There’s one thing that website owners always want, and that is to have a good flow of website traffic. It doesn’t matter if you have an e-commerce type website, a blog, or a one page website that shows people you exist, you’re not likely to have the quantity of traffic you desire without unique content that is descriptive and in abundance. Especially for your home page, the quality of the text is essential.
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In the video above, Google employee Matt Cutts talks about quality of content versus quantity. Focusing on blogs, what he has to say actually applies to most websites. Is your content useful, funny, exciting, or interesting? If it wasn’t your website, would you actually want to go there more than once?
Using Images Instead of Text
Replacing text with images is a bad idea. When a search engine like Google analyzes your website, it can’t see the text you may have in images. I know plain text on a page is boring compared to an image, but more than anything else, that text tells the search engine what your website is all about. I’ve seen websites that were made entirely of images or flash media, and the website owners couldn’t understand why they weren’t showing up on Google. Yes, you need text.
Stay on Topic
If you have a website that is meant to attract a certain type of customer or person, don’t stray from what you should be focused on. Having content that is out of place is confusing, and although you might think it is cute or revealing something personal, it can disconnect you from the site visitor you are attempting to attract.
Make Sure Your Text Includes Certain Words
I can’t tell you how many times I’ve had a customer show me their website and ask me why it isn’t helping their business, yet the only thing on their home page is a picture and their phone number. If your website is about marketing, make sure the word “marketing” exists in the text. If the website is for graphic design, the words “graphic” and “design” better be there somewhere. Even better would be to include these keywords more than once.
Don’t Overdo It
Yes, you can overdo it by including your keywords too many times. Ideally your text would actually be something a human can read, or would want to read. I know it may be tempting to have your keywords appear 100 times on a single page, but try to stop worrying about the search engines. You won’t get very far doing something like that anyways, because these search engines know all the ways people try to cheat.
Don’t Rely on Magical SEO Tactics
Read the fine print when you sign that contract with that Search Engine Optimization company. I’ve never seen one that outright promised results, and you could spend thousands of dollars before you realize it hasn’t helped. Will they offer you a money-back guarantee? I don’t think that’s very likely.
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No matter what stage your website is in it’s development, you can’t count on a service to trick people into visiting your website through bad SEO tactics, and you may even be penalized for trying to go that route. Take time to write good quality content for your site visitors, and let it work for you.