When it comes to building a reputation online, content is one of the ways you can be perceived positively and improve your SEO (search engine optimisation).
All you need is nice, strong and original content.
People like it; little search bots following their algorithms like it; and overall it just makes you a more respectable entity out there for all to see.
Below is a concise (not necessarily exhaustive) list of things to be aware of and some of the best practices:
1. Duplicate content.
Is what you’re saying your own words? It better be; it is highly frowned upon to be hijacking someone else’s genius (or not as is often the case).
2. How recently did you update your content?
Updating is often the key to both the content’s validity and how the search engines behave towards it; keep it fresh and relevant.
3. Edits and alterations.
Keeping things fresh may also mean regular culling of entire sections rather than some careful pruning.
Be a raconteur of the modern age. Tell a good story. - Highlight to share -
4. Are you being semantically aware in your keywords – latent and blatant?
Help the search engines sense meaning in your work by using synonymous terms for your keywords in tags. Latent Semantic Indexing (LSI) of keywords in content can act as a signal to search engines of what you mean and better help direct searches to you.
5. Strong headlines.
Strong, enticing titles will often do a lot of the work for you. Most don’t read past the title in an article, so make it engaging and force a desire in the reader to find out what else you have to say.
6. Be a raconteur of the modern age.
Tell a good story wherever possible, especially with blog posts. The more engaged you can make audiences with your content the better you’re going to look to the mighty search engines.
7. Be bold, don’t waffle.
If you can use four words where there were ten, you know what to do. The less fluff and nonsense there is, the more people will get from it and the more likely they are to keep reading.
Appealing to someone’s curiosity, both in blogs and web design, will help draw traffic. - Highlight to share -
8. Word count, what word count?
There may have been a time once (university, perhaps?) when you worked out the most convoluted way of saying something quite straightforward, but that’s neither helpful nor warranted. There will be places on your site when you certainly don’t want to stray over a word or character count. Brand or product descriptions perhaps, but otherwise, let the loquacious nature of your prose ebb and flow as you see fit.
9. Too heavy on the keywords.
This makes content slow and dull. The reader has to wade through a word soup because you overloaded it with keywords. Not cool.
10. Leave them wanting more.
Asking questions will involve a reader and – asked in the right way – can be a guiding force along a journey you’ve created for them. Appealing to someone’s curiosity, both in blogs and web design, will help draw traffic.
If you’re wily about the application of the above, it could help update and upgrade your content; your online respectability and availability to the search engines will be significantly boosted.
