Search engine optimisation is essentially about making your pages as relevant as possible to searches on your chosen keywords. This is not as straightforward a matter as it might at first appear. While your keyword research should give you an idea of the various related words you can use to build up relevance in your content, you can never really know if you’ve done enough.
Boosting your relevancy to your chosen keywords isn’t a matter of simply putting the right words in the right places. The search engines have become increasingly sophisticated over time, and now a number of factors play on the relevancy of a site to a word. In order to show that your page is truly relevant to the search term, you need to leave a number of clues that can be read in a number of ways.
How to build your page’s relevance to your keyword:
1. Use a number of related terms. Your keyword is just a part of the search equation. In the English language, words have a number of connotations. The way we interpret them depends on whatever’s at the forefront of our minds at the time. For example, anyone overhearing the word ‘avatar’ five years ago would never have connected the conversation with an image of lithe blue beings in a lush, psychedelic forest. These days, other connections are virtually impossible.
The influence of interpretation is what makes thorough keyword research so vital. You need to be able to predict which words the search engines are going to associate with your main keywords. To do this, you can go to the source, for example with Google’s Wonder Wheel search option which reveals connected search terms. For related keywords with longevity, however, it’s better to do some customer research and see what your target user group thinks.
2. Form links with your link anchors. Once you have a web of related terms, you need to establish them on your pages. You also need to support the page through links with related pages. You can do this to some extent with your site’s hyperlinks. Your SEO consultant is likely to advise you to hyperlink throughout your content to related pages in your site. You can talk to us at SEO Consult Australia about using internal links to SEO advantage.
3. Ensure inbound links are relevant. One of the biggest mistakes sites make is in automatically directing inbound links to their home page. You’re not helping your search engine optimisation campaign in doing this. Neither the search engines nor internet users appreciate following a link to a page that has no relevance to their hunt for information.
Your inbound links will provide more support when they lead to relevant pages. For example, if your animal health site nets a link from the World Wildlife Fund’s ‘looking after domestic animals’ page, that link is going to provide a certain basic amount of value to your link profile. If the link leads to your specialist ‘how to look after your pet’ page, the link’s value increases.
