Entries Tagged 'search engine optimisation' ↓

I’ve often talked about the importance of search engine optimisation when creating website copy.

Keyword stuffing is a frequent practice that was done to try and attract the search engine spiders. Web site owners researched their keywords and simply used them as many times as possible within their text.

The hope was that the search spiders would jump for joy because of the number of keywords. And the site would then appear in the top listings because it was deemed highly relevant.

That might have been the hope but the reality was somewhat different. Although sites like these may well have achieved good rankings, their conversion rates were lower than half the teenagers trousers are these days.

The problem is that stuffing your copy with keywords renders it unreadable to people. If they can’t read it or it doesn’t make sense, they’re not going to hang around.

A classic example of this was recently highlighted in one of Nikki Pilkington’s tweets:

This has come from an actual site – a copywriting site! This single snippet contains the phrase ‘search engine optimisation’ no less than 17 times!!!!

Eek! Now do you see what I mean by unreadable?

This is an extreme example and I find it unbelievable that any copywriter would think that this sample of their ‘writing talent’ would convince a client to buy their services.

SEO done correctly will look like normal text. The keywords may not even be obvious because they appear naturally within the copy. After all if you sell orange dog collars, the likelihood is that that phrase is going to pop into your copy anyway.

The position of your keywords is far more important than their frequency.

SEO is a game

The game of SEO is about playing by Google’s rules to achieve good rankings. It’s about patience and research – things won’t happen over night. And above all it’s about understanding what your customer wants.

Unlike other marketing methods that are pushed in front of the reader (such as adverts, newsletters etc.), you can’t push your website in front of someone. Instead you have to make it attractive enough for them to find it.

Therefore you have to understand them and work out what they are searching for. Then, and only then, can you optimise your site and continue tweaking until you get great rankings.

Why do you need to know this?

Don’t get ripped off. If you approach a freelance copywriter to help you with your on page SEO, check out their website:

• Do they rank for their keywords? (if you found them through a Google search and are in the organic listings rather than sponsored links, the answer is yes)
• Is their site readable?
• Do they understand SEO?
• Do they ask you for your keywords?

If you answer no to any of the above they probably aren’t right for you.

If they start harping on about keyword density and their site looks like the one above, run away as fast as you can.

SEO copywriting is an art as much as it is a science – make sure you hire someone who is a Jedi Master in both.

Search engine optimisation – everyone knows the phrase, most people know what it is, some people think they know how to do it.

But only a few can do SEO.

By ‘do SEO’ I mean perform the miracle that is SEO copywriting. It is probably one of the hardest disciplines to master as you are effectively writing for two different audiences at the same time.

In the green corner we have your customers – real life, living and breathing people who you’ve got to convince if you want them to buy your product.

And in the red corner, the search engines – mystical algorithms you have to convince that your website is relevant to the search terms your customers are using.

What SEO is really all about?

In a previous post I looked at what SEO is really all about and that why keyword density is a thing of the past.

We’ve all seen dreadful copy on websites that is stuffed with keywords. The result is something that looks nasty, reads terribly and that won’t sell anything.

There are some people out there who maintain you can’t have well written, readable SEO copy.

Why not?

Copy that is written naturally and that engages with your customers is going to contain your keywords. But not so many that it renders the whole website unreadable. They will be present in sufficient numbers to help your organic rankings and provide relevant, interesting copy for your readers.

The truth is that SEO and great copy go hand in hand – don’t let anyone else try to tell you otherwise.

I stumbled upon this video which makes this point perfectly. It was put together by Ian Lurie of Conversation Marketing. It’s well worth watching so sit back, grab a cuppa and be enlightened.

In days gone by, most ‘SEO copywriters’ thought it enough to achieve that magical keyword density within their web copy to keep their clients happy.

WARNING – if your SEO copywriter tells you keyword density is still important, get yourself another copywriter.

There was an ad in my local paper recently from a company looking for a freelance SEO website copywriter. Intrigued, I responded with a few examples of my work and a brief explanation of SEO copywriting and what I would be able to do for them. The next day I got a call from them wanting to meet up.

