Optimal Internet Research Service
Out Of This World Search Engine Optimization
Most people involved to any extent in web marketing know that the lion 's share of web traffic comes from search engines.
It is also common knowledge that keywords and links to your site, know ad "back links", are the two things that affect your ranking in the search engines. Your keywords tell the search engines what you do, and the inbound links tell them how important your website is, know as being what "authority" it has. This combination is what determines your website 's "relevance", and relevance is what search engines are after.
There 's a lot of information available about how to incorporate keyword phrases into your HTML meta tags, particularly the description meta tag. The keyword meta tag in no longer of any importance for SEO. At one time the keyword meta tag was important because search engines used the keywords in the meta tag to determine what keyword searches a particular website should be indexed under. Abuses of the keyword meta tag resulted in the major search engines ' newer generations of search algorithms to ignore them.
Search engine bots visiting your website now look at your description tag, page title and the page content. But the search engine bots don't stop there. They also consider how often the keyword phrase is used on the page.
You need to salt your site with your primary keywords, while taking care to not over optimize. The accepted ratio of keywords and keyword phrases on any given page, known as "keyword density",is between 3% and 5%.
If you don't properly employ keyword density it is unlikely your website will appear in the search results when a potential customer searches for those keywords. Too much and search engine bots are programmed to flag the page as being spammy and either relegate it to the supplementary index, or ban the website completely.
The trick is to write keyword-rich copy without compromising readability.
Readability is all-important to both visitors to your website and search bots. It may be the visitors to your website that buy your product or service, and not search engines. But is it through search engines most potential buyers will likely have found your website in the first place. New generations of search bots are programmed to detect poor grammar that has no other purpose than to seed textual content with keywords, and visitors finding the same poor grammar are not going to have much faith in the merchant with such a website, so are unlikely to make a purchase... So it it totally counterproductive to not use well written, keyword-rich, content.
By following these 8 simple guidelines, you will be able to overhaul the copy on your website ensuring it 's agreeable to both search engines and visitors alike.
1) Categorise your pages...
Before writing, think about the structure of your site. If you haven't built your site yet, try to create your pages around key offerings or benefits. For example, divide your Second Hand Computers site into separate pages for Apple products and PCs, and then segment again into Laptops, Tablets, Desktops, etc. By doing so, you will be able to incorporate very specific keyword phrases into your copy, thereby capturing your targeted segment of searchers. If you 're working on an existing site, go through each page and rewrite the page content where necessary.
2) Find out what keywords your customers are searching for...
Go to https://adwords.google.com/o/KeywordTool and type in the key points, offerings, and benefits you identified for each page. This is a free tool offered by Google to help Adword advertising purchasers, but it is excellent for any keyword analysis.
The keywords in the returned list are the words you will want to use within the textual content you use to describe your product or service.
3) Use phrases, not single words...
There 's a lot of competition for single keywords, with millions of websites trying to rank high enough to be on the first page of Google for something like "computers" or "laptops".
If you website is one competing in computer sales, don't choose "computers" as your primary keyword. Go to Google and search for "computers" and you will see why.
Secondly, research shows that customers are becoming more search-savvy and searching using more specific strings. They 're learning that by being more specific, they find what they 're looking for much faster.
Ask yourself, what 's unique about your business? Perhaps you sell cheap second hand computers? Then why not use "cheap second hand computers" as your primary keyword phrase. This way, you will not only stand a chance in the rankings, you will also display in much more targeted searches. In other words, a higher percentage of your site 's visitors will be people after cheap second hand computers.
4) Pick the important keyword phrases...
Don't include every keyword phrase on every page. Focus on one or two keyword phrases on each page. For your Apple products page, focus on "cheap second hand macs" or "cheap second hand iPads". For the PCs page, focus on "cheap second hand pcs", etc.
5) Be specific...
Don't just say "our computers". Wherever you would normally say "our computers" be create and use a variation of "our cheap second hand iPads" or "our cheap second hand computers". As long as doing so doesn't affect your readability too badly, it 's worth doing. However, it 's a fine balance. Your site reflects the quality of your service. If your site content is hard to read, people will infer a lot about your service…
6) Use keyword phrases in links...
Although you shouldn't focus on every keyword phrase on every page, it 's a good idea to link your pages together with text links. Text links are called "anchor text" and are important to search engine optimization as much as they are to directing site visitors to where you want them to go.
As an SEO too. using anchor text helps search engines bots visiting your site see that the pages are related. Once again, the more text links the better, especially if the link text is a keyword phrase. An example of a website that uses anchor text better than most is Wikipedia, the free online dictionary website. Have a look at how they employ anchor text and try to create similar interlinking of page on your site.
So on your "Cheap Second Hand iPads" page, include a anchor text links at the bottom to "Cheap Second Hand PCs", "Cheap Second Hand Apple Laptops", "Cheap Second Hand Laptops" and so on.
If you can manage it without affecting readability, also include an anchor link to those same pages within the copy of the page. For example, "As well as providing cheap second hand iPads, we sell high quality cheap second hand PC tablets too".
TIP: If you don't want your links to be underlined and blue, include the following in your CSS file:
<style type="text/css">
<!--
a {text-decoration: none;}
-->
</style>
Then format the HTML of each link as follows:
As well as providing cheap second hand Macs, we sell high quality <a href="pcs.htm" style="text-decoration:none"><font color="#000000">cheap second hand pcs</font></a>.
This code string will have your included anchor text links appearing to be regular text.
7) Use keyword phrases in headings...
Just as customers rely on headings to scan your site, so too do search engines.
Headings play a big part in how the search engines will categorise your site. Try to include your primary keyword phrases in your headings. In fact, think about inserting extra sub-headings just for this purpose. Doing so will also help the readability of the site because it will help customers scan a page for the information they want most to read.
8) Test keyword phrase density...
Once you have written your SEO copy, run it through a density checker to get some metrics. Visit http://www.gorank.com/analyze.php and type in your website URL and keyword phrase you want to analyze. It will give you a percentage for all the important parts of your page, including copy, title, met a keywords, meta description, etc.
The higher the density the better, to a point. Generally speaking, a density measurement of at least 3 to as much as 5% is what you 're looking for. Any less and you will probably need to edit your page. On the other hand, to high a keyword density and you run the risk of a visiting search engine bot flagging your page as spammy and losing page rank, if not have your page relegated to the supplementary search index.
The supplementary search index is where search engines archive web pages that have virtually not page rank, and short of someone actually searching for such listings by URL or domain name they are unlikely to ever appear somewhere in the search results anyone would ever see them.
Conclusion...
Follow these 8 steps to successful SEO copy writing and you will be well on your way to effective SEO copy.
Just remember, don't overdo it. It 's not easy to find the balance between copy written for search engines and copy written for customers. In many cases, this balance will be too difficult to achieve without professional help. Don't worry, though. If you have already performed your keyword analysis, a professional website copywriter should be able to work your primary keyword phrases into your copy at no extra charge.
If you have need help enhancing your company's online presence, increasing traffic, improving sales, or anything else relating to you business online contact us.
We offer a wide range of services relating to social media marketing (SMM), search engine optimization (SEO), analysis of web marketing strategies, back linking, optimization of existing websites, consultations, brand reputation protection, etc.
Optimal Internet Research Service offers a wide range of social media marketing services. One of our services is the development and managing of marketing strategies for clients Facebook, Foursquare, Google+, Twitter, Pinterest and other social media accounts.