1. Writing Effective SEO Copy
The purpose of SEO copywriting is to elevate your site’s ranking in the search engines by incorporating targeted keywords and keyword descriptions that are found right in your text. Where do keywords come from? No specific place. They are basically obtained by finding out how people phrase their requests when they input a request into the search engines. You find these keywords by using the content keyword search tools provided by Overture or Google (more about this later on in this section!)
Once the top ten to twenty keywords are found, articles are then created around each of these key phrases and posted to the web site. This means being very clever about your sentence construction. Keep in mind it is not just the search engine spiders you are trying to please. These should also make sense and appeal to your reader.
Each search engine optimized articles that you post to your websites gives the search engines something to crawl when people type in those key phrases during a search. So in essence the search engine optimized article is mainly a way to increase sales or membership conversions by increasing your visibility in the search engines. In fact you could say that writing keyword paragraphs is one of the most effective ways to increase your web presence.
The most effective SEO writing is SEO writing that is brief. Professional SEO copywriters that keyword paragraphs ideally be about 250 -500 words in length. These types of articles must be well written and informative with at least two of the search terms strategically placed within the text and other on-page elements. Ideally however they should be longer than 100 words.
The key is to find a happy balance between copywriting for people and copywriting for the search engines. Here are some tips to writing more effective SEO copy.
First of all don’t overdo the keywords. You will look incompetent to both the readers and the search engine spiders! Have you ever landed on a page that has been over optimized. Not only does the article usually just seem to “fill space” and not provide any information but it also makes whoever is behind its writing look greedy! To preserve your reputation on the web it is probably a good idea to only employ about three different keywords or keyword phrases per page. You want them to click the link to your site, as opposed to close their browser window in frustration once they read your awkward, badly composed keyword optimized copy!
Don’t write too little! There is such a thing as being too concise when it comes to SEO. People become very disappointed and annoyed when they search for some time for a focused subject only to be led to the same vague definition over and over. Disappointing and irritating people with your shallow search engine copy is no way to get customers or membership conversions.
Be tasteful about the use your keywords. Your keywords should not dominate or overload the piece. One way to tell if your piece makes sense is to read it out loud. If it sounds robotic, repetitive or nonsensical then you have probably laid on the keywords a little too thick.
Write the way you talk. Get to the point as if you were having a conversation and incorporate the keywords into your text afterwards. Excellent search engine optimized copy never sounds like the sentence was deliberately contrived to accommodate the keyword.
Don’t use big words. Try to write in grade four to grade six level conversational language. If you write any loftier you will not be comprehensible to the masses. SEO copy is definitely not the occasion to impress others with your large vocabulary or knowledge of obscure adjective.
Keywords that are too obtrusive or omnipresent are a turn off for everything human that can read. Even if the search engine spiders find them friendly, lousy, forced sounding content is only going to have your visitor clicking the little X at the right hand corner of the browser window after they have decided your writing is incomprehensible.
Use keyword phrases in headlines, titles and sub titles. There is no point to trying to do this if the keyword phrase that you are trying to incorporate completely distorts the title of your article. Never use a keyword in a title if it obscures the article’s topic or intention. Your best bet is to try to keep the title a complete sentence well at the same time trying to capture the general sense of it by using one or two well-chosen, high ranking keywords.
Use keywords in the first sentence, last sentence and at least once in each paragraph. This is a rule that many professional SEO copywriters follow in attempt to make their technical writing sound more like “natural language.” Natural language is a term that SEO copywriters use to describe the process of having to transform spider engine food into something that is understood by humans.
Use keywords as part of bolded, italicized or Bulleted Lists. This type of treatment can help highlight the words or phrases, not only to the reader, but also for the search engine. In terms of people, this type of layout is supposed to perform a bit of subliminal seduction when it comes to them retaining the memory of what your site is supposed to be all about in the first place.
Don’t use too many keywords in one paragraph. Avoid using focused keyword phrases when a more general term is required. Not every generic phrase that you see is an open call to insert a keyword phrase. For example, try to avoid writing “search engine optimized business opportunities” instead of the word “opportunities” if you can help it. Trying to fit several keywords into a sentence structure that only requires one word makes your copy sound stiff and unnatural.
