A copy appeal that attempts to take a humorous approach will be largely ineffective. Proof is in the number of times a funny advertisement tends to win an award, but fails to sell anything. Copy can have humorous aspects to it as long as the selling points and benefits do not rely on the humor itself to tell the story.
Search Engine Optimization (SEO) Copywriting Tips
Writing high-quality, search engine friendly content/articles for your website is crucial to achieve quality rankings in the search engines. Here are some tips to help you understand what you can do to improve your sites content and achieve your goals.
1. Write well
Content is king: this is the mantra of every SEO-conscious web developer out there. Google and other search engines love useful, well-written content. If users find your content useful, they will link to it and they will tell their friends about it. When Google finds these inbound links, that page’s ranking will rise even higher, which in turn will bring in more visitors.
One of the implications of writing well is that you should use as many different words that are as relevant to the title as possible. If your copy uses the same keywords again and again, search engines can tell that the article is shallow and not very useful. Conversely, is you use a wide vocabulary that is pertinent to the topic, search engines will infer that the article is authoritative, deep and useful. Google’s ability to determine the true value of a piece of writing by examining words other than the keywords is known as latent semantic indexing. For this reason, it is important to use synonyms of your keywords in addition to the keywords you are targeting.
2. Use the h1 tag for your title
Using the h1 tag for your title will make Google take the title extremely seriously, providing the title’s words are also present somewhere in the text. The h1 tag allows you to achieve a high degree of focus on your chosen keywords. The h1 tag is one of those golden SEO tips that will improve your search engine results very quickly.
You should also use the h2 tag on sub-headings, and the h3 tag on sub-sub-headings. If you make your article hierarchical, Google will give you a lot of respect.
3. Keyword density
The keywords that you are targeting should appear at the beginning, in most paragraphs and somewhere near the end. Once you have that down, just focus on producing exceptionally useful and comprehensive content. Do not stuff your articles with keywords, as this is spammy and search engines can tell. You are also a lot less likely to receive inbound links if your copywriting is poor.
4. Bold, italics, underlined
When you emphasize a word with italics, underlining or bolding, search engines assume that it is a keyword. Use this to your advantage to tell Google what your keywords are. The flip side of the coin is that you should only use these tags on keywords, or you will confuse the search engines and weaken the effect.
5. META tags
Use your title’s keywords in the and DESCRIPTION tags. Google will love it if the TITLE and DESCRIPTION tags are similar or identical. Do not repeat keywords in these (or any other) tags, as this is considered spam.
6. Numbered lists
For some reason people love to link to lists, so try and present some of your articles as numbered lists, along the lines of “10 ways to improve your website’s Google ranking.” Lists are easy to digest and are popular with bloggers.
7. File names
Use up to 5 keywords in the name of your files. Using keywords in the file name has some SEO benefit. You should also use keywords to name the directory in which the file is. In this way, all your URLs will consist of your domain name followed by keywords that are relevant to the page’s content.
8. Interlink your articles
Cross-linking your pages will ensure that PageRank is shared among the articles on your website; you don’t want a page that massively outperforms the others. Interlink your pages with contextual links whose anchor text is relevant to the target page. In addition to spreading PageRank over your websites, this technique will also help you tell Google what your pages are about.
9. Have useful external links
Linking to useful websites is vital. It has been shown experimentally that, other things being equal, pages with outbound links have a higher Google ranking than pages with no outbound links (Does the number of links on a page affect its ranking?). You should only link to pages that are relevant to your page’s content. You should also make sure that they have not been penalized By Google, or your page will be penalized too.
10. Do not use Flash
Flash is a real pain. It is also the biggest enemy of SEO, along with frames. Flash takes ages to load and cannot be read by the search engines: any information embedded in a Flash file will not be indexed, and the whole point of SEO is to make your content visible and understandable to the search engines. Flash also irritates users and drives them away, myself included. Enough said.
12. Do not use frames
There is no question about it – frames suck. Frames blithely do away with the fundamantal unit of web navigation: single, unequivocally identifiable web pages. They therefore completely destroy a website’s chances with the search engines. If a website uses frames, the ONLY page that search engines will index is the home page – if that. You’ve been warned!
13. Synonyms and plurals
To make your articles relevant to as many search queries as possible, you should use synonyms in your copy. Google will love this (see latent semantic indexing) and you will qualify for more search terms. A similar argument applies to plurals – it will make sure you get Google referrals for both the plural and singular versions of a given keyword.
If you have additional questions, please contact me and I will be more than happy to help. I can be reached at 208.598.0084 or matt.shifley@yahoo.com.
