Toronto SEO Blog

It all starts with content.  Your whole site’s based on it.  It’s what people come to your site for and it’s what will keep visitors engaged and is what convinces them to buy your products or services.

In most cases you’re not starting with a blank state, you’ve already built your site and as your online experience evolved, you’ve come to the SEO Services stage and have realized that there are improvements to your site, content included, that will lead to increased web traffic, sales and ultimately, revenue.

Back to Keyword Lists

For new and existing sites, the place to start with your content expansion and optimization process is back with your keyword lists.  The foundation of your SEO campaign, the keyword list you’ve created (or will have us create), will map what pages your site requires to maximize the SEO impact.

Each page on your site should map to a main keyword and supporting keywords – this will illustrate what pages on your site is missing, or what pages you already have need to be optimized and around what term.  It keeps things organized and makes the content optmization process easier to manage.

Assuming you’ve already created your keyword lists – and have them all mapped out, here are the components that you’ll want to incorporate into the new content you’re creating.

Keyword Incorporation/Density

If you’ve determined that page 1 maps to the term Blue Widgets – then you’ll want to ensure that the theme of the content is all about Blue Widgets, and supporting keywords like buying blue widgets, blue widget sales, how to use blue widgets, etc…  Incorporate a healthy number of specific mentions of the actual text “blue widgets”, but don’t over do it and make the copy look spammy.

In addition to incorporating the main keywords into the copy, you’ll also want to incorporate other unrelated keywords, that then link to these other pages.  Being part of the keyword list creation process, you’ll already know the main internal link terms, so you’ll just need to make sure that during the copywriting process you’re referring to this list and blending it into the copy.

Content Quantity – How Much Do You Need?

In terms of quantity – it depends on the type of page you’re working on.

If it’s a main or sub-category page, then you should have plenty of content – 3,000-4,000 characters with spaces.  Make sure that your design team understands the importance of content and builds a suitable template that allows for this amount of copy.  You’ll want to provide a few concise paragraphs of content above the fold, followed by your main or sub category options, then provide the bulk of the content below the fold.

If it’s a product page, then you’ll want to have 1,500-2,000 characters with spaces, again the layout can be tailored so that the page can handle the beefy content, with out negatively impacting the user experience.  It’s a balancing act, as not everyone wants to read a novel to order a new TV.  Design layouts can be created that allow you to split up the content, with shorter, more concise content up top, above the fold, and more in-depth content below the fold for those that want to read it (and for search engines of course).

If you don’t offer products, but offer services – then follow the main or sub-category page guideline.  With services you can tend to tailor your pages more easily then product oriented eCommerce sites that have more rigid requirements.  But both service and product sites should follow the same overall process of using your keyword list to map out what pages are responsible for what keywords, and incorporate the internal linking structure throughout.

Link Baiting Content

To help diversify your link profile, to build links, and to help provide users with additional information about the products, or services you provide, a section containing useful resource style information is a great addition to any site, large or small.

Product guides, white papers, video sections, contests, participating on related forums, even blogs, can be used to give people something to share with friends and family, share on social channels, while at the same time giving you and the search engines a place to create extra content to help nail some of those other keywords that were difficult to map to normal pages.  There’s many different opportunities with this type of content that isn’t possible with traditional product or category style pages – here you can use a little more style and be creative.  If you’re going to do product guides, be different, go the extra mile, provide everything your customers could possibly want to know and then some, and make it easy to read, and provide links throughout to actual product pages, and to social channels so users can share easily.

Forum Participation

Get involved with related forums, providing expert advice for users for free.  Create and establish identities on deal forums like RedFlagDeals and share deals and contest information – these can generate hundreds, even thousands of visits in a single day not to mention the natural link value the posts create.

Content Formatting

In all sites, make sure that you’re making use of style sheet classes to keep the code clean and simple. Headers and sub-headers should be used on all pages and that you’re only using one H1 tag per page, and that it contains the main keyword for that page. Use other headers, H2, or H3, for chunking up the copy, and that they also contain main, or supporting keywords specific to the page.

Dealing with Duplicate Content

If you’re running a large eCommerce site with thousands of products, you’re likely using a ton of duplicate content, as it’s quite common to just use whatever the product manufacturers have provided.  If you’re doing this, you need to stop and figure out a way to take what the manufacturers are providing and re-write it BEFORE the product goes live.  Yes, this will slow down your internal processes, but in the long run this process will also increase sales, traffic and revenue – paying for itself in spades.

If you’re displaying the same product across multiple categories, select one version as the primary, and use of the canonical tag to point this main version on all the other copies. The canonical tag tells the search engines that this page is a copy and that this is the URL of the main version.

Spelling Issues

Nothing will make your site look more unprofessional than a bunch of mis-spellings and typos.  For small sites, review all content thoroughly before it goes live.

For large sites, there are automated tools that you can use that will crawl all your pages and check not only for spelling errors, but also for broken links and other issues, and they are quite affordable, so use them.

Content Optimization for SEO Summary

Remember to balance your content writing style so that it’s solving two problems at once, user experience and SEO.  Make sure that you’re using your keyword lists as intended and that you’re not missing key pages that should be part of your site.

Create content that’s easy to read, fun would be good too.  A sense of style, and humor can be fused to create copy that’s not only useful, but is actually enjoyable to read.

Get a good copywriter on board, be it on a contract basis, or as a full time employee.  They’ll pay for themselves in no time, and although we all like to think we know best whether it’s because you own the company, or that you know more about SEO than the writer, or that you simply know more about the products – the reality is you’re not a copywriter and would be better served by leaving the copy-writing to the copy-writers.

Visit our main site for help with content and other SEO Toronto services.