Page content is a key player in SEO. The content of your page is what gives it substance and value in the eyes of its viewers.
In the most basic sense, page content is composed of text and images. Search engines comb through these elements to decide whether or not a given page will be valuable to someone searching for the page’s main topic.
Uniquely Valuable Page Text
Text can be further broken down into headings, subheadings, paragraphs, links, and lists. Google pays attention to all of these components.
Strategically using keywords/phrases in these elements will help you rank well, but you must use them in a way that makes sense. Simply listing a bunch of keywords will do nothing for you, as Google will view that as useless and thereby deduct points when calculating that page’s rank.
Informative Images
What makes an image informative in Google’s eyes? While Google’s page crawlers aren’t examining the actual content of the image, they are examining how the image is named and tagged. This affects both the page’s rank and whether or not the image will appear when searching Google Images for the same search phrase.
Google considers the file name of the image and the alt text, which are then compared to the text on the page for relevancy.
For example: if a page about goat milk soap contains an image of goat milk soap that is named IMG_0713.jpg and has no alt text, that image won’t likely be picked up by Google Images, nor will Google view that image as adding value to the page for someone searching for goat milk soap.
By contrast, if that image is named goat-milk-soap.jpg and is tagged with alt text reading “a bar of our goat milk soap”, it has a much greater chance of both improving the page’s rank for the search phrase “goat milk soap” and appearing in Google Images for the same search.
Your teachers hated plagiarism, and so does Google
Ethical reasons aside, plagiarism is also bad for SEO. If you steal text that originated on another website, Google will figure it out. They might penalize you for it, and at the very least will not rank you higher because your content isn’t original.
Look at it from your customer’s perspective: if you say the same things as your competitors, why should they choose you over them? You’re both the same, right? Wrong! You are uniquely superior to your competitors, and you should tell your customers why by offering unique content that sets you apart as an authority on the subject.
Who should write your content?
Perhaps you’re an excellent writer. Maybe writing just isn’t your forte. If that’s the case, talk to an SEO copywriter! An SEO copywriter will work with you to translate your outline of your business into fresh, artfully-crafted text that not only impresses your customers, but grabs Google’s attention as well.