Content, content, and more content
If you are creating a website or working on a site you’ve already created, the content of the site is one of the most important factors for successful search engine marketing. The pages you create should provide valuable information that references very specific terms and concepts that are unique to your website.
Text is one part of the content that is important for being found in search engines. Search engines usually read and index the first 500 words from each page they successfully crawl. The text within that span of words is one factor that helps to determine your relevance for a particular search term.
If you are successful at weaving your keywords into compelling copy you are more likely to be relevant for keyword searches. Once your site has been up and running for three months, run a report on your log files to determine what keywords people are using to find your site.
You might be surprised if the most popular keywords that do find your site don’t match up to keywords you already had in mind and were using. The web is a great educator about how to succeed. Your site might be very popular for search terms that you hadn’t thought of when you built it.
When people use search engines, they aren’t typing in generic terms that are hard to define and measure like “business” or “software”. People use search engines for very specific names and phrases, terms like “Inkjet printer cartridge refills”.
You wouldn’t have thought to include that specific phrase in your content because it doesn’t read very well. But if all those words are located in a web page carefully constructed to highlight keywords that are known to produce traffic, the likelihood that you will appear in a search result for a very specific search improves.
You must be diligent in understanding how people are getting to your site and focus on providing quality content that is geared towards the audience that is trying to find you. Be as specific as you can. You’ll improve the quality and quantity of visitors you get from search engines.
It’s also important to understand that you cannot trick the search engines. Flooding the engines with multiple versions of the same page, repeating the same term over and over – these tactics will only lead to negative traffic from search engines and the likelihood that your site could be banned from being listed in a search engine.
We mentioned earlier that the text on your website was one part of the content that’s important for being found at search engines. Another important part of the equation is your link popularity. By focusing on quality content, your website becomes more likely to have someone naturally link to it without having to request it. You can read more about link popularity here.
What is a bad neighborhood in the SEO world?
A bad neighborhood are those web sites that use unethical methods to get high search placement in the SERP (Search Engine Result Page) and these sites are usually banned by the search engines. You should not link to a web site if that particular web site uses unethical method to get high search placement on SERP. If you link to a site that is banned by the search engines for spamming, then you’re inviting the risk of getting banned for linking to a bad neighborhood. As soon as the search engine founds out that a particular web site uses unethical methods they will banned it and the sites that links to that particular web site may also be penalized by lowering their rankings or even banned. You can use this free online tool in locating potential problems with your linking strategies text link checker tool.
Unethical SEO (search engine optimization) are those things that are not accepted by the search engine and those that they accepts are called Ethical SEO. Those are the standards set by the search engines. Following those standards will help search engines index and rank your site. Not following these standards will lead to a site being removed entirely from search engine index or much worst penalized. Since Google is one of the most dominated searchengines you can learn more of their webmaster guidelines here.
How Google measures whether a site should be banned or not is a matter of controversy that Google itself only knows. It changes from time to time. Today the method that Google uses may be o.k., but in the next update it may be considered unethical.
If you do have a questions or suggestions feel free to leave a comment or send me an email.
Search Engine Optimization (SEO) Copywriting: Essential Elements
Let’s discuss the five areas to focus on with your web page, blog post, online press release, whatever . . . they’re all the same in the eyes of Google. The 5 SEO copywriting elements that matter:
1. Title – Whether you optimize up-front or later, you at minimum need to know what keywords you’re targeting and include them in the title of your content. It’s generally accepted that the closer to the front of the title your keywords are, the better. But the key is that they appear in the title somewhere.
The emphasis on keywords in the title makes practical sense from a search engine standpoint. When people search for something, they’re going to want to see the language they used reflected back at them in the results. Nothing mysterious about that.
Having keywords in your title is also important when people link to you. When your keywords are there, people are more likely to link to you with the keywords in the anchor text. This is an important factor for Google to determine that a particular page is in fact about a particular subject.
You should try to keep the length of your title under 72 characters for search purposes. This will ensure the full title is visible in a search result, increasing the likelihood of a click-through.
2. Meta Description – SEO copywriting is not just about ranking. It’s also about the presentation of your content in a search engine. The meta description of your content will generally be the “snippet” copy for the search result below the title, which influences whether or not you get the click.
It’s debatable whether keywords in your meta description influence rank, but it doesn’t matter if they do or don’t. You want to lead off your meta description with the keyword phrase and succinctly summarize the page as a reassurance to the searcher that your content will satisfy what they’re looking for. Try to keep the meta description under 165 characters so the full description is visible in the search result.
