When you have written high quality content, you will need to make sure that your content is optimized on the inside. Tagging is important, but there is even more to that internal work to be done. Primarily, you need to let the search engines know what your site is all about. That means labeling your pages for the right keywords, emphasizing others with bolded words and italics, and making sure your images are not only visually appealing, but also optimized themselves.
Indicating Your Focus Keyword
Before you began writing your page of content, you should have taken the time to figure out what your focus keyword would be. Go back and read up on keyword research and keyword density to learn more about that.
After you have your keyword in mind, you need to tell your page what the emphasis is on. This is done in several places, and most of it can be done all at once with the help of WordPress SEO by Yoast. Just type in what your keyword is, and if it doesn’t show up in the right places, then Yoast will tell you what needs to be fixed.
After you have written a few pages and ran them through the SEO check, you will begin to notice some of the areas that need keywords. For instance, you must have your keyword in the title of your page, in the headings, and in the alt description of your images. Just make sure to have those keywords fit in there naturally.
Utilizing Emphasis to Indicate Areas of Importance
I generally don’t write using bold and italicized content. I find it often detracts from the overall message of the writing, and it makes it look broken and choppy. I feel bolded words are great for lists, headings, and phone numbers, but I seldom include them in the content of my work. But the search engines like them, so they are important to include.
Before you publish a page, go through and highlight a few of the keywords in your content. The crawlers will see that they stand out, and they will categorize your page accordingly. However, if you emphasize too many keywords you run the risk of over saturating your page. A good rule of thumb is to only emphasize your focus keyword, and help keep the page easy to read.
Proper Use of Headings
Headings on your webpage do two important jobs. First they help break up a large block of text into smaller easier to digest chunks. We have all read long drawn out pieces of content that are just a huge block of text. It’s not fun to read. But when they are broken out into sections, they’re much easier to see and comprehend.
Not only do headings make the content easier to read, but they also provide another focus for the search engines. By putting your focus keyword into at least one of your headings it is like a double hit for your optimization. The crawlers will track your headings, and it will track a header with your keyword.
Images
Pages without images are boring. We like to see a visual, even if it doesn’t really pertain to the topic on hand. It gives the eye a break from reading words, and it helps to keep the article interesting. For topics that pertain to physical objects, such as talking about frogs or trees, it is much easier to put up a picture than to type a description (1,000 words right?).
But there is more to images than just something fun to look at. By including the focus keyword in the file name, the description, the alt tag, and the caption, you let your reader and the search engines know exactly what that image is all about.
Optimizing Your Page
A lot to think about here, but the basic idea is to make sure your page knows what your keyword is. Using Yoast is the easiest way to do so, and as you post more and more content you will begin to recognize where those keywords need to be plugged before Yoast even tells you where they are needed.
If you would rather not think about all of this, that’s fine too. I’m a writer from Billings, Montana; I do this for a living. Email me, or call me at 406.860.4407, and I can help you not only create great content, but optimize it as well.