Welcome to part four in this search engine positioning series. Last week we

discussed the importance of the structure of your website and the best practices

for creating an easily spidered and easily read site. In part four we will discuss

content optimization.

This is perhaps the single most important aspect of ranking your website highly

on the search engines. While all of the factors covered in this series will

help get your website into the top positions, it is your content that will sell

your product or service and it is your content that the search engines will

be reading when they take their "snapshot" of your site and determine

where it should be placed in relation to the other billions of pages on the

Internet.

Over this series we will cover the ten key aspects to a solid search engine

positioning campaign.

The Ten Steps We Will Go Through Are:

1. Keyword
   
   Selection



2. Content
   
   Creation



3. Site
   
   Structure



4. Optimization



5. Internal Linking



6. Human Testing



7. Submissions



8. Link Building



9. Monitoring



10. The Extras

Step Four – Content Optimization

There are aspects of the optimization process that gain and lose importance.

Content optimization is no exception to this. Through the many algorithm changes

that take place each year, the weight given to the content on your pages rises

and falls. Currently incoming links appear to supply greater advantage than

well-written and optimized content. So why are we taking an entire article in

this series to focus on the content optimization?

The goal for anyone following this series is to build and optimize a website

that will rank well on the major search engines and, more difficult and far

more important, hold those rankings through changes in the search engine algorithms.

While currently having a bunch of incoming links from high PageRank sites will

do well for you on Google you must consider what will happen to your rankings

when the weight given to incoming links drops, or how your website fares on

search engines other than Google that don't place the same emphasis on

incoming links.

While there are many characteristics of your content that are in the algorithmic

calculations, there are a few that consistently hold relatively high priority

and thus will be the focus of this article. These are:

1. Heading Tags



2. Special Text (bold, colored, etc.)



3. Inline Text Links



4. Keyword Density

Heading Tags

The heading tag (for those who don't already know) is code used to specify

to the visitor and to the search engines what the topic is of your page and/or

subsections of it. You have 6 predefined heading tags to work with ranging from

to

.

By default these tags appear larger than standard text in a browser and are

bold. These aspects can be adjusted using the font tags or by using Cascading

Style Sheets (CSS).

Due to their abuse by unethical webmasters and SEO's, the weight given

to heading tags is not what it could be however the content between these tags

is given increased weight over standard text. There are rules to follow with

the use of heading tags that must be adhered to. If you use heading tags irresponsibly

you run the risk of having your website penalized for spam even though the abuse

may be unintentional.

When using your heading tags try to follow these rules:

• Never use the same tag twice on a single page



• Try to be concise with your wording



• Use heading tags only when appropriate. If bold text will do then go that
  
  route



• Don't use CSS to mask heading tags

Never use the same tag twice on a single page. While the

tags holds

the greatest weight of the entire heading tags, its purpose is to act as the

primary heading of the page. If you use it twice you are obviously not using

it to define the main topic of the page. If you need to use another heading

tag use the

tag. After that the

tag and so on. Generally

I try never to use more than 2 heading tags on a page.

Try to be concise with your wording. If you have a 2 keyword phrase that you

are trying to target and you make a heading that is 10 words long then your

keyword phrase only makes up about 20% of the total verbiage. If you have a

4-word heading on the other hand you would then have a 50% density and increased

priority given to the keyword phrase you are targeting.

Use heading tags only when appropriate. If bold text will do then go that route.

I have seen sites with heading tags all over the place. If overused the weight

of the tags themselves are reduced with decreasing content and "priority"

being given to different phrases at various points in the content. If you have

so much great content that you feel you need to use many heading tags you should

consider dividing the content up into multiple pages, each with its own tag

and keyword target possibilities. For the most part, rather than using additional

heading tags, bolding the content will suffice. The sizing will be kept the

same as your usual text and it will stand out to the reader as part of the text

but with added importance.

Don't use CSS to mask heading tags. This one just drives me nuts and

is unnecessary. Cascading Style Sheets (CSS) serve many great functions. They

can be used to define how a site functions, looks and feels however they can

also be used to mislead search engines and visitors alike. Each tags has a default

look and feel. It is fine to use CSS to adjust this somewhat to fit how you

want your site to look. What is not alright is to adjust the look and feel to

mislead search engines. It is a simple enough task to define in CSS that your

heading should appear as regular text. Some unethical SEO's will also

then place their style sheet in a folder that is hidden from the search engine

spiders. This is secure enough until your competitors look at the cached copy

of your page (and they undoubtedly will at some point) see that you have hidden

heading tags and report you to the search engines as spamming. It's an

unnecessary risk that you don't need to take. Use your headings properly

and you'll do just fine.

Next article continues with "special text".

About the Author

Dave Davies is the owner of Beanstalk Search Engine Positioning. He has been optimizing and ranking websites for over three years and has a solid history of success. Dave is available to answer any questions that you may have about your website and how to get it into the top positions on the major search engines.

development heading tags content search