3. Content – Unique and frequently updated content makes search engines happy. But you know that part. For search optimization purposes (and just general reader-friendliness) your content should be tightly on-topic and centered on the subject matter of the desired keyword phrases.
It’s generally accepted that very brief content may have a harder time ranking over a page with more substantial content. So you’ll want to have a content body length of at least 300 words.
It might also help to bold the first occurrence of a keyword phrase, or include it in a bulleted list, but I usually don’t get hung up on that. It’s also debatable whether including keywords in subheads helps with ranking, but again, it doesn’t matter – subheads are simply a smart and natural place to include your keyword phrase, since that’s what the page is about.
4. Keyword Frequency – Keyword frequency is the number of times your targeted keywords appear on the page. Keyword density is the ratio of those keywords to the rest of the words on the page.
It’s generally accepted that keyword frequency impacts ranking (and that makes logical sense). Keyword density, as some sort of “golden” ratio, likely does not. But the only way to make sense of an appropriate frequency is via the ratio of those keywords to the rest of the content, so density is still a metric you need.
In other words, the only way to tell if your repetition of keywords is super or spammy is to measure that frequency against the overall length of the content. A keyword density greater than 5.5% could find you guilty of keyword stuffing, and your page could be penalized by Google. You don’t need to mindlessly repeat keywords to optimize. In fact, if you do, you’re likely to achieve the opposite result.
5. Page Links – Linking is the fundamental basis of the web. Search engines want to know you’re sufficiently “connected” with other pages and content, so linking out to other pages matters when it comes to search engine optimization.
Here are some “rules of thumb” for linking based on generally accepted best practices:
* Link to relevant content fairly early in the body copy
* Link to relevant pages approximately every 120 words of content
* Link to relevant interior pages of your site or other sites
* Link with naturally relevant anchor text
Again, these are guidelines related to current best practices. Don’t get hung up on rules; focus on the intent behind what search engines are looking for – quality search results for people.
Five Common Mistakes To Avoid When Writing
Here are five mistakes to avoid when blogging and writing web copy:
1. Your vs. You’re – This one drives a lot of people insane, and it’s become extremely common among bloggers. All it takes to avoid this error is to take a second and think about what you’re trying to say.
“Your” is a possessive pronoun, as in “your car” or “your blog.” “You’re” is a contraction for “you are,” as in “you’re screwing up your writing by using your when you really mean you are.”
2. It’s vs. Its – This is another common mistake. It’s also easily avoided by thinking through what you’re trying to say. “It’s” is a contraction of “it is” or “it has.” “Its” is a possessive pronoun, as in “this blog has lost its mojo.” Here’s an easy rule of thumb—repeat your sentence out loud using “it is” instead. If that sounds goofy, “its” is likely the correct choice.
3. There vs. Their – This one seems to trip up everyone occasionally, often as a pure typo. Make sure to watch for it when you proofread. “There” is used many ways, including as a reference to a place (“let’s go there”) or as a pronoun (“there is no hope”). “Their” is a plural possessive pronoun, as in “their bags” or “their opinions.” Always do the “that’s ours!” test—are you talking about more than one person and something that they possess? If so, “their” will get you there.
4. Affect vs. Effect – As with any of the other common mistakes people make when writing, it’s taking that moment to get it right that makes the difference. “Affect” is a verb, as in “Your ability to communicate clearly will affect your income immensely.” “Effect” is a noun, as in “The effect of a parent’s low income on a child’s future is well documented.” By thinking in terms of “the effect,” you can usually sort out which is which, because you can’t stick a “the” in front of a verb. While some people do use “effect” as a verb (“a strategy to effect a settlement”), they are usually lawyers, and you should therefore ignore them if you want to write like a human.
5. The Dangling Participle – The dangling participle may be the most egregious of the most common writing mistakes. Not only will this error damage the flow of your writing, it can also make it impossible for someone to understand what you’re trying to say.
Check out these two examples from Tom Sant’s book Persuasive Business Proposals:
After rotting in the cellar for weeks, my brother brought up some oranges.
Uhh… keep your decomposing brother away from me!
Featuring plug-in circuit boards, we can strongly endorse this server’s flexibility and growth potential.
Hmmm … robotic copy written by people embedded with circuit boards. Makes sense.
The problem with both of the above is that the participial phrase that begins the sentence is not intended to modify what follows next in the sentence. However, readers mentally expect it to work that way, so your opening phrase should always modify what immediately follows. If it doesn’t, you’ve left the participle dangling, as well as your readers.
Will Twitter Help Your Google Rankings?
