Your Website Needs Text

Darren Franks - July 16, 2009

Most webmasters do not realize how valuable good plain text on their top level (important) pages can be. For instance, in addition to providing a better experience for the user, plain, textual content provides the search engines with a way to assign relevancy to a page.

More plain words on a website targeting unique two to three word keyphrases can increase the reach in the search engines for more search terms and (if the content is good) can inspire other websites to link to you. Merely having a site that incorporates a list of links and cool Flash animation just doesn’t cut it, if you are looking to rank well in the search engines.

Of course, it can be difficult for website owners to come up with a couple of hundred words for all of the most important pages on the site, but at the very least, the homepage should have a paragraph or two outlining the main theme of the website. The homepage is the user’s entry point into the site and needs to give the user a clear understanding of what they can expect when the traverse the links to the other pages.