I am using a WordPress Plugin called Scribe. It is the bees knees for small businesses wanting to get the most out of organic search engine optimization of their posts on their WordPress Sites. New Tricks offers a marketing group for small businesses with WordPress Sites in Atlanta. We meet weekly for an hour and a half to go over topics such as search engine optimization and really work on meeting each businesses marketing goals. We have been having a lot of fun with this Scribe Plugin since it teaches and corrects your efforts to write organic SEO content. Here are some of the best practices Scribe suggests to rank well on your search terms.
Search engine optimization (SEO) in a nutshell is the practice of improving the traffic to a website. Organic SEO should not try and trick search engines ( black hat SEO) . It is best if it comes from good organic content written to show in the natural results of a search engine. It helps to understand how to provide your information-rich content in a way that is naturally weighted by the search engines by following the so called “rules” of search engines. Her are some current best practices.
To Start
The first step to writing content a post (or page) is that is search engine optimized is to determine the primary topic. This will be your keyword phrase or initial keyword and should be the central theme for the post content. The more closely the post is related to the keyword phrase, the more relevant the page will be ranked by the search engine. The goal for good SEO is to write a full post about the topic of your one keyword phrase.
Content Title
Here are the Scribe guidelines for writing titles or headlines:
- The title length should not exceed 72 characters. This will ensure the full title is visible in a search result, increasing the likelihood of a click-through.
- The title length should include at least 4 words.
- Include the keyword phrase in the title. This will increase the relevancy of your content for that keyword phrase. In addition, the title usually becomes the headline for the SERP, and including the keyword will increase the likelihood of a click-through.
- Include a Primary Keyword toward the beginning of your Title to increase the relevancy of the keyword within the search engines’ indexes.
Description
The description will generally be the “snippet” copy for the search result. Depending on the website that hosts your content, the description may also be used as a subhead for a press release, serve as the first paragraph of a web page or be the <meta> description − only seen on the SERP. When writing the description for the content, follow these basic guidelines:
- The description length should not exceed 165 characters. This will ensure the full description is visible in a search result.
- Include the keyword phrase in the description. This will increase the relevancy of your content for that keyword phrase.
- Include a Primary Keyword toward the beginning of your Description to increase the relevancy of the keyword within the search engines’ indexes.
Body
When writing content for the body, follow these basic guidelines:
- The body length should be at least 300 words, ideally centered on one or two keyword phrase(s).
- For keyword density, each keyword or keyword phrase should not represent more than 5.5% of the total words on the page. Otherwise, the search engine may consider the page to be keyword stuffing.
- To give a keyword phrase additional emphasis, bold the first occurrence of the keyword phrase in the first paragraph of body. Including some content in a bulleted list is another way to add emphasis.
- Include one hyperlink for every 120 words of body content spread out evenly down the page. For example, 500 words of content should include 5 hyperlinks with approximately each paragraph containing one hyperlink. Be sure not to “spam” or “keyword stuff” your content with a paragraph of keywords linked to the same web page over and over again.
- Include a hyperlink at the beginning of the body in order to show prominence.
- Ideally, hyperlinks should link to content that is relevant to the keywords, preferably to an interior page of your website, but when linking to another website, link to an interior page. In other words, do not link to a website’s home page if there is an interior page that is more relevant to the keyword phrase.
- As an example, consider a relevant hyperlink to be included in content focused on “home medical supplies” is a link to an article about “The increasing need for home medical supplies” at http://www.timelymedicalnews.com/supply. Following are four acceptable ways to link to the article:
- “According to Timely Medical News, home medical supply needs have more than doubled since 2005.”
- “According to Timely Medical News, http://www.timelymedicalnews.com/supply, home medical supply needs have more than doubled since 2005.”
- “According to a new report, home medical supply needs have more than doubled since 2005.”
- “According to http://www.timelymedicalnews.com/supply, home medical supply needs have more than doubled since 2005.”