An example of this kind of overkill would be “You can become a free affiliate member by registering for a free affiliate member enrollment at our free affiliate member website page.”
In conclusion the only sure way to test the effectiveness of your copy is by posting it and then searching for it by in an engine such as Google or Overture. If type in the keyword phrase and it turns up on the search engine, then you have done a wonderful job as at SEO copywriter!
Although all of this sounds so easy, it is actually subject to all kinds of inconsistencies and Murphy’s laws. For one thing SEO is not a guarantee of high rankings even if your SEO is done by an expert. If SEO worked in every single case then every single site on the web that has tried to incorporate would be highly ranked. Of course this isn’t true. The problem is that not all search engine spiders search a page in the same way.
It seems that one page of search engine optimized content can do well in one engine but not as well in another. This has lead to the practice of search engine optimizing several identical articles in different ways in order to appeal to all of the different search engines at once.
The keywords that you use for your page title may also determine whether or not a user will want to view your URL. The out of context page title usually has two parts: a keyword or key phrase that is friendly to the search engine and phrases that distinguishes your page from the thousands of listings that use the same title.
Keep in mind that the first part of the title’s intention is to improve your search engine ranking and the second part’s intention is to increase the click through rate of your pages once they rank well on the search engines. This is where knowledge of your target market becomes crucial!
2. How To Choose the Right Keywords
The first key to using keywords is to start thinking in terms of keyword phrases instead of just one single word. The reason for this is because there are just too many people out there doing exactly the same thing you are – going to an keyword generator or inventory search tool and coming up with the top single keywords that you are every month. This keeps you neck and neck with your competition but it does not really give you an edge over them.
Your key to success here is finding the appropriate “niche” key words. You also want to use two or three words strung together, also known as “keyphrases.” Studies have shown that most people type in two or three word combinations when they conduct searches, not single words.
Coming up with a list of the most targeted key phrases for your web site involves a bit of brainstorming and utilizing some free online web tools which are discussed in Part III of this book.
One method is to put yourself in the headspace of your site’s visitors, and write down words and phrases that you think they would use when searching for a site such as yours. For instance let’s say that you were searching for a daily horoscope. Rather than using just “horoscope” as a keyword you might try keyword combinations such as –
Daily horoscope
Today’s horoscope
Todays horoscope
Todays daily horoscope
Astrology prediction
Todays astrology
Horoscope today
Notice that the misspellings such as “todays” as opposed to “today’s can be included in these keywords. Don’t be afraid to include misspellings and misspell a main keyword throughout your SEO article.
You can also use ad” Dictionary and/or a Thesaurus to come up with words that are related to your topic. If you don’t have a hard copy, there are really good online versions located at:
http://thesaurus.reference.com/
http://dictionary.reference.com/
If your imagination fails you, look up your competitors online and see what kind of keywords they are using. It might inspire you to come up with a phrase that tops your competition.
If you’re trying to target a certain geographic location, make sure to include your city and state in your key phrase list. This is especially important right now, as many of the search engines have branched out into offering “local search.”
One of the keys to search engine optimization is determining your keyword density. This refers to the number of searchable keywords and keyword phrases that you have on your web pages. Keywords are vital to achieving a high page ranking and if you hire a professional SEO firm to do it for you, one of the first things they will do is look at your web pages to see if they have a high keyword density. If there aren’t any keywords on your pages to find for the search engines to index, there is literally nothing to find in the search engine results pages (also known as SERPs).
One of the biggest mistakes that people make when they are first starting a small site is to only submit keywords to the search engines. They either forget or just don’t realize that those keywords also have to be placed somewhere in the text of the site or the search engines just won’t have anything to latch onto when someone uses one of your keywords to do a search. For maximum results think of your search engine submitted keywords as the “hooks” and the keywords in your website copy as the “latches.”
