Chapter12.Optimize Your Content

Chapter 12. Optimize Your Content

Two-time American presidential candidate Adlai Stevenson once said, "Words calculated to catch everyone may catch no one." Such is the dilemma of optimizing your content. You know that organic search engines are looking for specific word patterns on your page to decide whether it should be shown at the top of the results list, but you also know that your page must appeal to the searchers themselves. How do you avoid "catching no one"? We show you the way.

And, although optimizing content is mainly a task for search marketers pursuing organic search rankings, paid placement marketers should pay attention, too. Increasingly, paid placement landing pages are subjected to editorial review to ensure that the page is relevant to the keyword purchased. We note where our tips are for just organic, or for paid, too.

In this chapter, you learn how to optimize your content. This chapter covers the following topics:

• What search engines look for. Search engines are meticulously designed to return the best matches for a searcher's query, weighing dozens of factors to decide which pages rank first. We explain what search engines want to see.

• The philosophy of writing for search. After you know what search engines are looking for, it's oh so tempting to write your page copy with only search engines in mind. And it's wrong. We show you how to think about your real goal.

• Step-by-step optimization of your search landing pages. You will be introduced to each task in the content-optimization process, and learn how to perform each one.

When you have completed this chapter, you will be ready to take on your own Web site and make the content changes needed for successful search marketing. We begin by exploring what is important to search engines when they choose the results they return.