Yes and no. How is that for an answer? Recently, Google started to display real-time results in addition to the regular top 10 pages on their search result pages. The real-time results are meant to offer web searchers access to brand new news items as fast as possible. The main element of Google’s real-time results are tweets. Tweets are the real-time messages that Twitter users post on Twitter.com.
Google’s PageRank algorithm looks at the link structure of a web page. The more websites link to a website and the more websites link to the linking websites the more relevant is the linked website. Tweets are not about links but about followers. On Twitter.com, people “follow” the comments of other Twitter users. The more followers a Twitter user has, the more reputable are the tweets of that user. If Twitter users that have many followers follow another Twitter user then these users will have a larger impact on the reputation of that user.
As high-quality pages link to another page on the Web, the quality of the linked-to page goes up. Likewise, in social media, as established users follow another user, the quality of the followed user goes up as well.”
The follower reputation rank is only one of Google’s methods to rank tweets:
1. Hashtags – Twitter users often use “hashtags” in their comments. Hashtags are symbols that start with a # followed by a popular topic, for example #earthquake. If such a hashtag is included in a tweet, the tweet will show up in the real-time results when other Twitter users click the hashtag’s topic word elsewhere on the site.
2. Spam – While hashtags can be useful to maximize the exposure of a tweet, they are also often abused for spamming. The wrong hashtags can serve as a red flag that triggers Google’s spam filters. Google modeled the hashtagging behavior in ways that tend to reduce the exposure of low-quality tweets.
3. The signal in the noise – There can be thousands of tweets that contain a very popular word such as “Obama”. To find the relevant tweets, Google looks for “signals in the noise”. Such a signal can be an increasing number of tweets that mention other words near mentions of “Obama”, for example “Cambridge police”. The tweets with the signals will be chosen for the real-time results.
The problem with Google’s real-time results is that they don’t last. The time and efforts that you have to invest in getting listed in Google’s real-time results is better spent on optimization for Google’s regular results.
Promoting Your Website
When you have a business, website promotion is essential to success. You want to get as many people looking at your website that you can. Without website traffic, it could lead to less customers and less sales. Websites are key to informing customers and non-customers about your company and product.
The first step in website promotion is to first get it listed on the main directories on the Internet. These directories include Yahoo and most importantly Google. The goal is to have your website be the first thing listed when someone searches for your product, something similar to your product or your company. Keywords play a big part, and if you pick the right keywords, it will rank higher on the search pages and be easier for customers to find the.
If this seems too risky, these directories also allow you to pay them so that your website will be guaranteed to be seen when using the selected keywords. However, it will be in a different part of the page then the search results. This is known as pay per click marketing, and you will have to pay the directory a fee every time someone clicks on that link.
You can also use current cutting edge methods to advertise your website. You can make podcasts and even YouTube videos. These essentially work like commercials, but are entirely free to put on the Internet.
Another step in website promotion is to actually tell people about it. Tell your friends, people you see on the street, anybody. This could have a chain effect and they could tell their friends which creates more traffic and hopefully more customers. Other ways to do this is visiting online communities and forums where your target customers visit and tell them about the website.
Having a website is essential to a business now, whether it’s a home business or a corporation. However, websites do not promote themselves, so you need to become aware of all the options available to you to create traffic. The more traffic you have, the more customers you will have.
There are also people like me that can do all of this for you. I can specifically focus on Internet marketing and know how to do everything that was mentioned in this article. You will have to pay people like me for these services, but it could be beneficial to deal with people who know what they are doing especially if you need to focus on your business or feel overwhelmed with promoting your website. If you have additional questions, please contact me and I will be more than happy to help. I can be reached at 208.598.0084 or matt.shifley@yahoo.com.
Search Engine Optimization (SEO) Tips From Google
Where better to learn about how to optimize your website than Google, the top search engine. If you’re new to search engine optimization (SEO) or wish to improve your site ranking, Google offers a great number of tips. I’ve explored some of Google’s greatest tips and SEO strategies in a variety of places, including their official blog (www.google-success.com), a how-to video published by one of Google’s engineers, and related news sources. Take a brief glimpse at the most useful recommendations from the search experts.
Recognizing “Trustworthy” Information
According to the NY Times article on Google in 2007, Google has a unique search algorithm that ranks Web sites and blogs based on over 200 different signals. The Web search engine is able to pick out trustworthy news sources that will best benefit Web users in their keyword searches. For instance, Google News is able to rate sites based on click-through data on news stories. This calls for more interesting and catchy page titles, and topic-specific terms that appeal to a targeted audience.
