As website designers and strategists, we’ve watched the web evolve dramatically over the last few years. One area that has changed the most is search engine optimization. I remember the first time one of our clients asked us about search back, say, in around 2005. At that time, SEO was practiced only by a few arcane maestros who, seemingly, couldn’t define what they did  succinctly but who, nevertheless, often got their clients’ website to the top of the Google heap (which is all a client really cared about anyway.) In the Philadelphia area, two of the best were, and remain Will Reynolds at Seer Interactive and Glenn Gabe from  G-Squared Interactive. As online marketing practices have evolved,  search engines have gotten smarter and apply the same sort of “human” reasoning in their evaluation of websites that, well, a human does. All of this has meant good things for our clients and website owners in general. Rather than having to understand a lot of esoteric search engine practices (and outsource even basic SEO decisions), everyday marketing people can now contribute a good deal to their brand’s overall search engine strategy.It all starts with content and keywords.  One of the ways the search engines have gotten smarter is in their recognition of the actual substance of the content of your website. Which leads us to the Tip of the Day:

Target Keywords on a Page by Page Basis

Many folks out there know that using keywords to describe your products or services is a good practice for search engine optimization. However, many don’t understand that every page of your site should be based on keyword research and be written with a specific set of keywords in mind for that page. Our business is a good demonstration of this principal. At Splat, we have a few different distinct services we provide for our customers. We design websites. And we also produce 3D animation and renderings. And we do a few other things, as well. But if you look at our site you’ll notice that there are only a couple of pages (namely, our home page and profile page) where we use a mix of keywords. On all the service-specific pages, we use keywords specific only to those services. Why do we follow this practice, you may ask? Because, basically, the search engines assign authority based on specificity of content. Search engines assume that, if you limit your copywriting to a few content areas (and keep referring to those content areas again and again…) you must be an authority in those areas. Conversely, if you choose to talk about a wide array of keywords on any given page of your site, the search engines make the tacit assumption that you’re a “jack of all trades, yet master of none.” Interestingly, though, the way to encompass multiple skills (or products) within a single website is to simply split those products or services across several pages or content areas of your website. So then, define your keywords for each page and reinforce them in keyword rich, yet compelling copywriting.