Been a while since you’ve taken an English class? Well, it certainly has been for me, but I recently noticed a technique that I have been using subconsciously to maximize my SEO efforts.

So what’s the trick? I substitute pronouns for nouns. There it is. That’s it. oops, I’ll have to go back and edit that. Dang it, that too… uggh. Pronouns are everywhere.

Don’t remember what a pronoun is? Well, a pronoun is a substitute for a noun. If there are any English professors that can help me out here, that would be great. Some common pronouns are: it, they, them, him, her and those. They are placeholders for something that you described previously.

So how do you use it? Correction. How should you use this technique of substituting a noun for a pronoun? Do you see how I substituted ‘it’ with ‘this technique of substituting a noun for a pronoun’ ? That’s how this technique works.

So how does this noun for pronoun substitution technique work, as it applies to search engine optimizations? This SEO technique works by:

1) providing more content to your readers and search engines. Longer posts/content give search engines a clue that it is quality content – length is one factor of a good post. More content also gives your readers an indication that you have something valuable to say. Ever find a post that is two sentences long? It’s really hard to get anything out of two sentences, and you leave the site with a sour taste in your mouth and you don’t want to return. Don’t let your customers and visitors get that sour taste in their mouth about your site. Give them quality content, and length and nouns is a great way to achieve this.

and

2) by giving search engines an increase in the keyword density of the words that you are using for nouns. If this page is a well targeted page to a certain keyword set, you will do everything in your power to keep the pronoun to noun substitutions focused around a certain subset of keywords. If however, your article or blog post is a general purpose article that could garner visitors from a number of keywords, then you will be utilizing un-targeted keywords, which is still going to be found by someone somewhere. For most articles, I prefer to target a pre-defined set of keywords that I’ve researched well in advance, but I’ll take a non-targeted keyword set over a pronoun any day of the week.

So there you have it. blast! Common cliches use pronouns so often, that I find that I’m still using the cliches. Don’t go overboard with the pronoun to noun technique, only use it when it makes sense (like this sentence)

So go back through your site, and see if you can optimize your site for the search engines by making a few small tweaks to your pronouns. You won’t see immediate nor dramatic effects, but keep an eye on your web analytic stats over the next few months after you do this, and it just might surprise you on the keywords that people are finding you with.