Go Easy on the Stuffing
Sponsored by:
Go Easy on the Stuffing
Tip provided by: Accolade Group of Vermont, LLC
Publishing and maintaining a quality website is vital to the success of any business. Of equal importance is getting your website noticed. In this Tip, we offer advice on effective ways to increase the prominence of your website.
Stuff it! No, this is not what you do with a turkey on Thanksgiving, nor is it what you say to your boss on a bad day. “Stuff It” is what amateur web authors do to get more attention from the search engines. For example, let’s say they have created a website to promote a business selling widgets. They want everyone to come to their website and they believe that the quickest way to attract people to come is to use the word “widget” all over the place. So they write copy for their website that looks like this:
WIDGETS
Widgets! That’s what this widget website is all about. We have the best widgets for all your widget needs. And who doesn’t need a widget? Our widgets can be ordered in any size: small widgets, medium widgets, large widgets. Extra large widgets? If you want widgets that are extra large, we have the best Extra large widgets available from any widget website.
OK, that’s key word stuffing. Does it work? Will more visitors come to a stuffed website? No, not any more. Stuffing was once a popular way to trick Search Engines into giving a website a prominent position on the Search Engine Results Pages (SERPS). Unfortunately, this tactic hasn’t worked since the late 1990s. The Search Engines are wise to this trick which is still used by some novice web developers; especially those who are “do it yourselfers.” Sorry, but stuffing wasting your time.
For best results, begin your campaign to attract attention to your website by writing copy for humans (remember them?) and not for Search Engines. Write as though your website might actually be visited by real, live people. If you talk to them kindly and intelligently, they just might show up. And why might this happen? It might happen because the Search Engines have advanced enough to recognize when a webpage is written for human consumption and not for food to be digested by Search Engine spiders.
You should continue to place headings in Headlines using tags like H1 and H2 as I did above for the headline Widgets. Would you like to make it bold? You can do that also. Just make sure that the copy that follows your headline is not stuffed with a “keyword” like “widget.” And, of course, make it fit for human consumption. Not only can Search Engines tell the difference, your website visitors can, too.
Lastly, if your webpage has content that is significant to your business, then don’t bury it in your website. The more links a visitor needs to click to get down to the webpage, the less important it will appear to a Search Engine. What’s worse is, that just as a webpage too many clicks deep from the Home Page may escape the notice of a Search Engine, so too may it escape human notice.
