Following are some tips that will help your articles improve your rankings in search engines:
Page Title. Your keywords should be in the title, the text that appears at the top of the browser. This is one of the first things a spider will find when going through the code on your page. Use several different keywords in the title section. Two to three is ideal; four is all you can afford. Again, you don’t want search engines to become wary of cataloging your site.
Description. This is one of the meta tags that is invisible to the site visitor but is found in the source code. You can use the same sentence as your title and then add one or two additional sentences that describe what the article is about. This is the abbreviated summary of your page that is often displayed below the link to your site in a search engine. If you don’t put a description here, the search engine may just pick up the first sentence or two of the article itself, which may not be the best way to draw potential visitors to your site.
Keywords. This is another invisible meta tag. Many search engine experts say that these are ignored these days by the search engines. Don’t believe it. Even if the major players skip it, such as google.com, there are hundreds of other search engines out there that still use keywords to help catalog their listings. Vary the use, spelling and combinations. Make them as specific as possible without using obscure search words. A good place to test keywords is through software made specifically to do this. The Dowser (http://www.thedowser.com) is a good product and it’s free. It provides you with keyword suggestions, the ability to manage keywords, and centralized management of keyword research tasks.
Headline. Now we’ve arrived at the article itself. Your headline, i.e., the title, should weave the keywords into it. Be creative with his. You need the headline to grab the reader’s attention so they will read the article while using your keywords.
Body of article. Congratulations! You’ve arrived at the real reason why someone has found your site and it’s time to strut yourself. As noted earlier, you don’t need to be Hemingway or Steinbeck. Write your article as you would a letter to a friend. Be conversational, explain things clearly, back it up with some research and be sure that your sentences are complete sentences with no glaring grammatical or spelling errors. Microsoft Word is good at helping you out on this. Use the Spelling and Grammar feature in the Tools section to spot issues with your text.
