Content is King
Google has been the target of all kinds of manipulation by a wide range of “black hat” systems that try to trick the search engines into returning a page even though it does not have relevant content or has poorly constructed content with little value. What black hatters should keep in mind is that Google is not stupid but rather extremely vindictive. Hundreds of thousands of sites that tried keyword stuffing and other non-value techniques have been de-indexed by the search engine giant, rendering all the work that went into the manipulation wasted. The golden rule for search is having content that is of superior value to the visitor. Good quality content is not only good for the site in terms of traffic and profitability, but it will attract quality back-links that will further build site credibility in the eyes of Google. Knock ‘em dead content is the keystone for any on page optimization effort.
What’s In A Name?
Google actually places a great deal of importance on the name of your domain and the name of your page. This is an area that many businesses, particularly small businesses make mistakes with. The natural tendency is to get a domain name that is the same as the business name. After all that’s the name you use in all your print advertising right? But the internet isn’t print. Searches on the internet are made based on specific keywords and keyword phrases. Consequently, if you have a florist shop called Maria’s Floral Creations and that’s the domain name you acquire, you are cutting down your odds of ever coming up on searches by people looking for “flower arrangements” or “florists” or any of a hundred related floral search words. The only time you can be half way certain of getting on the first page of Google is if someone specifically searches for your business name. So rather than using MariasFloralCreations.com you would be wiser to use something like SendFlowersToday.com or OrderFlowersOnline.com both of which are based on keyword phrases that have over 15,000 searches per month. Just because your domain name is based on a keyword phrase, that doesn’t mean that you can’t use your business name on the header of your free website. Your just using the domain name to get Google’s attention. The same drill goes for every page on your site. Each page should be optimized for a particular keyword phrase and that phrase should be used both in the title and in the meta description of your free website. If you look at a Google search result page you’ll notice that each result has a short snippet describing the content. Often times this comes from the meta description so take care in preparing that text to not only optimize for the keyword but to grab the searcher’s attention and get him or her to click. This meta description can be a powerful marketing piece if properly used.
LSI = Latent Semantic Indexing
While LSU’s mascot Mike the Tiger is a well known figure on the football field he has no super powers to influence where you rank in Google. LSI or latent semantic indexing does. The use of LSI is just a natural evolution of the Google process to achieve their ultimate goal of delivering the absolute best and most relevant sites to an individual query. The theory behind LSI is that there are commonly used words and phrases in the content of the highest ranked pages for a particular keyword search. Because these are the highest ranked sites, LSI assumes that other sites trying to rank for the same word or phrase should have some or all of the common phrases within its content. If the content has a low LSI score, then it’s assumed that the content does not have the same value as the highest ranked sites and will be listed appropriately lower. Can you begin to see the value of well constructed compelling content? The beauty of LSI is if you are an expert on the subject you are building the page around you almost naturally will include the common phrases of the top sites.
Site optimization is actually its own industry and there are thousands of tools and services available to assist you. However, follow the tips above and you’ll have the basics down whether you're using a free website builder or are coding your own HTML site from the ground up.
