Ive been frustrated lately. It seems people just dont get it. Theres lots of talk about SEO copywriting these days, but hardly any of it is on target. The majority of the conversations, posts and articles Ive seen deal with topics like keyword density, allowable limits, over optimization and such. These people are making search engine copywriting all about the search engines. They are forgetting the fact that SEO copywriting is still copywriting.
What that means - generally speaking - is you are still writing promotional copy designed to cause a *person* to take a specific action. Your target audience (your site visitors) should come first. The elements designed to help the copy rank well absolutely come last.
What good is all the traffic in the world if your site copy doesnt convert visitors into buyers Not much. Thats why - when writing SEO copy - the human visitor comes first.
Unfortunately, SEO copywriting is getting a bad name because so much of what is being cranked out is repetitious babble. Most of these pages would never have made it on to a site, except for the fact that the site owner wanted to rank highly for certain key terms.
So, in the interest of salvaging the good name of search engine copywriting, before its too late, let me offer some guidelines.
SEO Copy Is:
first and foremost - written for the visitor.
unique and purposeful.
natural-sounding - it flows.
SEO Copy Is Not:
written exclusively with the engines in mind.
mirrored, adjusted or altered to create new pages by simply changing keyphrases.
stiff, forced or overly repetitive.
The Dos of SEO Copywriting
When writing SEO copy, youll want to:
understand who you are writing to.
choose what the focus of the page will be.
create a plan outlining the message you want to convey.
decide how best to communicate that message to your particular target customers.
choose which keyphrases will be incorporated into the copy.
make sure those keyphrases work well with the page and the planned copy.
incorporate keyphrases as you write (not after you write), so they flow naturally with the planned message.
The Donts of SEO Copywriting
When writing SEO copy, you should never:
create a plan based solely on how to rank high.
replace *every* instance of a generic term (car) with a keyphrase (red, convertible car).
add pages of copy simply to appease the search engines.
rely on useless keyword density ratios and formulas.
shove keyphrases in everywhere possible. (No, it wont get you banned, but it will sound completely ridiculous!)
SEO copywriting is not the process of writing exclusively for the search engines. It is the process of writing copy to appeal to your visitors, while including elements to help the search engines and your visitors understand what the page is all about.
If you remember who truly makes or breaks your sites success (your customers!) and focus on them, youre sure to create SEO copy that rings true.
2005
Karon Thackston is author of How To Increase Keyword Saturation (Without Destroying the Flow of Your Copy). Discover the secrets to creating SEO copy with a perfect balance between keywords and natural language.
Two big things have just happened in Google-land: Jagger and Google Analytics. Together, these two events may have changed the face of search forever.
Jagger
First, lets discuss Jagger... Just like hurricanes, Google updates have names. (A Google update is a change to the way Google determines its rankings. Google makes these changes periodically, and theyre universally feared because they can impact dramatically on a websites ranking.) The latest update is called Jagger, and it has search engine optimizers (SEOs) all around the world in a state of panic.
Why was Jagger such a fearful update Simple... With Jagger, Google once again outsmarted huge numbers of SEOs. You see, many/most SEOs spend their time (and their clients money) trying to trick Google into thinking that their websites are more relevant and important than they really are. They do this mostly by swapping links, buying cheap links, and placing links on free directories. While theres nothing wrong with these sorts of links (i.e. theyre not considered black-hat), they dont really show that the site is relevant or important. All they really show is that the site owner has made a deal with another site owner. In these deals, the incentive for the linking site owner is a reciprocal link, money, or increased link volume. Google much prefers it when the linking site adds the link simply to enhance the value of their content or to increase their own credibility and authority.
In other words, Google wants its search results to contain relevant, important sites, not sites that merely appear to be relevant and important. To this end, Google invests millions of dollars and employs the worlds smartest mathematicians to create algorithms which identify sites that are trying to trick them. And thats exactly what Jagger did; and when it found those sites, it simply adjusted their ranking to more accurately reflect their true importance. (Unfortunately, it also demoted some sites which actually deserve a high ranking. It is hoped that these mistakes will be ironed out with future minor updates, but thats a topic for another article...)
