Tuesday, September 27, 2011

How to Write SEO Content, the Sequel

Last month we covered some SEO web writing basics. A key thought: The business value of a website is directly proportional to how high it ranks in key word search engine results.

Example of SEO Business Value

Let's imagine you are a travel agent in Phoenix, AZ: If you enter ''travel agent phoenix'' into a Google search box and press enter, a key metric of your website's business value is where your link appears among the results. This is called ''PageRank.'' If your link is among the top ten, directly below the sponsored sites, then you've hit pay dirt. Your website is likely to attract hits. If it appears between link eleven and twenty, it's not as likely your website will get any hits, unless someone already knows of your travel agency and is doing a Google search in hopes of being reminded of your business name. That often happens. If the link to your website comes in twenty-first or worse, forget it. Your website has negligible business value beyond being a domain placeholder.

What are sponsored links? Businesses engage with Google for a fee to purchase certain key words and be guaranteed of getting first, second or third place listing at the very top of the search results when someone enters those key words in the Google search engine. You can think of sponsored links as paid advertisements. Anyone can purchase them.

Organic Results vs. Sponsored Results


When I'm discussing copywriting strategies designed to get your website to wind up in the top ten links, I'm talking about ''organic results,'' not ''sponsored results.''
By the way, Google Search is the search engine most often used on the World Wide Web. That's why I always refer to it.

The Role of the Spider

The question I've always wondered about and never seen explained: How does Google or any other search engine know how to spit out the correct links after someone fills in a specific key word? The answer is the spider. Google sends out spiders that search the web, randomly crawling over websites, so to speak, annotating which key words are associated with which links and storing them in a database. A search engine is nothing more than a lightning fast database that offers up its spiders' findings the instant you click on your Google search box. The World Wide Web would be virtually unusable and meaningless without search engines.

Here's an important fact that relates directly to effective web copywriting. A spider only analyzes the first 65 words on any given web page. So, make certain your key words appear within those first 65 words. You should pepper key words and key word phrases throughout the first few sentences on each web page. When key words appear 66 or more words into the page, they have no impact on PageRank.

Best Practice Methodology

Let's discuss web writing best-practice methodology for a moment. When writing a website, the first priority is to assemble a list of key words and a list of the pages the website will include. Before writing the first word of the website, the writer should understand which key words are expected to appear on each page, and, if possible, in what priority order of frequency.

Data about the frequency of use of search terms is available on Goggle Analytics, Google Adwords, Google Trends or Google Insights for Search. It makes no sense to use a key word in your web copy that is infrequently used. And it makes every bit of sense to use popular key words.

For example, my EWAs appear on the web in the form of both my Blogger blog and Wordpress blog. I know that ''SEO'' and ''web writing'' are popular key words used by folks looking for useful information and freelance copywriters. Notice which words I use in the first 67 words of this EWA.

Interesting fact: Data about the frequency of use of search terms used in Google searches have been shown to correlate with flu outbreaks and unemployment levels. Key word searches provide statistical information faster than traditional reporting methods and government surveys.

Interesting fact: The ''I'm feeling lucky'' button on the Google Search page was always meant to give users a quick method of getting results but bypassing the search engine results page with its sponsored links. I always assumed it was a branding tool designed to give an alternative to selecting a Google branded search. About one percent of the time, people prefer ''feeling lucky'' and skipping the sponsored links. In 2009 Google removed the ''I'm feeling lucky'' button for a time, and its absence sparked a public uproar.

Next month: Tactical web writing rules.