Another challenge is determining how many keywords or keyword phrases should appear on your web page. The number of keywords appear on the page, makes a difference to all of the search engine algorithms. They simply pick on the keywords that are the densest your pages. Of course if you choose very general or highly competitive keywords and keyword phrases you just might end up with a lot of untargeted traffic.
How does untargeted traffic end up at your site? Let’s just say you have a site promoting psychic readings. You go to the Overture Inventory Keyword Search Tool and find out that the most commonly searched words for psychic readings are “free psychic chat”, “free online psychic” and “John Edwards”. Even though these keywords have five times the popularity in terms of sheer numbers there are several reasons why you shouldn’t use them.
First of all the single keyword term “psychic” is way too general. This keyword could bring you untargeted traffic as it would includes masses of individuals looking for something besides psychic readings. They could be looking for psychic tests, psychic books and the band “Psychic TV.” They are not necessarily people who are going to buy a psychic reading.
Even though it is tempting to use keywords with high traffic such as “free online psychic” and “free psychic chat” it is best not to do it. Sometimes a search engine penalizes you if they can’t find the free offer on your site (but this is rare.) More than likely you will be spending all of your time with customers looking for a free reading which can be a pain in the ass to deal with if you are trying to sell them a service.
The keywords and keyword phrases that have the most density on your site should be the ones that improve your search engine optimization in terms of bringing you customers who intend to buy.
To make the matter of keyword density even more complex, not all search engines have the same criteria for searching out keywords. Each major search engine uses a different algorithm to calculate the way keywords are found. Some search engines are friendlier to web pages that are dense with keywords and others, like Google consider too many keywords on one page to be a nonsensical page and not worthy of being indexed. Yet another thing to consider is that these algorithms are changing all the time.
Another thing that many newcomers to SEO don’t realize is that any content that you are linked to off the site is in fact considered by most pages to be the total part of your page’s content. This is why it is so important for you to only provide anchor links to content that is truly relevant to your site’s content.
Here are some tips for how you can manually improve the keyword density and placement of key phrases on your page to perform your own search engine optimization.
Try to think like a search engines. Only one or two keywords should have a high density and the rest that you use should be of a much lower density. Some search engine optimization experts recommend only featuring one keyword a page. However some engines like Google don’t like this as it has led to the creation of sites that have thousands of pages (called doorway pages) that boast a keyword phrase and very little information written around it. If you are going to use single keywords or keyword phrases as the focus of an article intended to create a doorway or portal for the search engines try to keep them as informative and as well-written as possible.
Unifying your web site so that just a few keywords or phrases are the theme of several pages that are linked together can also help boost your site search engine page rankings. Several pages that support each other in terms of optimized content is one way to increase the chance of improving the searchability of a keyword or keyword phrase. This is especially true if the keyword that you want to use is one that is competitive but could bring you loads traffic, as would be the case of a keyword like “psychic reading online” but not a more generic keyword such as “psychic.”
Keywords that are not as common in the search engines can be used more often on a web page. You can be more liberal with these less popular key phrases especially if they accurately and precisely describe the nature of your web business or describe one of its features or benefits.
It can’t be stressed enough that choosing unpopular keywords is not a mistake – especially if you are running a niche business. As choosing keywords that are too popular might bring you untargeted, window-shopping traffic and choosing keywords that are not frequently used might bring you an unvisited web site, the best choice of keywords are the ones that you find that have moderate popularity. It is recommended that you place these keywords somewhere on your home page and preferably in the headers, titles and in the first and concluding paragraphs. You should also make sure that these keywords are submitted to the search engines.
Another clever search engine optimization technique is to make your moderately popular keywords into a phrase that is also a link to another page on your website. As many search engines (particularly Google) favor sites with the most links this is one way to increase your site’s web presence. However also make sure that those links lead to relevant content that supports their existence.
In conclusion, the higher the keyword density of your site is, the more chances you have of your site being visible in search engine ranking pages. Web pages that are ranked the highest are the ones with pages that include as as many individual highly targeted “niche” search terms as possible. Keep this principle in mind if you are planning to use keyword density techniques to perform a search engine optimization on your own site.