From a technical standpoint, Jagger was well described by Ken Webster in his article, http://www.webpronews.com/topnews/topnews/Jagger. To summarize, Jagger:
all reciprocal links had vanished. We think that this is because Google is down-grading or eliminating reciprocal links as a measure of popularity. This does make sense, actually. Reciprocal links are a method of falsifying popularity. Sort of a cheap method of buying a link, if you want to think of it that way... During the second week of the Jagger Update, a few of our reciprocal links did come back up. However, we also noticed that these were from places where we had highly relevant content. They came from articles where we discussed our area of expertise: Web Analytics, or from forums where we had relevant threads. So we feel that these links came back because of content, not linking.The other group that came back up was one-way inbound text links, regardless of the originating web site. These links also had strong relevance to our web analytics business. In other words, they contained keywords and/or phrases related to our site and its business.
In short, Jagger undid the hard work of thousands - if not millions - of people! As a result, hard-won high rankings and revenues plummeted.
Interestingly, article PR (article submission) came through Jagger seemingly unscathed. My SEO copywriting website, for example, went from no.4 to no.1 worldwide for copywriter, and Ive employed article PR almost exclusively. Whether it was promoted or the sites around it were demoted, one thing is clear: article PR is one of the best ways to obtain a high ranking.
Google Analytics
The second monumental event to occur recently was Google Analytics - http://www.google.com/analytics/index.html. Google Analytics is a free web-stats solution which not only reports all the regular site stats, but also integrates directly with Google AdWords giving webmasters and insight into the ROI of their pay-per-click ads. According to Google, Google Analytics tells you everything you want to know about how your visitors found you and how they interact with your site.
Why is this such a landmark move Because for the first time ever, Google will have access to your real web stats. And these stats will be far more accurate than those provided by Alexa - http://www.alexa.com . Furthermore, Googles privacy statement (http://www.google.com/intl/en/privacy.html) says: We may also use personal information for auditing, research and analysis to operate and improve Google technologies and services. Now lets put two and two together:
Googles democratic vision of the Web will never be achieved by manipulating algorithm criteria based on content. It will only be achieved by factoring in what is important to people, and people will always remain the best judge of what that is. The true challenge for search engines in the future is how to incorporate web searcher input and preferences into their ranking algorithms.
In fact, the Jayde Online network already owns and operates a search engine, http://www.ExactSeek.com, which incorporates user popularity statistics in its rankings.
The Future of Search & SEO
To date, ExactSeek is the only search engine which uses visitor stats as criteria for its rankings. But Google isnt far behind. We all know that Google specializes in taking a good idea and implementing and adapting it brilliantly. This is exactly what well see in this case. By combining link popularity and user popularity statistics, Google will be the only major search engine to consider both what other sites think of your website and what your visitors think of your website. And because they have the most advanced algorithms for assessing link popularity, and will soon have access to the farthest reaching, most accurate web stats to assess user popularity, its competitors will be a long time catching up.
So if thats the future of search, whats the future of SEO The future of SEO is undoubtedly one where:
Clearly, the choices for SEOs will be pretty much limited to paying for links at niche sites and/or engaging in article PR. Being an SEO copywriter, I may be a little biased, but for mine, article PR is the hands-down winner in this comparison:
For more information on article PR, read How to Top Google with Article PR (articlepr.com/SEO_Article_Submission.shtml).
Conclusion
The lesson from Jagger is, dont try and trick Google! Theyve got more money and more brains than virtually any company in the world. Itll only end in tears! Dont spend time and money trying to make your site look important and relevant. Instead, spend that time and money actually making it important and relevant! Content - the real content behind the optimization - is the answer. After all, whether its an article or a web page, its the content that keeps eyes on paper, and thats what its all about.
Happy optimizing!
Glenn Murray is an and . He is a director of article PR company, Article PR, and also of . He can be contacted on Sydney +612 4334 6222 or at . Visit DivineWrite.com or ArticlePR.com for further details, more FREE articles, or to download his FREE SEO e-book.