You want to be at the top of the search engine results pages. But how do you get there? Google and the rest of the search engines keep tweaking the way they list websites trying to make sure that the best information sources are found first.
So the question then becomes how to you show the search engines that you are the best information source?
Do You Talk the Talk?
Search engines work with words. The words you use on your page describe what your site is about and demonstrate how good its information is. By using the right words you can show the search engines that you know what you’re talking about.
But how do the search engines know what the right words are?
Well, they basically read around the subject. Google, etc. already have a good idea of who’s likely to be an expert (site reputation, social media signals, etc). They can then look at the words used by these sites and start to build up a picture of the phrases that are associated with your marketplace. In essence the more good websites that use a particular word or phrase, then the more relevant those words are to your subject matter.
So ‘talking the talk’ boils down to using the same words and phrases that experts in your field use. If you can work out what words the search engines rate as important you can fit them into your text to sound like an expert.
If you think about it this makes perfect sense. If you are an expert in your field writing about your subject, these are probably the phrases you would have to use anyway.
Enter Page Themeing
This idea of working out what words the search engines expect to find and then building them into your content is sometimes referred to as themeing. If you get it right you can drastically improve the relevance of your web pages.
How To Find the Right Words
The only way to get an idea of what the right words are is to analyse the top search engine results. You need to read through each page and make a note of the words and phrases they use. Very quickly you’ll start to see certain phrases being used over and over again. What you’re really looking for is not how many times a phrase is used in total, but how many different sites use that phrase. For example a phrase might be used 30 times in the top 10 results pages, but only on three different sites (each one using the phrase a few times). These words won’t be as important as a phrase used only 15 times, but appearing on all ten top pages.
Once you’ve got your list try to fit the most important phrases into your page content. You don’t have to use every single word, just get a good spread of phrases concentrating on the ones that appear on the most different sites. This will improve your themeing and boost your search engine rankings.
