Content, Content, Content!

Did I mention content? When it comes to SEO, the most important thing on your website is the content. No matter how much time and effort you put into optimizing your code, your layout, your navigation, and all the other bits that make up your website, without good, relevant, content that people are looking for you will find very little benefit from all of your efforts. Content is the one thing that rules everything else you do.

Your website needs to have content and the content needs to be good, keyword rich, and relevant to the theme of your site. If you are selling jewelry then content relating to sterling silver, gold, precious and semi-precious gemstones, lapidary, jewelry making, and such shiould be your goal. Analyzing the keywords for your chosen industry, product line or service information is a must. The content on your page, especially in the top 35 lines or so, must be keyword rich. A keyword density, the ratio of any given keyword to the totality of content text, should ideally be about 3.5%. The more often your keywords appear (to a point) the more relevant your content is for the searcher in the view of a search engine.

But don't over do it. Don't ignore the fact that your content is meant for a person to read. It is meant to be readable, interesting and informative. A lower keyword density, but with good, readable, text, is better than spamming keywords for the sake of density. Ultimately it is all about providing good information to your viewers and, hopefully, converting them from visitors to your website into customers who buy your products and/or services. Remember that human visitors don't care about keyword density and want to be informed and enlightened by your content.

Stale content is just as bad as poor content. Revise and update your content regularly. Changes, re-writes and additions should be taking place constantly. If your website doesn't have tools to let you easily access and modify content then you should looking into having them available to you. Managing your online store, your website, is much like working in a real store -- changing displays and window decoration from time to time, seasonally, when you offer new items, and when you hold sales and clearances. Run your website like a real-world store and you will find your results improving in the search engines and more traffic coming to your store.