Also, Google identifies phrases like “according to the Washington Post” in wire stories. So, it is far to assume that if your story is mentioned in multiple places, your site will gain a higher ranking. And a post about a popular news story will gain a stronger presence.
Don’t Spam Your Articles
One of the things that will weaken your site is weighing it down with too many external Web links. It’s not a good idea to rely too much on link building to draw in new readers or raise your Web ranking. Avoid using excessive links that aren’t related to the posting, and try not to list your page through other Web sites that aren’t related. The content of your site should be, above everything, original, informative, and appealing to readers. Using too many links will likely harm your site’s reputation in the long run.
Comment, Discuss, and Network Often
You can subtly draw readership to your site by expanding your online network. Keep plugged into related blogs and Web sites that cover the topics you’re passionate about. Comment on other authors’ blogs, and also participate in discussion forums and chat rooms that interest you. Be careful that you don’t post your link forcefully at the end of every online conversation. Not only does this convey shameless self-promotion (and not a genuine interest in the topic), it could get you banned or kicked out of online conversations. Most forums allow you to create a signature, which is the ideal place to list your site.
Video & Photo Tips
According to Maile Ohye, Google’s Developer Programs Team Lead, their search engine does favor certain types of formats. As you post SEO photos to your site, keep in mind that Google particularly favors JPEGs over PNGs. Also, be certain that your images are tagged with your top keywords to boost your Web site’s overall search optimization. Videos hosted on YouTube, which is currently owned by Google, can significantly increase your Web ranking more so than videos hosted through other sites.
Link Building Tips
When it comes to Search Engine Optimization (SEO), maintaining “link popularity” can drastically change how search engines find and list your website for the mass of potential visitors who are searching for an exciting site like yours. Simply put, your link popularity is the number and quality of incoming links that point directly to your site. This is a major factor that search engines evaluate when deciding whether your website is worthwhile and relevant to Web visitors.
The quality of your content is extremely essential – it’s not just about the number of SEO keywords or artificial links to increase your online traffic numbers. The search engines require links from authoritative sites, or relevant sites that share the same focus as your blog. Link-building can be complicated. Here are eight simple link-building tips to help your blog legitimately increase link popularity.
1. Join a directory. Congratulations, you’ve already accomplished step one by joining OnTopList.com. By belonging to a directory, you’ve gained a global network, many of whom either write in your niche or are more likely to help you through cross-promotional opportunities.
2. Piggy-back off of high-ranked sites. If you do a search on your SEO keywords, you’ll get a glimpse of the top-ranked sites in your category. Contact the sites that do not directly compete with you, and build a link-exchange relationship where you can piggy-back off of their high rankings.
3. Contact the owners of related sites. Try to be selective when deciding who you want to exchange links with. Send a friendly solicitation e-mail to open communication, and be sure to give them a reason why the relationship would be mutually beneficial.
4. Trade articles or unique postings with interested parties. Is it a subject or news topic that related sites may find interesting? Often, you’ll find that news or commentary sites have sections to “share news or ideas” or “suggest a link.” This is the perfect chance to exchange fascinating stories or news that you have published with related websites.
5. Use social bookmarking sites to your advantage. Do you already have a DIGG or Delicious social bookmarking account? These sites allow you to bookmark and use tag keywords for your favorite Web links. Bookmark related sites in addition to your site’s entries, and the other users in your network may start consulting your links regularly, which could eventually lead them back to your website.
6. Rely on your own network of friends, family, and colleagues. Don’t leave out your existing network of friends, who know and like you already – and are the most likely to read, comment, and promote your site.
7. Write for online article sites. Lastly, there are numerous sites where anyone can be a published author – Helium.com, About.com, AssociatedContent.com, eHow.com, eZineArticles.com. It’s free to join, plus you’ll be able to write related advice and information to your site, and every one of your article includes your profile – which is where you can link users back to your pages. If you write an article related to a past entry, this is the opportunity to promote and link users to the topic at the conclusion of your article.
8. Write reviews and comments on other sites. If it’s applicable to your chosen niche, you can also write other types of online content in other sites. For instance, if you maintain a technology site, you may want to regularly write product reviews on Amazon.com, ePinions.com, and related sites. This will grow your presence as an expert in your niche, and provide another way to link new visitors back to your site.
If you have additional questions about how I can help your generate more links for your website and how important it is to helping your company receive more exposure online, please contact me and I will be more than happy to help. I can be reached at 208.598.0084 or matt.shifley@yahoo.com.
Matt Shifley: Marketing Specialist 