Entries Tagged 'SEO copywriter' ↓

The world of search engine optimisation can be confusing.

Identifying your keywords, looking at your site structure and building back links are all vital aspects if your SEO strategy is going to work.

But what can you do about your copy? Making sure it’s written by a professional SEO copywriter is obviously a step in the right direction but here’s a list of 8 quick tips you can use to optimise your web copy.

Open a second browser window and take a look at your web copy as you read – is there something you can improve?

1. Headline

As with any form of marketing, your headline must grab attention and draw your reader in. It must sell you, your company and your products and services.

A weak headline will result in people navigating away from your site to one that offers them what they’re looking for.

2. First impressions

Assuming your headline has caught their attention it’s vital that the rest of your website does. Do the first few lines of text live up to their expectations? Do the images you use compliment or detract from your copy?

To work, all the elements of your web page have to compliment each other and work together.

3. WIIFM?

This is the question that sits firmly in the forefront of your reader’s mind – what’s in it for me?

Make sure you tell them the benefits of your product/service straight away. That’s not the features here we’re talking about what it is that your product/service will do for them – save them time, save them money, make them more attractive, make them healthier etc. Something that they will value (that’s why it’s so important you know who your customers are and what they want).

4. Easy on the eye

This is where readability comes in. People don’t generally like reading from a screen so you must ensure your information is accessible and readable. To help you reader skim your content for the most relevant points use headings and sub headings, break the text up with bulleted lists and use images to help get your message across.

Above all keep Bryan Eisenberg’s 5 R’s of Search Engine Marketing in your mind:

• Relevance (make sure your copy is relevant to your market)
• Reputation (great content will build your reputation and encourage links)
• Remarkable (only truly great copy will build your reputation)
• Readability (use the right HTML, tags, headlines, bullets, sub headings, font size etc.)
• Reach (don’t cast your net too wide)

5. We

How many times does ‘we’ appear on your website?

A website full of ‘we’ comes across as being very self-centred. The reader doesn’t care about you; they care about what you’re going to do for them.

Go through your copy and change your ‘we’ for ‘you’ to shift the focus firmly on your customer.

6. Voice

The tone of voice you use is very important. The information you provide has to be accessible so avoid jargon. Also to make it more readable avoid using the passive voice. Be active and involve your reader in your text.

7. Other wording

The wording on your website isn’t just confined to your body text. There are also ALT tags, captions, banner text etc.  Are the words here really adding value?

8. Hypertext

The hypertext links are the words you use to link out to other relevant information. Make sure you use your keywords within these links to get the most value from them.

That is a quick and simple list of things you can do on your website to help attract visitors and boost your conversion rate. How many are you missing on your website?

There is one formula that is ingrained in the minds of many internet marketers and internet businesses out there:

The regular addition of fresh content will undoubtedly help your search engine optimisation strategy, generate more traffic and therefore potential business.

But just adding content for the sake of it could do more harm than good.

If you write or commission a copywriter to create a vast number of SEO rich articles for your website are you really adding value?

“But I’m driving traffic!” I hear you cry.

You many well be but what’s in it for those people when they find your article?

• What value will it add?
• What’s your call to action?
• Is it really all that relevant?

If your content doesn’t offer the reader anything or ask anything of them, what’s the point?

Adding fresh content to your website is a good thing.

Making sure it’s search engine optimised is great.

But you also have to ensure it’s relevant, adds value and asks something of your reader. If you don’t they’ll skim read and head off to another website because you haven’t used that content to draw them into your website, get interested about your product or buy.

So the moral of this post is – add content, make it relevant and make sure there’s a call to action/lead into your main website.

I have been a copywriter for a while now and many of the projects I am commission to carry out involve search engine optimisation.

That’s hardly surprising considering the importance of online marketing to today’s businesses.

People’s attitudes to online search are changing. Companies are now recognising that if they want to open up their businesses to new markets they have got to get to grips with SEO and keyword identification.

Keyword research

Most people ‘get’ keyword research these days.

They understand that the words they have to target are the ones their customers are searching for. That list might include the particular product that they sell or their geographical location etc.

Usually the list of keywords I am given are pretty relevant – they cover the products/services and will drive targeted traffic to their website.

But the problems start when it comes to allotting keywords to the copy – how many should each web page target?

