Creating Keyword Rich Pages
By Sumantra Roy
Once you have established the
keywords for which you should optimize your site for the search
engines, it is time to figure out how you can get a high ranking
in the search engines for those keywords. The solution is to
create Keyword Rich Pages (KRPs) - pages which provide good
content and in which a particular keyword is repeated a number
of times so that the page gets a top ranking for that keyword.
This article is focused on how you should
create these KRPs. I am assuming you have a working knowledge of
the different HTML tags like the Title tag, the Meta Description
tag, the Meta Keywords tag, the Heading tags, the Alt Tag etc.
Now, let us assume that your company sells
packaged tours to Australia, and that you are targeting the
keyword "travel to australia". Here's how you create
the KRPs:
The Title Tag:
The first and most important tag to consider
is the Title tag. You should always begin the Title tag with the
keyword that you are targeting. Also remember that the search
engines are going to display the Title tag while they are
displaying the results of a search. Hence, you need to make the
Title tag attractive to humans as well.
Here is one Title tag that I may have used:
"Travel to Australia and discover its scenic beauty".
Have a look at the Title tag - it uses the keyword right at the
beginning and also tells people how beautiful a place Australia
is.
Of course, all Titles need not be like the
one I used. The Title that you use depends on the subject matter
of your site. However, you should follow all the general rules
that I have outlined here.
Meta Description Tag:
The Meta Description tag is used by many
search engines to provide a short description of the page that
is listed in the search results. Hence, like the Title tag, it
is important that the Meta Description tag be keyword rich as
well as attractive to humans.
The rules for the Meta Description are more
or less the same as those for the Title tag. However, the
content of this tag will generally be longer than that of the
Title. Here's what I may have used in the Meta Description tag:
"Travel to Australia - We take care of
all the details of your trip so that you can travel with
complete peace of mind."
Note how this description repeats the
keyword and also the benefit that it stresses - it says that the
customer will be able to travel without having to worry about
the intricate details of the trip - you will take care of them.
Meta Keywords Tag:
The Meta Keywords tag has become less and
less important as far as search engine optimization is
concerned. In fact, you can get top rankings without having
anything in the Meta Keywords tag at all. However, just to be on
the safe side, you would want to include some keywords in the
Meta Keywords tag. You should also include some of the common
upper/lower case variations of the keyword. The rules for the
Meta Keywords tag are pretty simple - don't repeat any keyword
in the Meta Keywords tag more than three times and don't repeat
any keyword one after the other. Here's what I may have used in
the Meta Keywords tag:
"Travel to Australia, tourism, travel
to Australia, Down Under, TRAVEL TO AUSTRALIA"
Note how I have introduced
"tourism" and "Down Under" just to separate
the different instances of the keyword.
Body of the page:
Now we come to the actual body of the page.
Begin by getting hold of a nice (but not too large) picture
which is applicable for the page that you are creating. In the
present case, I might include a picture of the lotus shaped
Sydney Opera House. Place this picture at the top of the page.
In the Alt tag for the picture, just mention your target keyword
once, i.e. the Alt tag would be "Travel to Australia".
You can include other words in the Alt tag, but it should start
with the keyword you are targeting.
Once you've put up the picture, it is time
to create a Heading for your page. Use the H1 tag to do so.
Again, in the H1 tag, mention your target keyword once, i.e.
like the Alt tag for the picture, the H1 tag could be
"Travel to Australia". Again, like the Alt tag, you
can include other words in the heading, but the heading should
start with the keyword you are targeting.
Now it's time to create the actual text of
the page. The way you create the text of your page would depend
largely on what you want the visitor to do after reading this
page. In some cases, you may simply want the visitor to go to
the home page or another specific page in your site after
reading this page. In this case, you should write the text in
such a way that the visitor is attracted to the page that you
are targeting. You would also want to provide links to the home
page or the specific page that you are targeting at strategic
places in the KRP. Or, you may want the visitor to click on the
link to an affiliate program that you are a member of. In this
case, you would stress the benefits that the visitor gets by
purchasing the product or service that the affiliate program is
selling. You would also want to provide links to the affiliate
program at strategic places in the page and/or at the end of the
page. Whatever it is that you want your page to do, there are
some general rules to follow:
1) The first thing to remember is that some
search engines don't recognize the Meta Description tag. These
search engines will often simply take the first few lines of
text in the body of your page and display that as the
description. Hence, you must ensure that the first few lines of
text in your page are attractive to human beings.
