Entries Tagged 'seo' ↓

As a freelance copywriter about 95% of my marketing activties are carried out online. Therefore I have had to learn the intricacies of search engine optimisation fairly quickly to gain front page rankings to ensure my business (Briar Copywriting) is visible to potential clients.

But it has taken a number of years and a lot of reading and research to really get to grips with the techniques.

What would  you say if I told you there was a definitive guide to SEO available right now?

Yes please!

Well, there is. Google has just released its SEO Starter Guide (am updated version of their 2008 publication). Now before you get over excited let me add this disclaimer:

This guide will not give away secrets that will propel your website to the number one spot in the search results. But it will help you tweak your website to help you gain better visibility to the search engines as well as help you understand the mysteries of SEO.

So, if you’d like to get your hands on this valuable document click on the link below to download your free copy.

The art of Search engine optimisation is enabling businesses all over the world reach a greater audience online.

Done well and it can achieve amazing results, often slashing marketing budgets as expensive off line marketing campaigns and PPC are no longer needed.

But many people are still tempted to cut corners, impatient for results.

Don’t let temptation get the better of you. SEO will take time, but if you try to take short cuts, Google could slap you with a penalty.

Natural Link Building

Links to your website are very important. They act as an indicator to Google showing how relevant your site it for a particular topic. Each link is seen as a vote, so the more you have the more relevant you are perceived.

Buying links is a very bad idea and can be very damaging to your website. If you build your links naturally and ensure they come from related sites (i.e. the same industry/topic) you won’t fall foul of Google.

You can attract good links in a number of ways. For example:

•    Create a good Google local profile and fill it with relevant information about your business
•    Contact your Chamber of Commerce and enquire about having a link from  their website
•    Ask your suppliers/clients if they would be prepared to link to you
•    Issue press releases
•    Add your details to influential online directories in relevant categories
•    Write blogs and articles on your industry and link back to your website

Don’t be lazy about back links

Generating back links is often one part of SEO that is forgotten about.

Yes it takes time and is a constant process, but one that is vital if your SEO strategy is going to work. If you find it too much for one person to deal with on their own, get a link building team organised and share the workload.

Don’t indulge in the dark arts

Whatever you do, don’t succumb to using black hat techniques. These are activities that Google frowns upon. They are used by unscrupulous SEO companies to try and get quick results. But they could land you in hot water.

Black hat techniques cover things such as cloaking, using link farms, invisible text and keyword stuffing (more about that in a moment).

No keyword stuffing

The art of SEO Copywriting is quite complex and it pays to get a professional to create your copy for you.

Many people believe that by cramming as many instances of their keywords into their copy as possible, they’ll achieve magnificent rankings.

Well, if you do that, all you’ll achieve is unreadable text. What’s the point in good rankings if:

•    People can’t read your copy
•    People are completely turned off by your copy
•    Your copy doesn’t convert

A professional SEO copywriter will not only create compelling, benefits driven copy that will convert, they will also know where and how to use your keywords in a natural way.

Don’t repeat yourself

In a rush to own as much of the internet as possible, some companies are tempted to cut and paste text from their website into as many directories and online profiles as possible.

Don’t! Google frowns upon duplicate copy. If you fall into this trap you’ll earn yourself a hefty penalty so make sure you only add original content to your website, blogs and directories.

Don’t forget to keep the momentum going

Even when companies manage to avoid all the SEO hurdles I’ve mentioned, without constant maintenance their strategy will fail.

SEO isn’t a static entity, it’s very fluid. You must constantly monitor and tweak it to get the best out of it. Back links must be generated constantly to maintain and improve your rankings.

Your hard work will be rewarded by higher rankings, more targeted traffic and a reduction in your marketing spend.

I’m sure you’ve noticed by now that Google has been making a few changes to its search facility.

Google Instant is here!

Now, when you make a search, Google predicts what you’re searching for. Once you see your search term appear in the box (as you can see below Google predicted I was searching for a freelance copywriter) results are automatically shown and change instantly depending on how your search term develops:

There have been numerous posts and news articles written about this new phenomena and what it is going to mean to users.

Rather than going over old ground, I wanted to being one of the best posts to your attention to illustrate precisely what Google Instant is going to mean to search engine optimisation.

If you haven’t already seen it, here’s a link to SEOBook.com’s post – How Google Instant Changes the SEO Landscape.

There are a couple of videos embeded within the post which are really good – one is quite long though so it may be best to save that one for your coffee break.

I am a search engine optimisation copywriter (that’s just one of the copywriting services I offer) and so have a good idea about what it takes to get your website ranking well in Google. But there’s more to it that a bit of keyword research and great copy.

There are several factors that have to work together if you are going to get great results:

SEO can be a complex subject, especially if you are new to it all. So, I’ve listed below the 5 basics of search engine optimisation.

1. Keyword research

Before you do anything else, research your keywords. These are the terms real people use to search for your product or service. Although you can guess what people use, there’s no substitute for research:

• analyse your own Google analytics (this is especially if you already have a website that you are looking for give an SEO make-over to) to see what terms people are using to find you.
• Do some market research – ask your customers how they found you and if it was through a Google search, what term(s) they used.
• Social networking – see what people are talking about. Engage with them and ask their advice.
• Look at what your competitors are doing and what keywords they’re targeting.
• Don’t overlook local (geographic) terms.

Once you’ve done your research and made a list of primary and secondary keywords, don’t just stop there. You will have to test your keywords constantly to ensure you are targeting the phrases and words that will generate you the most traffic.

2. SEO friendly infrastructure

Before you get to the point of building your website or writing your web copy, you must decide which pages will be used for which keywords. Your Home Page will target your primary words/phrase whereas your sub pages will target your secondary phrases.

3. SEO copy

SEO copy isn’t just the copy that appears on your web pages. You must ensure that your Page title tags use the keywords relevant to that page as identified when looking at your infrastructure.

Then there are your META descriptions. Although these don’t have a direct influence on your SEO, they will have an effect on the number of click-throughs you get. The META description is the text that appears below the page title in your search results page:

By using your keywords within that description, you will show the relevance of your page in relation to the search term and therefore increase your chances of getting that all important click-through. If you don’t add a META description, Google will just take a snippet of text from anywhere on your page. Therefore to ensure its relevance, make sure you provide one.

The next place you need to use your keywords is in your headings – these are the H1 and H2 tags (which go all the way down to H6). Again these are prominent locations which will be picked up by Google. Your primary keywords will go in H1 and your secondary ones will go in H2 onwards. Remember though not to just stuff these areas with keywords. They should be there as part of a meaningful phrase or sentence.

Finally, there’s your website copy itself – if you write naturally the keywords will appear within your text. Whatever you do, don’t be tempted to stuff your copy with keywords. The result will be clumsy and unreadable.

4. Build your links

The final aspect of SEO is link building. The more quality and relevant one way links that point to your site, the higher you’ll appear in the search engine results. Building links should be an ongoing process – there is no quick fix for this. You can generate links in a number of ways:

• Write content for other sites and link back through hypertext links (using your keywords)
• List your website in directories
• Comment on blogs in your industry
• Participate in forums (again linking back to your site by using a link in your signature)
• Write guest blog posts for other people

So they are the basics of SEO. Remember you need to look at everything – your website construction and navigation as well as your copy. All elements have to work together if you want to achieve great results. But this isn’t a quick fix. SEO takes time and constant monitoring – but get it right, and the benefits speak for themselves.

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.