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Search Engine Optimisation (SEO)

Good content that visitors want to read is the most important thing for the page to rank high in search engines.

A simple three-step keyword analysis

  1. Choose keywords you think visitors will use when searching for your content.
  2. Do a Google search on the chosen keywords and consider whether your content would be relevant among the search results. If it is not relevant, then try another keyword.
  3. Choose a few keywords to focus on. It is essential to use words where your content can rank high.

What does search engine optimisation mean?

Search engine optimization, SEO, improves your website to rank higher in search engine results for important keywords.

The content is essential for visitors and search engines

As a web editor, you have an important role in optimizing for search engines. You should therefore ensure that:

  • the content is relevant. Stick to the topic and clear out anything unnecessary for understanding.
  • the content is unique. Having the same text in several places on the website results in poorer search results.
  • readability is good. Be sure to break up your content with subheadings and bulleted lists.
  • the content is updated, so search engines see it as live
  • reuse pages when you need to update it. If you create an entirely new page for the same topic, the search value the old page gained by having existed for a longer time is lost.

Plan your text

Remember to write your text for the visitors and not for search engines. A text that is easy for readers to understand is also good for search engines.

Use synonyms and related terms but avoid filling the text with many keywords. Use whole terms that users might search for. Competition among search results is much higher for, for example, "computer engineering" than for "computer engineering degree programs".

The parts of the text that are especially important for search engines are:

  • main heading
  • preamble
  • subheadings
  • bulleted lists and numbered lists
  • words in bold
  • words that come early in a paragraph.

Writing for the web

Internal links

From a SEO perspective, linking to other pages on the same website is good. The pages must be relevant to the content, and it is vital to have only a few links, as the page can feel spammy.

Links

Describe images

The most important things to consider when it comes to images and search engines are:

  • images that are relevant to the content
  • alt texts
  • descriptive filename.

Images on the web

Web addresses

URLs are important for search engines to assess the page's content correctly. What you write about should also be included in the address so the visitor knows what content they end up on if they click the link.

In Polopoly, the URL is taken from the main header. As the system suggests a relatively short address, you should have the most essential word first in the heading.