Common misconceptions

When investing in SEO most people want to maximise their ROI and use SEO to get found for every keyword or phrase they can think of.

For a start, initially, that’s not practical. Over time as they build links and relevant content, they will see rankings for most of their keywords (the level of their ranking will depend on the competitiveness of the term they are targeting). But from the outset, SEO takes time and the early results will be found with the least competitive words.

The second problem is that many people view their website as their Home Page. By that I mean they want to load their Home Page with all their keywords.

So, for example, if they sell silver jewellery, their keyword list may look something like:

• Silver jewellery
• Silver jewellery suppliers Suffolk
• Silver jewellery gifts
• Gifts in silver
• Silver necklace
• Silver bracelet

You get the idea.

Now, to try and include all of those words on one page is complete madness because the resultant text won’t encourage anyone to buy.

Using keywords the right way

For starters you must remember there is more than one page to your website. Plus, Google and the other search engines also recognise this as each page is indexed individually. Therefore you should be targeting different keywords on different pages. The keywords should also be reflected in your navigation and page titles.

With regards to the number of keywords per page, you should only look to target 2 (3 max) primary keywords. You can of course incorporate long tail keywords (i.e. your primary keywords plus modifiers) but trying to target more than 2 can create unwieldy text.

The main point of your website copy is that it should be relevant, interesting and compelling. The traffic your keywords attract must be drawn in by your text and encouraged to buy – otherwise what’s the point?

By researching your keywords, using them to structure your website and then target each page for different keywords will maximise your chances of SEO success.

Keyword research (as opposed to keyword guessing) is vital if you want your search engine optimisation activities to bear fruit.

The words or phrases you decide to target will have a big effect on your website and its contents which is why it should be done before you begin the design process.

How can a few keywords affect your site?

Well quite easily. After all it’s not until you know what you’ll be targeting that you can:

• Create your on page text (SEO copywriting)
• Decide on your link building anchor text
• Work out your internet linking structure
• Decide on your site navigation
• Produce your page titles (title tags)
• Decide on your URLs
• Write your META tags

So as you can see it’s quite important that your keyword research comes first.

How to decide on your keywords

That’s all well and good but how do you begin the process of deciding on which words and phrases to target?

Here are 3 steps you can take to ensure you get the best possible match between your keywords and your target audience.

1. Be open to new ideas

Don’t go into the research blinkered to the ideas of others. You must remember that you are trying to find the words that other people search for to find your products and services, not necessarily the terms you would use.

The main thing is that the words you decide on must be relevant to your product or service. There’s no point in using a keyword that generates lots of traffic if it’s not pertinent to what you do. You’ll just end up with a lot of frustrated people.

2. Create word groups

Your starting point will be to generate a list of words that relate to your product/service.

Then, expand that list to incorporate names used in your industry for what you do. Expand this again with words used within the media for your product/service. Then, if you work in a specific locality, add in relevant geographical modifiers.

Then it’s time to use keyword research tools such as Google’s to further refine and expand your list.

3. Check competition and relevancy

The final step is to work out which are the best terms to go for.

Although you want to target terms that generate a lot of search traffic, you don’t want to pick something so competitive you won’t stand a chance of ranking for it.

This table below will help you determine which the best terms to try are:

That’s why keyword research is so important. Make sure it’s the first think you do before starting your web design process.

Search engine optimisation is vital for today’s online businesses.

If you want to be found you have to make your website as visible as possible and the only way to do that is through a strong SEO strategy.

More and more companies are realising that PPC is find for short a term push (if you have the budget for it) but unless you have seriously deep pockets, it’s not a long term solution.

A winning SEO strategy

If you want to be an SEO winner you’ll need the following:

• A well-researched list of keywords
• A well designed website structured inline with your identified keywords
• A professional SEO copywriter on board who really knows what they are doing
• An ongoing link building strategy

But whatever you do don’t try and go for fast results. SEO is a slow burning entity. You won’t get overnight results but if you work at it constantly you will be rewarded by lasting high rankings that will bring a continuous stream of targeted traffic to your website.

What to avoid in your SEO strategy

I came across a post on Seomoz the other day entitled “32 SEO Tactics to Avoid in 2011” which gives you a run down of ‘black hat’ techniques that should be avoided at all costs.

Have a read through and make sure you’re strategy is above board. Also take a look at some of the comments—it is a post that generated a lot of debate about SEO.