to write a lot of pages. Is that right?
Yep. Don't let anyone kid you that building a successful website isn't going to be hard work. It's going to involve writing a lot of web content.
A website is like a fishing net. The wider it is, the more you catch. A one page website is like fishing with a spoon.
No matter how much you might wish it, it's impossible to build a web page that ranks highly on a ton of different keywords. The search engines like to see a narrow focus on a particular page.
So if you want to create a website that's successful, prepare to spend a fair amount of time writing web content.
And if you want guidance, instead of flying blindly, consider the company I'm using. In fact,here's a link to a free download they offer.
Guidance on your web content from Site Build It.
There's a lot more that SiteSell does to enable your success
I'm not going to go into it here. I've focused mainly on the writing aspect. But...
If you already have a website, there's a free service Sitesell offers called Value Exchange.
As you probably already know, another way the search engines determine rankings is Link Popularity. In other words, if lots of other sites link to your site, that helps your ranking.
Value Exchange enables the exchanging of reciprocal links between websites. You link to the other guy, and the other guy links to you.
Both sites are helped.
Register for Value Exchange free.
My "What to Write?" page.