That meeting was very enlightening. The guy told me he had spoken with a few people who’d responded to his ad – most of the SEO ‘experts’ couldn’t write and most of the SEO ‘copywriters’ obviously had no idea about the whole concept of search engine optimisation.

I had been called in because I was the only one who’d mentioned in my email that keyword density was not an important factor anymore. We had a very enlightening discussion.

Just plain chicken for me, forget the stuffing

You still see today websites that have their content stuffed to bursting point with keywords. In fact the copy is so jam packed it is unreadable.

Sure keywords are still important – more so in where they are positioned – but you’ll find natural writing will attract the required frequency of your keywords anyway. What is more important is the construction of well thought out, relevant copy that will be of interest to your readers.

Today SEO is more about relevancy and popularity – your writing has to make you an authority.

Come link with me…

In today’s internet environment, if you want to get great rankings you have to get people to link to you.

Links from other sites are like gold dust as far as Google is concerned which could have something to do with the strong emergence of social media marketing.

Before you can get any links you have to get your stuff noticed – sites such as Digg, Delicious, Stumble Upon (there are loads more) are great for this. Self submission can be frowned on so get a friend to submit for you. Creating strong headlines will give your stuff a great chance of being picked up.

Use a blog, Twitter, Squidoo or Hubpages to generate more links too.

Basically the more links you have coming into your site from other websites (relevant to your field), the more authoritative Google will see you and the higher in the search engine results you’ll appear.

Concentrate on…

• Relevant copy that people will want to read
• Making sure your keywords are in your headings, subheadings, page tags
• Use social media marketing
• Blog, Tweet, Squidoo and Hubpage
• Creating copy that will attract links

Need advice?

If you’re not sure how good your webcopy is and just need a bit of advice or guidance, get in touch and I’ll take a look for you (no tricks, no charge, no obligation).

Sally Ormond – freelance copywriter

Search engine optimisation is the new black – well, OK it’s not exactly new but it is vital for any business with a website today.

When consumers type their search terms into Google’s search box, its many thousands of spiders zip around the web finding websites with relevant content. So if your website isn’t SEO friendly, it won’t get found and therefore won’t be listed in the organic search results.

OK so you could do an Adwords campaign, but that’s going to cost you – organic results are a much better way to go, but they take time to achieve.

So how do you know the best way to optimise your website?

Well there are plenty of SEO guys and gals out there that will take care of that for you for a handsome sum – but does it really have to cost you a fortune?

Nope – not if you know where to look

Tom Picks,  TheWebMarketCental Blog, has some great links to take you to practically any piece of information you want to know about SEO guidance (and more – just take a look) in his post Best of 2009 (So Far): SEO Guidance, Part 2

Great post Tom, thanks for sharing it with us.

Search engine copywriting continues to develop each and every day.  Copywriting as a field continues to grow but this particular niche is growing at a much faster rate. As the Internet continues to grow, more and more companies are relying on it for a higher percentage of sales. This will ensure that search engine copywriting will continue to be in demand.

Why?

The number of searches done on the Internet is in the hundreds of billions annually. The way that most people are able to get to a website these days is through search engines.  It is much harder for your website to be highly ranked without being optimised for search engines.

The number of pages on the Internet has grown to over 4 billion so increasing importance has been placed upon the fact that your web page is easy to search and is indexed by search engines.  If not, you will find that you will not have the sales results that you would like from the Internet.

You can buy traffic to come to your website but you will find that you are missing out on an important piece of the sales ‘pie’ by not focusing on organic traffic.

How?

To get your website indexed within the search engines, you must have original content that is in high demand.  Search engines index web pages by sending their search bots through these different web pages.

The search bots are looking for many different factors but the key is your website’s content. The information must be valuable both to the search bots so that they index you as well as to your readers.

For more information about SEO, take a look at SEO, Keywords and Stuff – 3 Golden Rules.