Working Web Copy

That is a very good question. Search Engine Optimization (SEO) writing is really what anyone who has been writing for the web for a while does; this is just the industry term for it. What exactly goes into proper SEO writing?

Keyword Analysis
There are several tools you can use to do keyword analysis; the only one I use is the Google Keyword Tool. Before you start writing your page or blog posting, you use the tool to develop a short list of short tail and long tail keywords. I usually use two short tail phrases and about three long tail phrases. Short tail phrases are common searches, such as “green living”.

Long Tail Defined
Long tail phrases are more narrowly defined, and would be something like “organic web content writer”. You then use these phrases in your body copy, with long tail phrases at the top and bottom, without making them sound awkward. The keywords shape your copy, you don’t insert them into your copy. You can, but it ends up being more awkward if you do.

Writing in Digestible Chunks
Humans and search engines both like copy that is structured like this article; a headline followed by a paragraph. Don’t make your paragraphs too long either. This also allows readers to skip over areas which they feel they don’t need

Write Decent Headlines
This is especially important for blog posts; your readers are likely using an RSS feed to pick out the posts that they want to read, so make it engaging and don’t make it too short.

There is a lot more to SEO writing, and a lot more to SEO in general. One thing clients have to understand is that SEO does not stop at writing. Decent content is only part of the package; you also need clean code and a link building program. It is also the responsibility of people who do web copywriting for a living to forge relationships with web designers and SEO specialists who can further help clients with these areas of their website presence. It takes a village to make a good website and market it properly.

This week, I wrote a screed about content mills over at my freelance writing jobs site. One of their defenders wrote in a comment that they were advertising on my blog, so I took action; I removed them all from my Google Adsense.

What was left was stunning. There were relevant, interesting ads that I would have clicked on had I been allowed to do so. I wasn’t the only one who noticed; my CTR’s ballooned soon after.

Do you have a couple of “industry giants” who pay for the highest spot on PPC ads running ads on your Adsense? Take them off and see what happens. Hopefully, you’ll be as pleasantly surprised at the results as I was!

So you’ve gone and got yourself a blog because you realize that having one is intrinsic to participation in this “social media” thing all the kids are doing. First of all, pat yourself on the back. Go ahead, nobody can see you.

Your first question is probably how often you have to blog. This is a good question. You will get different answers to this question depending on who you ask. As someone who has maintained blogs for a while, this is mine.

The more often you blog, the more often you are feeding fresh content to Twitter and search engines. Once a day is ideal. If this is an impossible number for you, go for a few times a week. People will still appreciate that you are updating your content often, as will search engines.

Most companies only blog about once a week, on average. If this is the case with your company, try to make up for it by setting up a couple of trusted employees with access to a Twitter account and have them Tweet news pieces, interesting articles and generally anything that has to do with the business. These will probably be the best people to manage the blog postings as they will be more in touch with your customers.

I have found Twitter search to be indispensable for my freelance writing business. Whenever I run up against a saturated keyword that has search engine results pages that are polluted by nothing but Yahoo Answers, paid search, and eHow articles, I turn to Twitter search to get some quality results.

One example is the term “green products” or “organic products”. I write a daily blog on green living and search for new and unique green products to share with my readers. I have all but given up on Google as a source now that I have discovered Twitter real time search. The products I find on Twitter are new, they are interesting, and best of all I don’t have to wade through pages and pages of irrelevant search results. They are ALL relevant. This allows me to drill down on my information within seconds, where before it would take me up to 30 minutes to find a good product to blog about.

I find traditional search results are getting clogged with bad content from content mills, enough that I have lost faith in the depth of material available to me on a traditional search. How many of you feel the same way? Here is a list of the sites I am talking about:

Yahoo Answers
eHow
Examiner.com
Suite101.com
hubpages.com

I have consistently found that pages from these sites return results with bad data and worse writing. Twitter search seems like a much more viable option to weed out these bad apples.

I have been running a freelance writing jobs site for just over a year. In the first eight months or so, ad revenue was zero to very little, all because I believed the site was just gaining traction. After about a year and a healthy following, I noticed that ad revenue was completely flat. This led me to start troubleshooting. I made a very small change that has seemed to make all the difference; I started using whitespace around my ads.

Prior to that, I had my ads fill up one of my sidebars, which essentially made it blend in with the background of the design. Other sites use this technique, including theweathernetwork.ca. If you visit pages in their site, you will notice that they use about a half inch of whitespace on either side of their ads on the left sidebar. Same goes for my site at freelancewritingjobs.ca.

If you don’t think your ads are performing, make this small change and see what happens. Worked for me! I’d love to know how it worked for you if you want to e-mail me or leave a comment.