Creating a perfect SEO enhanced webpage

There's two important factors that contribute to the popularity of a website from the perspective of a search engine; namely the quantity and quality of its content.

Since most webmasters have limited manhours to devote to creating fresh new content, it becomes important to ensure that every bit of SEO juice is squeezed from what content is created. This is what has driven the growth and importance of SEO.

There's nothing magical or particularly difficult about creating SEO enhanced webpages. Simply follow the same process, discussed below, each time you create a new webpage:

1. Set an SEO goal
2. Identify a niche SEO topic
3. Research SEO keyword and keyphrases
4. Implement correct page format and structure
5. Provide facilities for linking and sharing
6. Promote

Let's look at what each step entails:

Set an SEO goal

Its important to have some sort of goal before you set about creating new content. Sitting down and writing about whatever pops into your head may be fun, but it's the equivalent of closing your eyes and firing blindly as fast as possible. Its much better to take careful aim at a specific target and hit the first time.

Any time you sit down to write something you should be thinking of what you want to get out. Maybe its tonnes of backlinks, or maybe its to boost your website's PageRank above a competitor's for a certain topic. Whatever it is, know what you want before you get down to business.

Understand that you have limited manhours with which to create content. Therefore, writing stuff arbitrarily can be wasteful and not as productive as you might want. Always ask yourself how new content will enhance your Google PageRank.

Identify a niche SEO topic

Look at how content is structured on some of the larger content driven websites that rank highly on Google and other search engines. You'll find that each page, while it might have tonnes of ads and links to other pages, has a very narrow focus on a very specific topic. Study the most popular pages to learn why they are popular and use what you learn to write bettercontent.

Think about what you want to say and then frame it within the context of the website or blog as a whole. Make each individual page specific to one thing only. That's not to say it can't link or relate to other pages, but it should cover a niche topic in its own right.

There are a number of reasons its important to identify and target a niche SEO topic. First and foremost, it will help keep your content focussed and clear which is an important factor for human readers. Secondly, it makes it easier for the search engines to understand what the content is about and allows you to use keywords and keyphrases suited to that particular topic. It also helps differentiate parts of your site that might otherwise compete with each other.

Research SEO keywords and keyphrases

Once you have a topic, it becomes really important to understand how your target market will find that content. What words or phrases might they type into Google in order to find that page. It's not an easy question to answer theoretically because a hundred different people might type in a hundred different phrases when trying to locate the same information.

Fortunately there is a solution provided by Google. The Google Keywords tool allows you to search for the keywords and keyphrases you think are most important and gives a break down of how popular those phrases are in relation to all related keywords and keyphrases.

You might find that after identifying four or five keyphrases to be targetted in your webpage, that, in fact, there are one or two others that are more important or have far less competition. In this case, you have made some real progress because you know that, as far as Google is concerned, you are going to be using the best words and phrases to boost your niche topic's SEO.

Implement correct page format and structure

Knowing what the topic is and which keywords and phrases are the best ones to use is not the end of the story for SEO. What becomes important now is ensuring that they are used in the most efficient and powerful way. Effectively, this comes down to structuring the document properly:

Use meaningful META keywords and write a keyword enriched, human readable META description for the page. Many people incorrectly believe that the META description is no longer important, but it is. Google still uses the META description under the page title when displaying results. Since humans read this it can play a crucial role in convincing them to click on your page.

Use keywords and keyphrases within headings. I should point out that Google loves well structured documents - think along the lines of how a school text book is laid out, with chapter titles, section headings, nice paragraphing and clear and relevant information.

Provide facilities for linking and sharing

It's important to make it super easy for readers to share and link to your content. Link building is hugely important factor when it comes to search engine optimization. Make sure there are buttons or links clearly visible on each page allowing people to use their favorite social, news or linking website - like the ones that appear at the top of this page ;)

Remember that if your page appeals to someone who already has a huge following and they decide to share your page, it's quite possible that you can go from no traffic to huge amounts of web traffic overnight. It happens all the time...

Promote

While it is a dream come true to have a page generate a hundred thousand hits from linking or social networking sites, why leave your SEO survival to chance? Undertake a bit of marketing and promotions to get your pages seen. What you do depends on the nature of your content and who might be interested in reading it. Be creative.

For example, if it relates to business you might want to share it in a business group on Linked In, or if it is social in nature you might tell people about it on FaceBook.

If you're creating content on a regular basis (which you should be), ensure that you have an RSS feed to allow other sites to aggregate your content - sending links back to your site in the process and increasing your perceived authority in the search engines.