3. Using Information and Articles to Attract Traffic
Although the SEO articles that you have on your site don’t have to be long, the more of them that you have on your site the better. In fact the more information you have on your site, the more likely your pages are to be crawled by the search engines. This information can take any form. It can be photo captions, other people’s articles, content in blogs and forums and links to other sites.
With regards to your actual content any information that you own can be considered to be assets that can be divided up, repackaged and parceled out to be
•Reprinted as articles with your url attached to drive traffic to your site
•Sent out as monthly newsletters
•Reprinted in non-virtual sources such as local newspapers to drive traffic to your site
•Used as free bonuses, tips or advice
•Used to stack up your archives with valuable information that will keep your visitors returning to your web pages for more
•Used as the basis of a blog.
When it comes to SEO no document that you have the copyright to should go to waste. Material can be rewritten, revised and revamped to create press releases and newsletters.
Once you have written the article you a use it to generate traffic by emailing it to other publishers or webmasters. Of course this only works if your SEO article is so cleverly crafted that you want it filled with real, useful information about your topic. In this way your keyword-optimized article becomes viral in nature. Other people’s web site pages work for you by drawing readers on their websites to your bio and link at the end of the article.
To get your SEO articles posted, type in the topic of your article” into the top engines such as Google or Lycos. This should lead you to hundreds of sites that are about your topic. Perform a sub search using the phrase such as “submit article” and this should lead you to sites that ask contributors to submit articles. For example if you have a site that sells horseshoes type “submit article horses” or “submit article horseshoes” into the Google search engine and see what happens.
Submit your articles along with your URL and byline and watch yourself rapidly turn into a sought over online expert as people then find your SEO content on other people’s sites along with that link that leads them to you! This is a great way to increase your traffic and the repeat visitors should increase your visibility in the search engines.
4. Obtaining Articles From Syndication Sites
If you are completely talent free always acquire expert content from syndication sites. Every day writers for syndication submit thousands of articles for distribution. All the writer wants in return for their “expert” content is a link to their URL.
Here are some of the top sources for finding free, re-printable articles:
•Articles For Reprint: www.l1nk.com/urr/twt.html
•Constant Content: www.constant-content.com
•Go Articles: www.goarticles.com
•Download articles www.downloadarticles.com
You can also find articles that are for free –
•
•Ezine Articles: www.ezinearticles.com
•Article World: www.articleworld.net
•Ideamarketers: www.ideamarketers.com
However sometimes these free articles aren’t what they are cracked up to be. The only good thing about them? Sometimes you can use them as a point of inspiration for writing your own SEO keyword optimized article.
You know the old saying, you get what you pay for in which case you might want to buy content that is written by an expert. This is called premium content. In this case, you will search for the best articles in terms of expert authorship Internet libraries and then write the author for permission to buy web rights for the article.
You can also contact world-renowned experts at local or distant universities to see if you can acquire the rights to papers and studies that may support the arguments as to why one company or an other should sell your product.
The only risky thing about buying expert content? Usually the expert is putting together their own website and will encourage you to contact them so that they can steal ideas from you.
Very often you might find this premium content in a book you have read in which case you will have to contact the author, the author’s agent or the epublisher to buy rights for the material. If the author is famous it is a real plus because his name will rank higher in the search engines and so will your site!
5. Hiring A Ghost Writer
Fortunately as this industry grows, there are more and more expert ghostwriters out there who also know how to technically craft an SEO paragraph or article so it is at exactly the density that you prefer.
This is a good idea for those who have great ideas but consider themselves to be too busy to master writing search optimized content. There are several main sites on the web where writers place bids on projects posted by people wanting articles, web content, search engine optimized material and ebooks. These are:
- www.guru.com
- www.elance.com
- www.freelancewriting.com
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These require a paid membership but it is worth it as it seems that most freelance writers on the web have conglomerated in either one or more of these places. You might also consider hiring writers from a local agency.
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SOURCE : TOP SEO-Secrets Part II : Creating Web Presence Using SEO
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