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How to Improve Search Engine Placements with Content
by Ross Dunn ©Copyright 2003

Just how important is content to the search engines? We all 
know that well written content is paramount to maintaining 
repeat traffic to a web site but just what qualities pique the 
'interest' of the major search engines? This can be a convoluted 
topic where the unique characteristics of each search engine are 
considered to create highly appealing content. In most cases, 
however, the general concepts are all that you will need to know 
to attain a positive search engine placement, especially when 
you are focusing on less competitive goals. After all, accuracy 
is not always required when your target is as big as a barn and 
you are only a few feet away.

For maximum effectiveness, content should be:

Unique

Content should be written uniquely for each page of your web 
site. Why? Well, when a search engine spider indexes each page, 
it constantly searches for any patterns that match known spam 
practices. For example, an old (and unfortunately still used 
by less knowledgeable 'optimizers') spam tactic is to create 
numerous pages with basically the same content to get multiple 
placements under a single phrase.

Fresh

Search engines are always on the lookout for web sites that 
offer information useful to their users. If Google found new 
content every time it indexed your web site, your site would 
instantly gain credibility because this would indicate that 
your site is constantly evolving. Following the logic of a 
search engine (and they are all essentially logical), an 
evolving web site is likely to be more interesting to searchers 
since the content is up-to-date. As a result your site has a 
better chance of obtaining better placements and maintaining the 
positions gained.

Relevant

Relevance can not be emphasized enough! It is important that 
when you create the copy for a web page you try to maintain 
the overall relevance of the topic. In other words, if your 
web page has been created to describe the process of "varnishing 
teak" then maintain that focus throughout the copy. Do not skip 
to a totally unrelated topic such as (an extreme example) how to 
change tires... this will dilute the keywords on the page and it 
will make it more difficult for a visiting search engine to 
determine the placement that the page should achieve. A great 
deal of the SEO (search engine optimization) process is ensuring 
topical clarity throughout a web site. By ensuring that the copy 
on each page clearly indicates a desired topic (in this case the 
page focuses on teak varnishing), you will leave a search engine 
with little choice but to place your web site under your desired 
listing. 

Visible

Seems simple right? Well, there are many ways to unwittingly 
damage the visibility of a beautifully written web site. Many 
of the following elements are straight out of search engine 
placement 101 but they must be noted: 

Do Not Use Frames: There are few worse blocks to search engine 
indexing than framesets. If your site is using frames and all 
of your content is found within a frameset then you may need to 
reconsider a redesign. The "why" of this is simple; the home 
page actually has no content on it other than meta tags and a 
title because the page is only there to 'call' the framesets 
(which are the pages with the content). As a result, the search 
engines only see a page with a few links on it and some Meta 
tags; a very poor recipe for search engine placements. 

Do Not Create a Site Totally in Flash: Flash is a beautiful 
medium for advanced and often engaging multimedia BUT, it should 
not be the sole medium for your web site because the content 
within flash is not viewable by a search engine. If you wish to 
use Flash then we recommend interspersing it throughout a web 
site much like images are. This way you can include the same 
impressive interaction capabilities and you can still write your 
content in html; the sole medium that search engines can index. 
The same rule applies to images; if you want your text to be 
found and indexed by the search engines then do not include it 
within a graphic. 

Note: Image ALT tags do the job somewhat by providing an 
ALTernative copy of the text shown in the image, however, 
this is a poor substitution for true visible text. 

Provide Alternative Navigation Options: Most sites employ a 
graphical navigation method which provides a very attractive 
and often functional method of navigating a web site. By ALT 
tagging each of the menu buttons with a topical summary of the 
destination page, graphical menus can even be effective for 
search engines. There are, however, a couple of alternative 
navigational items that we at StepForth recommend; a mirrored 
text menu at the bottom of the page and a text link to a sitemap 
located somewhere within every page.

The reason behind the text menu becomes clearer when you 
understand that hyperlinked text is more credible than a linked 
graphic. This is because the text within the link can be read 
and, as with any properly designed navigation, the menu's text 
link defines the topic of the destined page. Also, since this 
text is visible to visitors (unlike less visible ALT tags) 
there is less likelihood that you are trying to fool the search 
engines. This adds further credibility to the overall topic of 
the destined page which, in combination with the correctly 
written content, creates an even better atmosphere for top 
placements. 

The sitemap is useful because of a certain well-known 
characteristic of search engines; they often take a long time 
to index pages that are located deep within a web site. So by 
creating a sitemap (preferably with text links) that is 
accessible from any page, you provide the search engines with 
a direct route to every page within your site. Not only do
you facilitate a faster crawl of your web site but you provide 
the search engines with more text links which may further 
increase the credibility of your content.

In Summary

Now that you know what it takes to create content that the 
search engines will love, you are one major step closer to 
improving your search engine placements. Once you have a web 
site that meets the many qualities that were listed in this 
article, turn your attention to the proper optimization of your 
pages. If you would like some pointers please see my 10 Minute 
Search Engine Optimization tutorial 
(http://news.stepforth.com/2003-news/ten-minute-optimization.shtml)
which will walk you through the basics of the process.

By implementing my suggestions from this article and the 10 
minute optimization you will have a much better chance of 
achieving better placements simply because they are designed 
to work with, and increase the value of search engine results. 
You can't lose if you add value; the search engines will love 
you!

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Ross Dunn is the CEO of StepForth Placement Inc., a search engine 
marketing company founded in 1997 and based in Victoria, British 
Columbia, Canada. StepForth provides cutting-edge search engine 
optimization services that provide highly successful, targeted 
results for its clientele. Ross Dunn is a Certified Internet 
Marketing and Business Strategist (CIMBS) with a background in 
web design and online marketing. His broad Internet experience 
in combination with a talented staff has made StepForth a name 
synonymous with top results. (http://www.stepforth.com)
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