2) Ensure that as many sentences as possible
in the page contain your target keyword once. The keyword
shouldn't just be placed on an ad hoc basis - the way the
keyword is placed in every sentence should actually make
grammatical sense and the repetition should be such that your
human visitors do not feel that you have deliberately repeated a
particular phrase throughout the page. This is not only
important from the point of view of ensuring that your readers
don't get a bad impression of your site, but also from the point
of view of search engine optimization - the search engines may
penalize your page for spamming if they find that you have
randomly repeated the keyword throughout the page. Also, while
repeating the keyword in the page, try to repeat the keyword
once near the top of the page and once near the bottom.
3) Make sure that your paragraphs are not
too long - each paragraph should be no more than 3 or 4
sentences long. This is because people on the web simply don't
have the time or the inclination to read long paragraphs.
4) Try to ensure that the page contains
links to other pages with the keyword being present in the text
under the link. This can often lead to a higher ranking for your
page.
5) If possible, link to other pages which
have the keyword in the file names. This can again lead to a
higher ranking for your page.
6) There is no hard and fast rule regarding
the total number of words that should be present in the KRPs. As
a rule of thumb, try to ensure that there are between 500-600
words. However, if the number of words falls a bit short of or
exceeds this limit, don't worry too much.
Once you have created the page, ensure that
the name of the file in which it is saved contains the keyword
and that the individual words of the keyword are separated by
hyphens. In this case, the name of the file would be
travel-to-australia.html. This will get you a higher ranking in
the few search engines which give a lot of emphasis on the
keyword being present in the file name.
Now that you have created the KRP, you
cannot simply upload it to your site and submit it to the search
engines. This is because the search engines take a rather dim
view of pages which only contain outgoing links to other pages
but do not contain any incoming links from other pages. The
search engines may penalize sites which have such pages.
What you should do is to provide a link to
these KRPs from the home page of your site. Now, you don't want
people who are seeing the home page to actually follow these
links to the KRPs - you only want the search engines to follow
these links. However, you can't create links with hidden text
(i.e. text with the same color as the background color) in your
page since the search engines will almost certainly penalize or
even ban you for doing this.
What you should do is to create a small
transparent gif image. Then, name this image with the same file
name as the name of the KRP you have created. Hence, in this
case, you should name the image travel-to-australia.gif. Then,
add this image to the end of the home page and have it link to
the KRP. Also, you should explicitly set the border of the image
to 0 (add border = "0" to the img tag of the image).
Otherwise, when you get the image to link to the KRP, a border
may be visible. In case you don't want to create your own image,
I have created a sample transparent gif image for you - you can
get it from http://www.1stSearchRanking.com/t.cgi?1039&download.htm
That's it! When you want to target another
keyword, create another KRP for it, make a copy of the image
that you created for the first keyword, rename it to the file
name of the new KRP, add the image to the home page and then
link it to the new KRP. Repeat this process for every keyword
that you are targeting. Once you have created all the KRPs and
once you have got the home page to link to each of them, upload
all the KRPs and the gif images to your site, and submit your
home page and each of the KRPs to the search engines. When you
are submitting these pages, to be on the safe side, make sure
that you submit no more than 1 page per day to any search engine
- otherwise, you run the risk of some search engines ignoring
some of the pages you have submitted.
Follow all the rules that I have outlined in
this article and you can soon see your search engine blues
disappear for ever!
Article by Sumantra Roy. Sumantra is one
of the most respected search engine positioning specialists on
the Internet. To have Sumantra's company place your site at
the top of the search engines, go to http://www.1stSearchRanking.com/
For more advice on how you can take your web
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