So you’ve researched your keywords and are thinking, “What now?” We’ve put together this free SEO article to help you take the next steps in order to push your website up the search rankings. High quality, keyword rich and original content is key to getting more search engine traffic to your website so here are 10 tips on how to make the most out of yours!

1) Be bold for SEO success

When writing content for your pages, you can highlight certain aspects of your text that are important or should stand out. Doing this not only draws the attention of your readers, but also of search engines. If you’re using a blogging tool such as Wordpress, you’ll be able to use your admin section to make things bold with ease. However, if you’re writing things by hand, a little HTML technique is in order! Encasing your phrase with <b> and </b> will make it bold and so search engines will deem it more important. Make sure your bold text is keyword rich for SEO success.

2) Headings!

Like using bold tags, search engines look closely at your content headings to deem how relevancy. As headings are usually a concise sum-up of what’s about to come, search engines judge them as a good indication of your content. So, make sure you use headings and make sure these are keyword rich and relevant to your content. The html code for a main heading is <h1>, a slightly less important heading is <h2> and a mini heading is <h3>.

3) SPAG your way to the top of Google.

SPAG stands for Spelling, Punctuation and Grammar. Poorly written prose or content, filled with spelling mistakes and errors will result in search engine penalties. Better content is usually written without such errors, so if you’re make spelling mistakes, Google, Yahoo et al will assume you’re not an authority on your topic.

4) Straight to the top.

Organise your content in a SEO friendly way; this means try to keep concise, important information at the top of the page. Write a brief introduction that is keyword rich and put a header at the top; that way, when a search engine robot visits your site it will give it extra points for its concise, convenient and relevant organisation.

5) Originality is the answer.

Don’t rip off other people’s content. Google and other search engines use sophisticated techniques to check whether or not you’re just copying someone else; if you’re found doing this, you can suffer heavily in the rankings department. It’s much better to write your own quality material and post this on your website. If you’re collating lots of different stories from around the web, it can be acceptable to post content written by others, so long as you don’t claim authorship or violate copyright in any other way.