Content is King
In the world of search engine optimization, or SEO, content is king. What we’re talking about is human readable HTML text on your home page.
One of the major search engines has stopped considering the “Keyword” META tag because of keyword spamming by website owners in an attempt to manipulate their search rankings. For example, a photographer might have repeated the word “photographer” or “photography” many times in the tag in their effort to rank on the first page of the search engine results page, or SERP.
So what do search engines analyze to determine what a web site is all about, and in turn determine where it should rank? Human readable text. This puts a visual artist such as photographers in a sort of quandary: should I design my site for aesthetic appeal or search engine friendliness?
I think the answer depends on which segment of our industry you work in. If it’s editorial, PR, or corporate, I think internet search is a crucial piece of your overall marketing plan and your site should be designed with search in mind. And that means including body copy on the home page.
Your body copy should include your “keyword phrase” which is the search term you believe potential clients would use to find a photographer such as yourself. Keyword density refers to the frequency that a keyword phrase appears in the body text. Generally speaking, to avoid keyword spamming, your text should be naturally flowing and result in a keyword density of about two to seven percent. There are a number of keyword density checkers available online to assist you with determining the keyword density of a page.
I get about 60-percent of my new clients each year as a result of my SEO efforts. If you suspect your potential clients are using search to locate photographers, you should consider optimizing your site to help them find you. Good luck!
5 Responses to 'Content is King'
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A little off topic but still related to SEO, I’m curious whether anyone out there has more information on Google’s ability to crawl Flash sites.
My assumption has always been that Flash sites can’t be indexed, but I asked my site hosts (who put out html-mirrored flash sites) about it and they sent me this link:
http://googleblog.blogspot.com/2008/06/google-learns-to-crawl-flash.html
It’s from last year, but it is from the mothership itself. If anyone has more current knowledge or can clarify I’d be curious to hear.
I have been trying to get a decent ranking by search engines for the last two years. I started with 0 knowledge and feel like at this point I still only know about 10% of what I need. I did however recently add good old fashioned text pages to my website as Mobile Device Versions.
They look very similar to my dynamic site pages but they are easier for search engines to see. One of my recent blog posts talks more about it.
Thanks for the tip on keyword density checkers.
My appologies, the “Mobile Device Versions” link should be This-click here
Hi Blake, Would love if you could point us to some of those “keyword density checkers” you alluded to. I’d love to test my site against one.
Looks like your question thing at the end of the post worked. Also not having to sign in is nice too. Good job. Nice list. Thanks.