Search Engine Friendly Copywriting

Gone are the days when journalists are commissioned to write grammatically correct copy for websites.   What website owners tend to forget ever so often, is that search engines are not humans. They do not see images and certainly do not read words the way that humans do.  It is our job as Internet Marketers to help search engines read our websites.

To come up in a search results you need to ensure that you have considered all relevant criteria that makes up the very complex algorithms used by search engines in order to decide who is most relevant and who gets to rank highest.   There are a number of criteria that internet marketers and website owners need to take into consideration for ranking; however one of the most important areas is writing copy that is search friendly and rich in keywords or key phrases. SEO copy writing requires writing content that search engines see as relevant, unique and meaningful.  Here are some guidelines to writing search friend, keyword rich copy:

• Start by writing your copy normally, so that it makes sense to you.
• Create a list of keywords and key phrases you believe people might type into the bidorbuy search bar, or search engine’s search bars (such as Google).
• Choose one or two most important key phrases rather than individual keywords as there is too much competition for single words.
• Add these key phrases or keywords to the title, with the most important words towards the front.
• In addition to the title, add a heading (HTML – H1) to your copy and include the key phrase or keyword in the heading as well.
• Surround your keywords or key phrases with similar or related words (stick to a theme).
• Add your keywords or keyword phrases to the main body copy in places where they have a natural fit (with minimal disruption to sentence structure).   Don’t repeat key phrases too many times and try to ensure that you have distributed your keywords evenly across the page.
• If you are writing copy for an information or research page make sure that you have a large amount of content (over 400 words at minimum) on the page.  However, if writing for shopping sites, keep your copy short and use bullet points and lists as opposed to paragraphs.  
• Use <strong> as opposed to <bold> to place emphasis on your keywords or key phrases.
• Create a hyperlink from your key phrases or key words to link directly to other similar pages of content on your website.
• Mesh singular and plural terms together on the same page.

•  Use synonyms for your keywords or key phrases where possible.  

Here are some guidelines on spamming (‘blackhat’) techniques to avoid:

• Don’t overdo it.  Don’t stuff keywords into your descriptions in a manner that does not make sense to the reader (user).
• Your copy must look ‘real’ (natural) and not appear to be ‘spamming’ the site.
• Never use white text on a white background.
• Stuffing keywords into images is regarded as spamming.  A reasonable text description (doing exactly that i.e. explaining the image in text) is acceptable.
• Do not place hidden text in your code that is displayed above the page (i.e. can be read in your code by a spider, but cannot be seen on the page by the user.

Always ensure that your copy is real and looks natural to ensure that you do not appear to bespamming the website.  If you attempt to fool the search engines, you stand a very good chance of being dropped or blacklisted by them.  Remember, although you are writing copy to be seen by robotic spiders, you still have an end user to consider – your customer.  No matter how well ranked you are by a search engine, if your customer does not get what he or she wants from your site, they’ll click right out and continue searching for someone else – your competitor.

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