Search Engine Copywriting
- Harjot Kaleka
Importance
of Good Copywriting
Whether it is the
traditional print media or the electronic media, be it
advertising, newspapers, or a website, copywriting is the use of
a strong blend of powerful, motivating and persuasive words that
not only put your message across to your target audiences, but
also brings about the desired results.
In advertising,
good copywriting grabs attention, creates user interest, holds
attention, conveys useful product information and expects to
generate more sales. You're right, we are talking A.I.D.A.
formula! Grab Attention, create Interest, build Desire and bring
them to Action! A newspaper article, on the other hand needs to
be informative, interesting and absorbing. It cannot be denied
that credibility also plays a crucial role. It is important to
keep your audience in mind while writing: Whom are you
addressing? Who are the people reading your article? What
exactly are they interested in reading?
Generally in
most cases, be it web, print or electronic media, space and time
is a constraint, not necessarily from the feasibility point of
view but more from how long you're able to hold a reader's or a
viewer's attention. This not only requires addressing the
emotional needs of the people but also picking up their common
traits, as no two readers are the same.
What is
Search Engine Copywriting?
Search Engine
Copywriting or SEO copywriting is re-writing text on the website
page in such a manner that it continues to appeal to the site
surfer while being compatible to the Search Engines. Search
Engine copywriting is a specialized field that optimizes your
site content so that search engines tend to rank your site
higher when keywords related to your business are searched. One
might question the need for Search Engine copywriting , when
they already have the best of best copy on their website. The
fact is that sometimes, even the finest written copy by the
greatest copywriter might not generate the rankings on the
search engines that you had hoped for, despite the fact that you
have a great product or service, have spent an amazing amount of
time and money in building that site. Interestingly, since
Search Engine Copywriting attempts to focus on specifics, it
usually improves even human viewers' appeal and clarity rather
than hurting the creatively written copy.
Search Engine
Copywriting helps in optimizing your site in such a way that; a)
it ranks highly on the search engine results with your business
specific keywords b) it succeeds in bringing quality (read
targeted) human traffic to your site and generates more
potential for sales and c) is intended to bring long-term 'free'
traffic through
'natural' search engine rankings.
What Search
Engine Copywriting is 'Not'
It is important
to understand that Search Engine Copywriting is not developing
'creative' copy from a scratch. At the cost of repeating, Search
Engine Copywriting is essentially a re-writing process of
existing 'creatively written' copy. It is not an attempt to
insert several disjointed, thesaurus-sounding keywords into the
copy just to make it rank high in search engines. The
fundamental difference is that Search Engine Copywriting is
written (read optimized) for both human surfers as well as
search engines.
Search
Engines and SEO Copywriting
Many websites
have a high degree of dependency on the Search Engines like
Google to get traffic. Search Engines collect information from
websites and match this with the keywords searched by a user
looking for relevant information on different topics. If the
Search Engine algorithms detect a close match on relevant search
terms, your page is likely to be ranked higher. It is therefore
important, from a SEO perspective, to have keywords
strategically appearing in the text of your site. Search Engine
Copywriting as mentioned earlier, is writing for these Search
Engines, in order to bring higher rankings, quality human
traffic and thus a higher potential for sales. Interestingly, a
nicely done SEO copywriting job makes the copy even more
appealing to the human visitors.
What
does SEO Copywriting do for Existing Copy?
- It makes the
existing content more Search Engine friendly, without
interfering or spoiling its natural and original
essence.
- It makes the
copy targeted for specific theme of the page by utilizing
keyword phrases relevant to the content of the
page.
- It makes the
copy more structured.
- It makes the
pages compatible to both the human surfer as well as the
Search Engines.
Effective
Search Engine Copywriting
Though there are
no cardinal rules for effective SEO copywriting. You can follow
a few guidelines that can help make your text Search Engine
friendly. Here are a few
useful tips:
- SEO
Copywriting with Keyword Phrases
Doing Keywords (read Keyword Phrase )
research is one thing that all successful SEO Copywriters
swear by. Targeting the right keywords and key phrases is a
significant step in SEO copywriting because this way you
would know what people are actually searching for. Good
Keyword Phrase research removes guesswork. Focus needs to be
on specific search phrases pertaining to what your site is
offering. Once keywords have been decided they need to be
used at several strategic places on your site.
Keyword Selection Process
The first step in the Keyword
selection process is a good Keyword Research. There is
simply no point in using keyword phrases that no one's
searching for! Hence, it is advisable to do your keyword
research by using tools like Wordtracker
and Overture
- Search Term Suggestion Tool Other search engines like
Google also offer some tools https://adwords.google.com/select/KeywordSandbox
), which can be used as a guide, although Google
does not indicate the popularity count of each key phrase.
Note: Wordtracker
offers free use for one day. If you are organized in your
planning, you can complete your keyword research in a day
and use this benefit.
Lets take an example to understand
keyword research better. Lets say, you have a hotel in Las
Vegas and your site wants to get traffic for customers
looking for your services. The first few keywords that come
to your mind may be, Hotel, Hotels, Las Vegas, Las Vegas
Hotels etc. When we look for these keywords on Google, we
are bombarded with several million pages of information. A
lot of these pages talk about hotel chains, Las Vegas
Gambling etc. The users usually refine their search to find
more specific information. They may, for instance, type in '
Discount Las Vegas Hotel' or 'Las Vegas Hotel Reservation '.
The benefit with focused approach is two-folds. One, you
would get visitors who would be looking for 'exactly' what
you are offering ; Second, you would be dealing with far
lesser competition in ranking your site high.
Therefore it's evident that:
1. When people search for information, they're searching for
specific information. Hence it makes more sense to optimize
for specific keywords .
