How to write your site's content to get good search engine rankings.

Intro

Getting good search engine rankings is not rocket science. It involves 3 main things:

Figuring out what search phrases people are going to use to find your site,
Optimizing the content you write for those search phrases,
Using those search phrases within the links in your web pages that link to your other web pages.

1. Choosing Good Search Phrases

When people talk about getting good search engine rankings, what they really mean is getting good rankings for a specific search phrase or phrases. Your site could be getting amazing rankings, but if they're not for the search phrases that bring you new business, they're not worth much.

An example of a good search phrase would be the name of your city, county or region plus the words 'home inspection', or perhaps your location plus 'home inspector' or your location plus 'mold inspection'. Another good search phrase would be the name of your business. Another might be your name.

While it would be great if you could get a good ranking for the generic phrase 'home inspection', a quick look on Google shows that there are over 19 million competing web pages for this phrase. By putting your location in your search phrase, you make it much more likely that someone searching for that phrase would actually be wanting to find an inspector in your area. You also vastly reduce the competition for top rankings for that phrase.

You should make a list of your top search phrases. Remember that to some search engines the words 'inspector', 'inspectors', and 'inspections' are all different, so be sure to include all the variants.

2. Search Engine Optimization

Your Inspectamatic package will handle some of the more technical aspects of search engine optimizations. However, there's something you need to know about it: you need to include your search phrases within your website's content.

So when you're writing your site's content, be sure to include the search phrases that you listed. Use one to three phrases per page, and use each phrase two or three times per page, but not so many times that it would look strange to a person reading it. Natural looking writing and a strong marketing message should take precedence over search engine optimization concerns.

You don't have to use all your phrases on your home page -- you can spread them out onto other relevant pages (ie About Us, Contact Us, Service Area, Our Fees). But use your home page for your most important couple of phrases.

When adding or editing a page using our web page editing system, there will be fields for Browser Title, Meta Description, Headline, Left Sidebar Content, Main Content, Right Sidebar Content, and Footer Message. These are all places you can insert search phrases into.

The Browser Title is what the web page is called within your web browser's title area, which is the very top border of the browser. Use your most important keyphrase to begin the browser title of your home page! If possible, also use your most important keyphrase within your home page's headline.

The Meta Description is what some search engines display as the description of your site when they list your site when someone performs a search.

3. Web Page Links

In less competitive markets steps 1 and 2 above will be sufficient. In more competitive markets you might need to add another optimization trick to the mix: using search phrases within links that point to your site. So if one of your phrases is, for example, 'Los Angeles mold inspections', you might want to create a link from one of your website's pages to another one of your website's pages in which that phrase is used as the link text. So instead of the link saying click here to go to my home page it would say Los Angeles mold inspections.

Or you might want to ask other real estate and/or inspection related websites to link to yours using that phrase as their link text. This step is essential in highly competitive markets.

4. About Blogs

In competitive markets, a simple website with just a few typical pages (home, about us, service areas, fees, contact) is probably not going to have enough heft to get very high rankings. In these cases, a blog can be extremely helpful in securing high rankings.

Search engines essentially give ranking boosts to websites with lots of text content and lots of search phrase-rich interlinking. Blogs provide the perfect platform for these two exact things.

Of course, having a successful blog means making a commitment to update the blog regularly (once a month at very minimum, once a week even better). No one, especially the search engines, wants to look at a blog that hasn't been updated in six months.*

While you could certainly use the website's built-in page management features to just keep adding new page contents, blogs offer additional features such as automatic archiving, search, RSS feed, user comments, and more.

Blogs can be either offsite with a blogging service, or built into the website. The blogging service doesn't cost anything to set up, but it won't look like the rest of your site, and it doesn't help your site's search engine rankings as much as a blog that's built into your website would.

Building a blog into your website costs about $150 initially, with security updates twice a year adding about $20.

* If you like the idea of a blog but you don't think you can make the commitment to add new blog posts regularly, consider just using the website's built-in page management features to add a new article whenever you feel like it. It's better than nothing! Make an "articles" main page, then every new article could just be a sub-page.

Conclusion

If you need help with any of this, or are in a competitive market and want more heavy duty search engine work, see our online marketing services.

For more information or if you have any questions please email info@inspectamatic.com.

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Intro
1. Search Phrases
2. Search Engine Optimization
3. Web Page Links
4. About Blogs

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