We find that many of our customers take a lot of convincing that good web-copy will do their website, and in turn their business, the power of good. Poor old Kate tends to walk around with the phrase “everyone’s a critic” resonating in her mind as everyone and their dog has something to say on the art of copywriting. Don’t get me wrong, constructive criticism is very healthy and helpful for all involved but many of our clients seem to think they know a little more than they probably do when it comes to Search Engine Optimisation (SEO) copywriting.
First things first, when writing for the web, some of the traditional English writing rules that we know and love fall from a top storey window. Writing for the web is predominantly about the reader (while always keeping those search engine robots in mind), meaning that sentences and paragraphs have to be shorter and snappier than, say, when essay writing. It’s also wise to use simple words so that the message is clear and easy to understand at a glance or when scan reading.
And for the sake of making things a bit more lively and interesting, keeping the tense active rather than passive and using colloquial or everyday language and phrases is best in many circumstances. Techniques like listing with bullet points and dividing text with punchy, keyword relevant headings and including links to high quality websites also keeps the search engines smiling.
But enough waffle about Kate’s pet peeves as a lowly copywriter and a look at what the good people at Econsultancy have said in their SEO Best Practice Guide. We hope that a bit of advice from an independent third party will help you to see that Chichester Design knows a thing or two about copywriting.
On-page optimisation is vital to achieving good results through SEO. When planning and implementing on-page optimisation you should create documents which are deemed highly relevant to a particular search term. The most basic test of relevance is the number of times the search phrase appears on the page (headlines that include a search term are particularly powerful).
For those companies who are considering not taking advantage of the expertise of a skilled SEO copywriter, each content author and reviewer in your organisation should be trained to understand all on-page optimisation factors and…
- Clearly identify different levels of target keyword phrase priorities for each webpage – primary, secondary and tertiary keywords.
- Consider creating different types of content which enable two entries in the SERPs (Search Engine Results Pages) for strategic keyword phrases
- Consider keyword synonyms and phrase variants as well as homonyms where the meaning of a phrase may conflict with the marketing objectives e.g Blackberry fruits and Blackberry handhelds are not the same
- Make sure title tags that summarise the page’s content, contain keyword phrases, have a call to action and compliment the meta description tags are essential
- Make sure meta description tags are concise and effective in explaining what you offer and encourage clickthrough since it will often be displayed on the SERPs (or Search Engine Results Page)
- Make sure in-house content owners and reviewers know the importance of heading styles and should have the ability to add them. Headings and sub-headings containing relevant keyphrases help with usability, accessibility and SEO.
- Be clear on the importance of hyperlinks and how to format them. Outbound links from a page can be positive for both search rankings and user experience.
- Make sure image tag ALT attributes are used to summarise the content of main images and involve keyphrases where relevant.
- Remember that search engines seem to assign more weighting where keywords are included towards the top of the document although you should try to balance keyword use naturally throughout.
Does all this Search Engine Optimisation lark seem like a synch to you? Fantastic we wish you every success with achieving websites that soar up the Search Engine Results Pages (and we may even offer you a job)! If on the other hand, you are interested in the benefits of on-page optimisation and you would like further details of how our professional web-copywriter can help you, contact Kate today.
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