How far to go in Optimization

An expert will know the limits

Optimization is a grand word that simply means ensuring the texts in your website pages are relevant to the people doing a search. After all, nothing is more annoying than finding oranges when you’re searching for apples.

Along the way, you have to find the right balance between words searched by robots like Googlebot and the meaning that guys like George Bull are looking for.

An exercise in creativity

For an optimization expert to be good at what he does (she does), he must have a strong sensitivity for good content. The point is that the keywords need to be ‘weaved’ into the texts in a natural way that doesn’t look forced. There are several ways of saying the same thing (taking ‘optimization expert’ as an example):

• We have expert knowledge in website content optimization
• Optimization is by no means easy and calls for expert knowledge
• Only when you apply optimization techniques on a regular basis can you become expert at it.
• Getting good ranking will depend partly on doing expert optimization of your site’s content.

Working the keywords

Keyword research is a separate subject so we’ll assume for the moment that you know what keywords to use. It’s important that each webpage supports only one or two keywords at most, so that you have strong relevance. Remember that your web page will be competing against other web pages that will focus on a particular keyword, so you want to keep an advantage.

Your optimization expert will use the keyword in various places on your web page – in the body text, as hyperlinks, as alt-tabs for images, in the page’s code (title, description etc) and perhaps even in the page’s URL too.

For example, www.anybody.com/optimization-expert.html is more effective than www.anybody.com/optimize.html. (note: these are just examples and not real links – they don’t lead anywhere)

The ‘footprint’ issue

If you compare the effect of a 200-page site to a 10-page site on the Web, you can start to appreciate the effect of the ‘footprint’. The first has many more opportunities than the second to be optimized for numerous search terms. Concentrated optimization around a certain keyword over enough web pages is one of the keys to getting good search engine ranking. Which site will perform better – the one that has 10 pages supporting a single keyword or the one that has 1 page supporting 10 keywords?

Part of the optimization expert’s job is to ensure that keywords are not being diluted by being spread too thinly over the entire website.