Keep Your Web Site Content Relevant

Visitors and search engines love content-rich web sites, but just having a lot of
content on your web site is not enough. It all has to be relevant to a main topic with
each page or section of the web site having a specific theme (And yes, this includes
any resource or links pages the site may have). Each page should have its own topic
and content should not stray to a different topic.

If you are promoting your graphic design business and have a page on business
card design, stay on the topic and refrain from using a page title such as "Graphic
Design company in Vancouver, Canada - business cards, logos, letterheads". Your
want the business card design to be the most important key phrase.

There are two main reasons for content relevancy. The first is so that visitors have
an easy time understanding the flow of your web site. Visitors who have to search
through multiple pages to find the information they're looking for won't be visitors
much longer. The average web site user takes about three seconds to decide
whether or not stay on a site. A clear idea of what your site is about should be
apparent immediately, followed by easy navigation to other pages that display
further topics in more detail.

The second reason for keeping content relevant throughout your web site is for
search engine algorithms. Keyword relevancy is an important part of search engine
optimization. The more relevant your web site's content is for a specific term, the
more likely the site is to show up near the top of search results for the term.

Keyword density is another big deal with search engines. There is an optimal ratio of
key terms to the overall amount of text that must be used for search engine
optimization purposes. The more unrelated terms that are used consistently
throughout the content will bring down the percentage of more important
keywords. Keyword density matters throughout an entire web site, not just on
certain pages.

Other areas to keep an eye on are the contact page, about us page, and any other
pages that you may not think are important to have optimized for search engines
such as advertising info, privacy policy, etc. For instance, some web sites have
pages devoted to reciprocal links. There's nothing wrong with them unless you link
out to a lot of unrelated web sites. The keywords that are used in the anchor text
and surrounding description text will detract from your overall site content if they
are not related. Incoming links from unrelated sites are fine, but keep in mind that
the links page counts as part of your web site as a whole.

Consider using a reciprocal links page as more of a resource for visitors instead of a
long list of irrelevant sites. This not only appeases search engines but your visitors
as well. And as mentioned before, both visitors and search engines should be kept
in mind when creating web site content.

John Metzler is the co-creator of Abalone Designs, Inc. - http://www.abalone.ca, a
Search Engine Optimization company in Vancouver, Canada. He has been involved in
web design and web marketing since 1999 and has helped turn Abalone Designs
into one of the top SEO companies in the world.

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