4 Mins

How to win with on-page content

Published on Mar 11, 2014 by Sallyanne

On-page content allows search engines to get more context about the page; it also provides visitors with detailed information. As a brand, looking at your on-page content allows you to answer questions, increase trust factors and share your expertise with audiences.

More content also makes social sharing easier – more content = more subjects to talk about online.

It is worth going through your website and looking at additional content you can add but be cautious about adding content for the sake of it. Think from the visitor’s perspective:

• What questions might they want answering?

• Do they need to understand technical jargon so need explanation?

• What information would make them more likely to get in touch with you rather than another company?

• What makes your products / service unique and best for them?

Content which is useful and informative will also help your organic ranking, as search engines want to provide the best resource for a search query.

I repeat: WANTS TO PROVIDE THE BEST RESOURCE FOR A SEARCH QUERY.

If you provide relevant, useful content then search engines are more likely to reward your site just because you are providing great answers. Easy win!

HOW TO FIND SEARCH TERMS WHICH WIN

You can get a pretty good idea of what your audience is searching for from conversations with clients. For a deeper analysis there are a number of tools you can use to generate new phrases or to work out which phrases you should be including more.

One of the best (free) tools you can use is Google Trends. This tool allows you to get an understanding of search volume for particular phrases. Based on this you can then include these terms in existing pages on your website or produce blog posts including these terms.

For example: one of the services Noisy Little Monkey provides businesses is social media marketing. As with anything, there are a number of different phrases used to describe this service which a user may enter as a search query; some being:

• Social media marketing

• Digital marketing

• Facebook marketing

• Social media agency

• Social media strategy

To work out how to describe this service stick all of the above into Google Trends and here are the results:

The above research shows the search volume for UK audiences and indicates that ‘digital marketing’ is the most popular phrase in terms of search volume. This phrase should be used in the content of the page.

Interestingly, ‘Facebook marketing’ is the second highest phrase in terms of search volume. Based on this the phrase should be included in the on-page content but I could make more of a song and dance about it – perhaps writing a blog post on ‘why businesses should use Facebook marketing’ or creating a whole new page explaining what it is and the benefits of Facebook marketing for businesses.

In terms of your business, research which phrases best describe your products and services and currently get the most volume and use those in your on-page content.

You will find that volume of search for certain phrases changes over time, especially if the phrase has become topical (changes in law, lots of social mentions). Take for example the results for ‘injunctions’

The phrase saw masses of volume in May 2011. This was the period of ‘super injunctions’ (remember Ryan Giggs making the headlines after being named on Twitter as having an affair with a reality TV star? Or Jeremy Clarkson?)

Once you have a list of high volume search phrases, naturally insert them into your content. Do not keyword stuff. This is the process of loading a webpage with keywords in an attempt to manipulate a site's ranking in Google search results. Search engine algorithms are clever and highly sensitive ‘beings’. They will identify sites which are keyword stuffing.

Rule of thumb: if it reads naturally for a human then roll with it.