what is content optimization
Important of content optimization
content optimization in website design

earch bots love fresh content and there is no exception here. This is why content optimization plays a major role in any SEO campaign. The point to be noted here is that content optimization is not a solitary process and involves optimization of the webpage as a whole. This means content optimization can be defined as the optimization of the on-page content in correspondence with other factors like title tags, Meta tags, alt tags, web page URL, domain name and internal links.

The process of content optim ization
1) Keyword Research
Keyword analysis plays a major role in optimizing content and is basically the first and more important step. In a narrow sense keyword research involves researching and finding keywords that people use in a day today context to search over the internet. Hence a keyword research should help a person locate all variations of keywords that people use for searching (a particular product/service/information).

There are many free as well as pay and use tools available over the internet that can help in effective keyword research. Some popular ones are overture and wordtracker. Wordtracker is a pay-and-use tool that offers real user search statistics from many meta search engines like MetaCrawler and DogPile.

2) Keyword Analysis
The next step after a through keyword research is keyword analysis. Keyword analysis basically involves finding the right keywords from a bunch of available ones. This involves analyzing the most effective keywords that can generate traffic and at the same time are easy to optimize for. At the end of the day keyword analysis should give access to a set of keywords that are actually used by people and at the same time unique enough to generate highly targeted traffic. Keyword analysis is an extremely important step as wrong keywords can make your SEO efforts vain.

There are many tools available over the internet that help in effective keyword analysis. One very good tool in this regard is offered by Axandra

3) Using Keywords on a webpage
When optimizing for content the webpage as a whole needs to be taken into consideration. This involves the on-page content along with title tags, Meta tags, alt tags and the page URL.

For on page content optimization the first and foremost step is to find out the keywords that matter most. After this is estimated the keywords are spread out inside the content in the most natural manner. Search bots give more importance to keywords placed in the heading tags and within the first few lines.

A minimum of 200 words per page and proper spreading out of keywords is considered best from the optimization point of view. One must also ensure that the keywords are used naturally within the content. This is important from the usability point of view. To achieve this you can even break up the keywords without changing the order. For instance when using a difficult keyword like 'real estate Florida cheap' you can break it up without changing the word flow as follows;

'Finding real estate in Florida which is cheap requires proper research online.'
Important things to take into consideration for content optimization

Location of Keywords

Location of keywords inside the content is very important. In basic search bots tend to give more importance to keywords that are placed within the heading tags and those that appear within the first few lines. Some search bots also give importance to keywords that appear at the end to the content. In addition search engines also place much importance to keywords that appear in bold and italics.

Checking keyword density

It is important that keywords are used properly and not exceedingly which could lead to search engine spamming. Most bots today can easily identity pages that are filled with keywords and can even penalize them other than dropping their rankings. This is the reason why it becomes extremely important to manage the right density of keywords on a webpage. A particularly useful tool to analyze keywords is offered by keyworddensity.com

Increasing Keyword importance

Keywords that appear in bold or italics are given more importance by search bots. In addition keywords that appear in the heading using heading tags like <h1></h1>, <h2></h2>....<h6></h6> are given special importance. Search bots also give importance to keywords that appear in links and in the beginning of a webpage.