One important search engine optimization mistake made by novice web creators is hyperlinks on generic or unimportant content like “click here” or “see more”. Hyperlinks are special content, according to search engines, and should be considered carefully.

Content with hyper links, or even content that is bold or in italics, will get more consideration from a search engine when determining relevance of your page or for a particular search term or topic.

Listed below are the types of “emphasis” content search engines consider more important than other content on a page:

• content that is linked to another page on your website;
• content that is linked to an external page (though this could reduce your page rank if you have too many);
• content that is italicized;
• content that is bold;
• words that are included in any heading or subheading block.

To get the most out of a search engine crawl you must carefully analyze the content on your page and determine what key words and phrases will be linked, bolded, or otherwise highlighted on the page. But before you can do that you have to decide what key words and phrases you want search engines to find relevant for your website.This requires a bit of effort but is well worth your time.

First, find websites that are providing similar products and/or services as you. Check what key words and phrases are included in their meta data. Make a master list of all these words and phrases and see which ones pop up the most. These are probably a good start, as they indicate what words are working on others sites.

Next, analyze this list from your business’ perspective; what words should be added, or which can be eliminated? Make these changes until you feel you have covered your website page well (around 10 word phrases is recommended).This list now should be used to develop your content, and to determine what content will be emphasized on the page.

Here is an example; a sentence on a website page might read:

Below is how the sentence might be structured to take full advantage of the way search engines “read” website pages:

First, the sentence itself is far more compelling, and gives a feeling of movement or energy. Second, the hyperlink is now emphasizing the key words “coaching services” instead of the generic and meaningless words “click here”.  And last, the words “improve your communication skills” is in bold, indicating significance to search engines.

In the first example a search engine would understand the words “click here” to be significant, instead of seeing the phrases “coaching services”, and the additional bold content gives a search engine more key words to consider when determining relevance.

You will not be able to structure each and every sentence in this way, of course. Too much emphasis on a page actually have the opposite effect; none of it will catch a readers eye if it is all emphasized. But with careful selection of key word emphasis and, specifically, words used in hyperlinked text, you can help to ensure that search engines find your web content relevant for the topic areas you find relevant to visitors.