DEFINITIONS OF TERMS
Keyword – a word (or combination of words) that describes the topic or subject of a piece of content. It is also a word or combination of words that are used in a search engine to search for a topic or subject.
Primary Keyword – a term developed by Scribe™ to designate the keyword(s) or keyword phrase(s) in a piece of content that are most likely to result in an organic search listing based on Scribe’s analysis of the content and the keyword usage.
Keyword Analysis – a proprietary process utilized by Scribe™ to determine the keyword(s) or keyword phrase(s) in a piece of content based on popular search terms. It includes a report on the rank, prominence, frequency, density and search volume of the keyword(s)/keyword phrase(s), and provides related terms, along with their search volumes for comparison.
Related Keyword Tag – words or combinations of words added to a piece of content that describe the main topic(s) or subject(s) of a piece of content.
Keyword Rank – a proprietary algorithm developed by Scribe™ that determines the value of keyword(s) or keyword phrase(s) in relationship to a piece of content and to each other. Keywords are ranked in descending order of importance as either Primary, Important, Significant, or Not Emphasized.
Keyword Density – the number of times a keyword or keyword phrase appears in a particular piece of content in relation to the total number of words in the content. It is usually represented as a percentage; the higher the number, the greater the density. Current SEO best practices suggest that a keyword’s density be less than 5% for one piece of content.
Keyword Frequency – the number of times a keyword or keyword phrase appears in a particular piece of content. It is usually represented as a whole number; the higher the number, the greater the keyword frequency.
Keyword Prominence – a proprietary formula developed by Scribe™ that determines the value of a keyword or keyword phrase based on its relative placement within a particular piece of content. Prominence is rated as either Very Low, Low, Medium, High or Very High. The higher the prominence, the more favorable the keyword/keyword phrase is presumed to be weighted in the content by the search engine algorithm. You should strive to achieve a Prominence rating of high or very high for your Primary Keyword/keyword phrase for a page. However, all keywords/keyword phrases on a single page should not have a high or very high prominence rating to minimize the chance that search engines will consider you guilty of keyword stuffing or spamming.
Keyword Research – the act of exploring keywords. The process frequently involves reviewing search volumes of targeted keywords and alternative keywords to determine which keywords to include in content.
Keyword Stuffing (or keyword spamming) – adding an excessive number of keywords or keyword phrases to a web page or repeating a keyword or keyword phrase excessively on one page in place of relevant content. It is typically a technique used by those trying to “trick” the search engines into ranking a website in organic searches.
Trend – the approximate search volume of a keyword or keyword phrase over the past 12 months. Trend is helpful to identify seasonality of keywords that may have a low volume but are on the rise.
SERP (Search Engine Results Page) – the web page(s) containing hyperlinks to related content provided by a search engine in response to a search query. Usually, the results page returns both paid ads (sponsored links) and organic listings.
SEO (Search Engine Optimization) – the practice of improving the traffic to a website from the organic or natural results of a search engine.
SEO Best Practices (white hat SEO) – utilizing search engine optimization (SEO) techniques that align with the guidelines of the search engines’ ranking algorithms without the use of trickery. Examples of trickery include using hidden text, duplicating content, link farming and keyword spamming, to name a few.
The Scibe LowDown
Scribe is a Premium Plugin which means there is a fee for this plugin unlike most WordPress plugins which are open source and therefor available free. The basic scribe package will be adequate for most as it costs 27.00 which gives you the ability to use it to check how your post rates 30 times in a month. Most people I know are not posting more than once a day so this works out fine. Unfortunately, the number of unused evaluations does not roll over to the next month. But, you are able to use it on more than one site. So you can share it with a friend if you don’t do 30 posts a month.
It is very easy to use and makes writing great optimized posts a game – by giving each post a score that you can work on and change. I love to try and get it my scores to 100%. The whole things appears on your admin area when you are writing or editing a post. Couldn’t be easier. You should give it a try.
