Archive for the ‘SEO Copywriting’ Category

Search Engine Marketing: Writing Philosophy

Thursday, March 1st, 2012

If you’re a regular member of our site, you know how important catering to search engines can be. However, there is one thing most marketers don’t keep in mind. It’s not really about the search engines. In the end, your customer’s are people, and that’s who you should be writing for.

Now don’t get me wrong, search engines are THE tool for promoting yourself and your business. Without search engine marketing your website and online presence could go unnoticed forever. However, we want to assert this writing philosophy, this writing for people, also called search engine marketing writing.

Far too often, marketers get very wrapped up in all the cool things that search engine marketing has to offer. Once you start learning, there’s a tendency to go overboard and attempt to optimize every little thing. We become so wrapped up in analyzing and overanalyzing rankings and re-tuning our sites for search engine appeal that we miss the bigger picture.

Are we in the business of improving our search rankings? Do we directly profit or generate revenue from this constant tweaking? Our search rankings are merely a means to an end. Our business is to serve our customers and continually evolve and improve our ability to do that. Your ultimate goal is to convert website visitors and build relationships.

If you fail to write with people in mind, it will show in your content. If you write on poorly thought out ideas, with bad grammar and spelling, people aren’t going to care what you have to say, and will take no interest in your site. Meaning your search rankings will be all for naught.

When you optimize your content, really optimize it with people in mind rather than just trying to cram as many keywords as possible into your writing. When you do this, it results in stilted unreadable copy that nobody will bother to read, much less be persuaded to convert.

Instead, write strong, interesting, action-oriented copy that helps your visitors accomplish their goals. That way even if you lose the battle of search rankings, you’ll still win the war of conversions thanks to your original, quality content.

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Posted in SEO Copywriting, Search Engine Optimization Copywriting, Web Copywriting | No Comments »

10 Essential Don’ts of SEO Copywriting

Friday, August 28th, 2009

alphabet-light-writingLike many types of copywriting, SEO copywriting is somewhere between an art and a science. Writing for both Web users and search engines takes a certain amount of skill. There are far too many tips and tricks about SEO copywriting for a single blog post. A book would be a more appropriate format. So instead, this post will cover some of the key things one should avoid when beginning SEO copywriting. Here are the 10 “don’ts” for SEO copywriting.

  1. DON’T overstuff your keywords and keyphrases into the copy. SEO copywriting is not solely about quantity. It’s true that Google and other search engines do take into account what words and phrases are on a Webpage when ranking it, and Google and other search engines will try to match a searcher’s query with the SEO copywriting on a Webpage. But the Webpages that rank near the top in search engine results are derived from an extremely complex algorithm. By overloading keywords onto your page, you risk turning off users without making any real contribution to your actual Webpage rankings.
  2. DON’T forget who you are writing for. As we already mentioned, you really have two audiences with SEO copywriting. The Website user and the search engine. The best balance you can strike is one that caters to search engines in the right way. SEO copywriting that pays too little attention to search engines, you risk low rankings. Too much attention, as we have already said, means you lose Website users.
  3. DON’T let software be the sole decider of your targeted keywords. Keyword-finding software can be incredibly useful. But one must not rely solely on the keyword results. Think about what keywords you want to go after when planning an SEO copywriting project. You’ll usually get the best results when you combine your own keyword targets with the keywords suggested by whichever keyword software you use.
  4. DON’T sacrifice the quality of your copy for better rankings. Some SEO copywriters think that throwing in many nonsensical or grammatically-incorrect keywords anywhere they can is worth it. It’s not. Don’t sacrifice your SEO copywriting “flow” for clunky keywords. Disrupting the Website reader will make them feel like leaving.
  5. DON’T use keyphrases that are unrelated to your Webpage. If you run a Website that sells car floor mats, then don’t include a keyword for car hubcaps simply because it’s a high-ranking keyword. Even if you do manage to pull some traffic to your site, most of your visitors will leave as soon as they realize there are no hubcaps to be found. It’s wastes time and it makes users hostile towards your site.
  6. DON’T use misspelled words and their correct spellings on the same page. Misspellings can be valuable, but only if used correctly. Mixing misspellings and correct spellings in the same page creates a poor visual. It looks like there are typos strewn throughout your SEO copywriting.
  7. DON’T use the exact same keywords every time. Using the exact same keywords and keyphrases over and over creates a dulling repetitive effect. There are ways around this, though. Break up your keyphrases with punctuation. Search engines don’t give much attention to punctuation marks, so you can shift the rythmn of your keyword phrases by adding hyphens, commas, semicolons and periods.
  8. DON’T use all types keyword phrases in every situation. There are certain SEO copywriting keyphrases that do better on certain pages. Usually, you want the most general and most important keyword phrases on your home page. Long-tail keyword phrases should generally be relegated to less prominent pages, ideally the pages that specifically deal with those more specific keywords.
  9. DON’T forget about ALT tags and images. ALT tags are the little windows that pop up when a mouse hovers over a particular phrase or an image in a Webpage. Many search engines track these. That’s why it’s a good idea to put keywords in your ALT tags and your image attributes.
  10. DON’T forget about hierarchy. Some SEO copywriting keywords and keyword phrases are more important than others. It’s up to you to decide which ones, but it’s also important to give your highest-rated SEO copywriting keywords the most exposure.

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Posted in SEO Copywriting, SEO Copywriting Services | No Comments »

Best Way to Increase Website Traffic? Content

Wednesday, June 17th, 2009

3347658610_bd6daf9b57_mHave you been trying to increase Website traffic by carefully nurturing your Website’s content? Or have you been neglecting it? If you have been putting off updating or editing your site, don’t feel too bad. Neglecting to provide current and excellent content that can increase Website traffic—which includes relevant text, images and video—is a pretty common sin for busy businesspeople of all stripes.

But that doesn’t mean that you should just forget about it, either, since great content is a simple and effective way to increase Website traffic. Content is the heart and soul of a Website. And it’s a key component in gaining excellent search engine rankings.

So what kind of content do you need to increase Website traffic? You need both quality and quantity. All right, that’s not too surprising, is it? Isn’t that what any Web professional would say?

Probably. So lets go a little deeper into what those two qualifications mean in the online world and to those trying to increase Website traffic.

Quality: Simply enough, quality content is content that’s unique. While it may be tempting to copy and paste text from other Websites, blogs and news stories, it’s not a good idea to increase Website traffic for two reasons. The first is that it could be an invitation for plagiarism charges. Laws regarding online plagiarism are still vague, but content stealing could still open up a whole Pandora’s Box of related problems. Your reputation could take a hit and you could be the subject of a lot of negative online attention. Just see this post for an excellent example. The secret to quality content to increase Website traffic? Original content. Yes, it helps a lot if your content is professionally written. It also helps increase Website traffic if content is edited and laid out professionally. But the most important thing—by far—is that it’s original.

Quantity: More pages give you more authority in the eyes of search engines, which will increase Website traffic. How much content do you need? A good rule of thumb is about twice as much as you have now. In other words, you could always use more content to increase Website traffic. Earning authority means more than just putting up a few informational pages on your Website. How to make more Webpages? Break your pages into sub topics. Expand your content as far as it can stretch. See what similar Websites are offering. With a little brainstorming and creative thinking, you should be able to come up with some great ways to add even more pages to your site that will help increase Website traffic.

So that’s the basic guide to how content can increase Website traffic. Next week we’ll discuss the best ways you can structure your content for great search engine ranking results.

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Posted in SEO Copywriting, Search Engine Friendly Web Development | 1 Comment »