SEO Web Fundamentals
SEO web fundamentals
Your SEO efforts can only help you rise if you are building on a solid foundation. I equate the SEO website fundamentals with the preparation of a construction site – these are all things that can happen or may have happened even before your SEO web copywriter started typing. But he or she, your web design, web development company or your search firm, should certainly be able to consult with you in the direction of a properly optimized site, even when that transcends copywriting or design or whatnot.
Create an SEO website by first making sure you are building in brick.
Your SEO web copywriter should be quick to tell you that one of the absolute most dominant factors in today’s SEO is your domain name and its extension. Ideally, you want a top level domain, meaning a .com or one of the other most recognizable extensions. Though this could change, with a bevvy of new tld’s having been released in 2014, I tend to doubt it. I think a .com will continue to carry extra cache, both with consumers and with the engines. That said, if one of your keywords shows up as a top level domain, I think you’re going to have to work extra hard to maintain your position. How does your SEO web copywriter help you? By creating lots of great, unique, natural language content! What? Didn’t you read the previous page?! An SEO copywriter works to develop unique content, while balancing the user’s experience and the company’s need to promote its products or services with the search engines’ needs to see your site as a credible, validated source of relevant information.
Does a search engine optimized website mean I have to put a keyword into my domain name?
An SEO website doesn’t have to do any one thing – the upside to such complicated search engine algorithms with so many factors and weightings is that you have countless opportunities to increase your cumulative “score” – soar with your strengths, remedy your weaknesses, and let longer dwell times, backlinks and social shares affirm your authority in the eyes of the engines.
Most SEO web copywriters will tell you that if a great keyword happens to be in your domain name, as of today, that’s a definite plus. But, honestly, that could change any day, so don’t go considering it make or break. Many websites out there have a keyword in their domain name, but with flimsy content supporting it, so please don’t think for a minute the engines won’t prefer all of that juicy, keyword-optimized content your SEO web copywriter created just because it’s behind a clever, non-generic domain name. But if the competition has both the industry keyword AND the content to support it, well, get angry, I suppose. No, no! Don’t get angry. Just outsmart them in other ways. Build more links. Blog harder. Pay your SEO web copywriter more.
Website optimization: a few do’s and do not’s
Though many of these things fall outside of SEO web copywriting, you’re going to want to know them. So I’m going to tell you. You don’t want hyphens in your domain name; it smacks of impurity. You do, however, want to use them in your page names. Not underscores. Repeat: not underscores. Hyphens. Just not in the domain name part, but we’ve covered that already. Something else you don’t want: url’s of unusual length, the joke here being, of course, the reference to R.O.U.S.’s from “Princess Bride.” End of digression. Something you do want? Applied semantics and keyword stemming. These pertain to whether the engines deem you to be communicating holistically on your subject, which would include not just utilizing your keywords per se but terms statistically relevant throughout the field and variants (singular, plural, tense) that indicate a genuine discussion of the topic, as opposed to keyword stuffing. An SEO website is one that delivers value to visitors. Period.