Entries Tagged 'keywords' ↓

I’m contracting with an interactive ad agency right now on an SEO writing project. They actually have a full-time copywriter on staff - but he isn’t trained in SEO (i.e. hasn’t learned keyword research and keyword-rich copywriting) and handles only their print ads.

But why no web-savvy copywriter at a leading agency with big clients, in this day and age??

As Thom Schoenborn at PopArt Blog observes:

It’s time for copywriters to evolve and embrace search engine optimization. And not just re-writing headlines, but owning the search-optimized content creation process from start to finish…. Re-writing/optimizing copy on the recommendation of a separate SEO expert is a waste of time and money when it can easily be written correctly the first time.”

Given that I make my living by “rewriting/optimizing copy” for others, my advice here may seem like I’m shooting myself in the foot…

But heck, I’m all about efficiency! I’d really rather see my clients spend their marketing dollars on as many aspects of SEO and site usability as possible, including keyword research (pleeease start with that!), search-compatible design, link building efforts, social media optimization, and ongoing monitoring/analytics.

I feel badly for businesses where I am sitting down - for many billable hours - to entirely rewrite a site that could/should have been SEO written the first time.

So if you’ve already got a writer on staff, make sure that he/she is fully trained on the most current best practices for SEO… or you better give me a call right away!

Although the unethical SEO practice of “keyword stuffing” in one’s metacontent (source code behind each web page) has thankfully expired, old remnants are still out there.

I’ve seen many older sites with horrific meta-keyword lists in their source code. I audited one recently that had 950 keywords stringed along in the metacontent - and the same ones for every page!

Another client had her company name, not SEO-friendly to begin with, repeated over and over ad-naseum in her meta-keywords.

(Like many business owners, they had no clue this was hurting their site’s chance of ranking better in search engines. How would they?)

No keyword stuffing; keep the list small and targeted

So, strip out the entire <meta keywords> line, right?

Not so fast; I recently learned that leaving some keywords in (the right ones) can have an unexpected benefit: As fodder for internal site searches…

You know, when you go to a website and type a word or phrase in the “Search” field usually found in the upper right corner - and it delivers up a listing of all the pages within that site that have relevant content. (Or that’s how it supposed to work.)

You want to put 3 or 4 of you best keywords/phrases for each page in its <meta keywords> line. That way, you help your site visitors find stuff and stay on Google’s good side.

SSO - Site Search Optimization (I know, another acryonym, isn’t it grand!) deserves a second look. While I’m in my clients’ source code from now on, I’ll be - judiciously - putting in some words that serve as signposts to popular content…. making that ubiquitious Search bar the useful tool it’s meant to be.

Juliet had her own agenda for saying: “What’s in a name? That which we call a rose by any other name would smell as sweet….”

In the world of writing for SEO, however, names rule. Selection of the terms you use for your web content (known as “keywords”) will, to a large extent, dictate how sweet the smell of success - read, sales leads leading to profit.

We fail to research and select the right keywords at our peril.

Seek out the SEO stinkers and leave them out of your copy

To use Juliet’s example, a rose could actually stink if, for example, you called it a rosebush:

• More than 273,000 people each month are searching the Internet using the word “rose”.
• Only about 600 people are searching for “rosebush.”

Art or science?

I spend a lot of time researching keywords/phrases, and folding them into SEO copywriting, for my clients. I think it’s both an art and a science:

Art: Fine-tuning a marketing campaign until the pitch sounds just right; then, writing eloquently and elegantly with these keywords.

Science: Building a significant database of keywords and mapping them strategically to each web page of content.

Investing in deep and imaginative keyword research, conducted by SEO experts, is some of the best money you’ll spend on your website. Don’t even think about beginning the (re)writing process until you’ve got a list of optimum keywords - and all their variations - as long as your arm.

Waxing poetic over real people buying real products

Of course, you don’t want to write just for the ‘Google-bots’ that crawl your site looking for content-rich, relevant sources of information. You want to write for humans - and specific types of humans, depending on your market. But you better know how those humans are searching.

So, poetically, a rose by any other name might smell as sweet - but if you don’t call something by the label most people use, who’s going to come ’round and smell it?