Even if you have expertly crafted your website’s text, there is still another step essential for maximum website performance. Optimizing your website’s text to gain favorable ratings with the major search engines is key to online business success.

Optimizing your site with specific keyword choices will bring traffic and qualified leads to you.

This is called SEO, which is the common abbreviation for “search engine optimization.” SEO is a practice that is half art and half calculated science. Perhaps you have heard of SEO and were unsure of what it meant or how to use it to your advantage. Here is an outline of what it is and why it is important in your lead generation efforts.

What is SEO?

Search engine optimization is the online marketing technique that makes your web text more attractive to the major search engines. This is done through careful product and industry-specific keyword research and analysis. Once the keywords have been identified, they are then expertly woven throughout the text to create a seamless, transparent marketing effect that is not obvious to the reader, but that is picked up by the major search engines via “web crawlers”. The goal is to be included in the coveted “Top Ten” of Google or similar search engines.


Optimizing your web content

On each of the pages within your website, there are hundreds of words. Web crawlers look at all of the words on the page – both those that are visible to the reader, and others that are hidden. Optimized text should include the general content, as well as less-than-obvious content like alternative image text, page titles, page descriptions, and file names.

First, focus on writing reader-friendly web content. Then concentrate on keyword phrase selection and density. Professionally-written SEO content is keyword dense, yet written in a way that is transparent to the reader. For best results in generating leads, a professional writer can mix talent with experience in SEO.

Why word choice is important to your lead generation efforts

A potential customer looking for your product or service online will most likely go directly to a search engine and type in a word or phrase. This word or phrase choice is most likely one of the top keywords used by potential customers.

For example, someone looking to purchase kitchen cabinet hardware online might go to a search engine and type in “kitchen hardware.” Keyword research would tell you other common keyword phrases for this type of search include “cabinet hardware”, “kitchen cabinet hardware”, “cabinet hardware pulls”, and “cabinet door hardware”. Having these phrases on your site will increase your popularity.

However not all web surfers will use the same words when searching. For example, a company selling drinking water dispensers would need to include all of the different words for their product like “drinking water fountain” “water cooler”, and “water bubbler”. Keyword research provides a list that includes all terms commonly searched for the same item. By using the different terms on your site, you can draw in all leads that are looking for your product, but calling it something different than your business traditionally does.

Once you have optimized your site with core keywords and phrases, when a customer searches by those core keywords, your page – depending on the ranking and density of keywords, and other factors – will appear in the results list.

If potential customers can easily find your site through search engines, you will get more traffic. These people that come to your site through search engines will likely be qualified leads that you can then, through on-page marketing, sell products and services.

Overstuffing is bad

The biggest mistake that people make in working with keywords is overdoing it. In hopes of attracting web crawlers, people have found ways to pack in so many keywords, codes, hidden text, illogical page redirects, and other messy techniques. This inadvisable practice can have a negative impact because search engines penalize websites that gets caught. Plus the content will be so unpleasant to read that potential customers will probably leave. A seasoned professional SEO writer will be able to provide insight into how much is too much.

Conclusion

Finding an excellent professional SEO writer need not be difficult. Search for someone with a proven track record in writing content that gets results through increased traffic and qualified leads.

If you decide to go it alone, keep in mind that like many things in life, moderation is important in SEO. Write your web content first for your reader’s enjoyment, then employ search engine marketing techniques.