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 isn’t really a one-post subject, but it is meant to give everyone who is giving it a go on their own a bit of advice on how best to go about it.

After a very long time in the industry, I’ve come to the somewhat obvious conclusion that quality wins out over quantity.  The conclusion doesn’t seem like an obvious one when you start reading SEO literature or start listening to a few SEO experts speak.  Many of them profess that multiple articles on the same subject will act as “linkbait” and encourage search engines to link to your site.  They’re not wrong.  However, this attracts the wrong kind of attention.

Posting a bunch of bad content on your site is the equivalent of dressing up and sauntering by a construction site – you’re bound to get a lot of dates, but they won’t add up to much more than a bunch of names and no meaningful relationship will come of it.  The key is to develop a quality relationship not only with the search engines, but with your readers who will act as evangelists for your site and Twitter, Digg and otherwise share what they find.  Real eyeballs are the key.

While I know they work, I have an ethical issue with creating landing pages for sites because I feel that they dilute the web in general.  If I see a “landing page” on a site, I purposely will not buy something from there because I feel that they must have something to hide in order to employ such an obvious sales gimmick.  I have a feeling that I am not alone in this distaste for landing pages, although it is the rare writer who won’t do them at all.  If a client asks me to, I will,  but under advisement that successful sites on the internet are moving away from such language and into more quality content that appeals to social networkers.

I also believe in giving Google what it wants.  Google and the rest of the search engines want good, quality content that has been linked to by reliable sources.  The only way to get this without tricks is to actually sit down and do it, something many SEO experts write off as too time-consuming or troublesome.  If you have a hard time writing yourself, that’s what Working Web Copy is here to help you with.  If you don’t, insert some solid facts in your site and people will keep coming back.  Sometimes they’ll even bring their friends.  They’ll link to you and voila – Google has been satisfied.  Your natural rankings rise.  That’s SEO without the tricks that go the way of the dodo every time Google changes their algorithms.

Got any questions about optimizing web content?  E-mail me or hit me up on Twitter at @workingwebcopy.