2. It is better to use keyword phrases than single keywords,
as single keywords tend to be generic. Apart from that, many
keyword phrases can be made out of a single
keyword.
3. Try using popular yet 'not so competitive' keywords,
rather than most popular and competitive ones. They'll get
you better ranking on the search engines and moreover, bring
targeted traffic to your site rather than just junk traffic.
Other Useful Tips:
After you have researched for your keywords, you may realize
that your keywords appear in both singular and plural
versions, as can be seen in the above given example. Hence,
use all the different forms of your keywords in order to
rank higher. This can also include words that can be spelled
differently or commonly mis-spelt words. For instance, words
like eCommerce that can also be written as e-Commerce.
For effective Search Engine Copywriting make sure that your
key phrases run throughout the page, rather than focusing on
just the beginning or the title of the page. So be generous
while using those all-important keywords, but a word of
caution, don't go overboard. Excessive keyword repetition
can lead search engines to think you are spamming which can
get your site penalized.
- SEO
Copywriting for Page Headings
Headlines, apart from giving a brief preview of what
follows in the body copy, are also used to pass on the most
relevant information on the page. One look at the headline
and we decide whether we want to read the article or not. In
Search Engine Copywriting too, headlines are as sacred as in
most other mediums of communications as search engines give
high value to text put in heading formats. So, place your
keywords in the HTML header codes and
tags. For instance, the headline of this page is Search
Engine Copywriting : placed in the tags. This is suggestive
of what the page is about. The sub heading Importance of
Good Copywriting follows in tag. This is then followed by
keyword rich body text.
- Optimized
Text-Length on Page
It is advisable to have sufficient text on your home page
and important section pages. Search engines like to see
between 250 to 500 words of text on a page to assess its
keyword relevance. The longer the text, the better. Let the
beginning of the page text contain your important keywords.
Some search engines do not read deep in your page. As such,
it becomes important that they read your initial text with
the keywords. Avoid placing links in images. Search engines
cannot read images. If you must have images, have a text
link bar at the bottom of your page. Try and include your
important keywords within the hyperlinks ( anchor text ) as
this gives a high relevance not only to the page but also to
the linked page. Read our detailed article on Anchor Text
Optimization
- Search
Engine Copywriting : Using CSS (Cascading Style Sheets)
CSS or Cascading Style Sheet is a
style sheet language that allows you to tell a browser how
to present your page. CSS can be used to control text
formatting, thus maintaining the visual appeal of the text
in headings. This separates the presentation style of the
documents from the content, hence simplifying site
maintenance. This includes specifications regarding the kind
of font to be used, spacing, color, margin, border etc.
- Search
Engine Copywriting for Meta Tags
Meta Tags are used to communicate
information to the search engine crawlers that a human
visitor may not be concerned with. It should be noted that,
Meta Tags in HTML are not necessary while making your web
pages but SEO-wise, they can be a great help. Owing to its
easy manipulation by webmasters, some Meta Tags ( Meta
Keywords Tag for instance) have lost the importance they
enjoyed till some years ago. Yet, some Tags such as the
Title and Meta Description Tag are still very important.
Keeping your Meta Tags updated is not such a bad idea. In
the present day scenario the most valuable feature that the
Meta Tags provide to the websites is the ability to control,
to a certain extent, how its web pages are described
(displayed in search results) by some search engines. Apart
from this, HTML Meta Tags also offer the ability to specify
that a certain website page should not be indexed. Out of
the number of existing Meta Tags ; the more prominent ones
are mentioned below.
Read our detailed article on Meta Tags Optimization .
Types of Tags:
a) The Title Tag
Whatever text is placed in the Title Tag will appear in your
reverse bar (the top bar of your browser) when you view that
web page. The Title Tag also comes in use when we bookmark
or add a page to our favorites list. For instance, if you
were to add this page to your favorites list, then it would
appear by its Title, ' Search Engine Copywriting : Tips
& Copywriting techniques for effective search engine
copywriting '. For more information on Title Tag, read our
article on Title Tag and Meta Description Tag Optimization .
Title Tag of 70 to 90 characters is appropriate.
b) Meta Description Tag
The
Meta Description Tags allow you to manipulate, to a certain
extent, the description of your page in some of the crawlers
that support this Tag. I repeat 'to a certain extent' and
only in 'some' of the search engines. Meta Description Tag
of about 25 words should be fine. Read our detailed article
on Title Tag and Meta Description Tag Optimization .
c)
Meta Keywords Tag
The Meta Keywords Tag can
contain about 15 important keywords. Search engines no
longer read the Meta Keyword Tags. It's sufficient to have
one on the home page (just in case). Read our article on
Meta Tags Optimization for Search Engines
Other Useful Tips for SEO Copywriting
1) Update your content frequently, as
some search engines index your content more often, if it is
updated and kept fresh. But a better reason to do this is
that when a user visits your site again, he should find new
relevant information, which would bring him to your site
again.
2) Have adequate HTML text on
your home page with important keywords in the beginning.
This is what search engines can read. For home page and
important inner pages, about 250 words of text with keywords
should be fine.
3)
The best SEO copy written pages that rank highly on the
search engines are the ones with the best information and
content. These are kept so natural that a surfer, more than
often does not even realize that they have been optimized.
SEO Copywriting and other kinds of copywriting don't always
blend well, but that's exactly what SEO copywriter has to
ensure, because SEO copywriting would only help in bringing
people through the search engines to the website. Hence, it
is essential to provide maximum information, so that people
don't hit on the back button as soon as they visit your
site!
About
the Author
Harjot Kaleka is an SEO Copywriter at
www.SEOrank.com , a leading Search Engine Optimization
services company. She has a Masters degree in Mass
Communications and Copywriting.
More Articles
|
