Optimal Copy - SEO Copywriting Blog

Here’s an informative enumeration of SEO copywriting practices you do NOT want to engage in.  Courtesy of the always illuminating Karon Thackston.

Top 10 Don’ts for SEO Copywriting
By Karon Thackston © 2009, All Rights Reserved

Following in the footsteps of Rand Fishkin and Guy Kawasaki, I
decided to come up with my own list of don’ts.

There is no shortage of don’ts when it comes to SEO copywriting.
It seems this niche got off to a rough start many years ago
when early comers somehow misconstrued the core principles of
the trade.  Allow me to elaborate on how not to write SEO copy.

1. Don’t shove as many keyphrases into the copy as humanly
possible.  It’s not about the sheer volume of search terms you
include.  Yes, Google and other engines should be able to follow
what the page is about.  Yes, engines are looking to match a
searcher’s query with search engine optimized content on your
web pages, but which pages land at the top is decided through a
series of calculations far more complex than any simple ratio.
When you overload copy with keyphrases you sacrifice quality and
user experience.

2.  Don’t lose site of balance.  If SEO copywriting isn’t about
the percentage of keywords within the copy, then what is it
about?  Balance.  You have two audiences with SEO copywriting:
the search engines and your site visitors.  But surprisingly,
the balance doesn’t come with serving both masters well.  The
balance comes in how much you cater to the engines.  You see,
your site visitors always come first.  However, if you write
with too little focus on the engines, you won’t see good
rankings.  If you put too much focus on the engines, you’ll
start to lose your target audience.  Balance. always balance.

3.  Don’t let someone else choose the keywords.  If keyword
research isn’t a service you offer, an SEO firm, keyword
specialist or some other professional that your client hires
will have to conduct the research.  Don’t just accept keyphrases
these folks toss your way.  Ask to see the entire list with
recommendations as to which terms would be best strategically.
Then you, as the professional writer, can decide which will also
work best within the copy.

4.  Don’t sacrifice flow for numbers.  This is a follow-up to
number three and is a major issue with bad SEO copywriting.
SEOs or clients sometimes insist on using hacked-up search
phrases that simply don’t work in a normal sentence. An example?
“Candies samples free.”  Many copywriters will just grin and
bear it, sacrificing quality and flow for the sake of
competitive values or other numbers.  The result is often some
obnoxious sentence like, “If you’re looking for candies samples
free, you’ve come to the right place!”  Forcing a phrase into
the copy at all costs never turns out well.

5.  Don’t use keyphrases that don’t apply to the page.  If you
operate a site about wedding receptions, don’t try to force a
search term about wedding dresses into the copy just because it
pulls a lot of traffic.  (A) Unless you sell, alter or design
wedding dresses, it won’t be applicable.  (B) Even if you manage
to get the page ranked well for the phrase [wedding dresses],
once the visitor clicks to your site and realizes you have
nothing to do with wedding dresses, they will leave. It’s a
waste of time and effort and it creates a poor user experience.

6.  Don’t use misspellings and correct spellings on the same
page.  I fully understand that the misspellings of keyphrases
can be valuable search terms.  However, to mix correct spellings
and misspellings within the same page of copy looks like you’ve
got a bunch of typos in the content. It’s just not professional.
Some writers will go for the old, “We rent limousines
(sometimes spelled limosenes) for the most affordable prices in
town.”  I don’t care for that approach. It’s just not natural.
Would you ever see brochure or newspaper copy that reads that
way?  I think not.

7.  Don’t use keyphrases the exact same way every time.  This is
how we end up with horrible SEO copy that sounds like a 4th
grader wrote it.  (See #4.)  There are lots of ways to use
keywords in copy, not just one.  In order to sound natural, you
have to get creative with your keyphrase use.  One way is to
break up phrases using punctuation.  Since search engines don’t
pay attention to basic punctuation marks, you can easily write
something using the search term [real estate Hawaii] that reads
like this: “Currently there is an impressive selection of
available real estate.  Hawaii listings can be.”  See?  “Real
estate” is at the end of the first sentence and “Hawaii” is at
the beginning of the second sentence. The engines ignore the
period so there’s no problem.

8. Don’t use all types of search phrases for every situation.
There are many ways in which this “don’t” applies.  One quick
example is that of an ecommerce site.  It wouldn’t be advisable
to use specific, long-tail keyphrases on the home page of your
site.  They are much too specific in most cases and are better
suited for individual product pages.  Broader terms are
typically best for an ecommerce home page.  If you don’t
understand the best applications for the various types of
keywords, you’re likely to have lackluster results.

9. Don’t neglect ALT tags/image attributes.  These tags are the
ones associated with images on your pages and they carry a good
deal of weight especially if the image is used as a link.  The
ALT text counts the same as anchor text in a text-based link.
Depending on a few different factors, ALT text may be a good
place for those misspellings mentioned in #6.

10. Don’t forget the chain of protocol.  There’s a method to the
SEO copywriting madness.  The idea is not to get as many
different keyphrases onto a page as possible.  Just the
opposite, in fact.  Rather than having 12 different search terms
used only one time each, you need to use two to four keyphrases
(depending on the length of your copy) per page.  The title,
META tags, ALT tags, other coding elements and on-page copy need
to support each other as far as keyphrase use goes.  Your goal
is to let the engines know that you have original, relevant
content about a narrow topic.

Unless you have an exceptional number of back links built up,
just mentioning [dark chocolate], [chocolate strawberries],
[chocolate chip cookies], [chocolate cake], [chocolate
desserts], [organic chocolate] and [chocolate cheesecake] once
each on a web page isn’t likely to do a lot of good.  Instead,
pick two or three terms which are closely related and use them
several times each along with mentioning them in your tags.

When you avoid making common mistakes, you’ll find your SEO
copywriting flows much better, is more natural-sounding and
ranks higher, too.

Need help with SEO copywriting?  Karon has written 3 excellent
books to help you learn keyword optimization techniques. Visit
http://www.CopywritingCourse.com today and click to the Order
page for details.

By Lisa Peyton

At the core of all search optimized copy is keyword content or “density”. SEO pros may disagree on just how important this content is, but they all agree that it’s important. There are several keyword density tools out there so I’ve listed my favorites for your consideration. I use the tools below to check out the keyword density of my landing pages and to check up on my copywriter’s work to see if I need to have him rework and increase the amount of times he has worked the targeted phrase into the text. I also use these tools to research the keyword density of the contenders for that coveted #1 spot on any given search engine for my keyword phrase, getting a good idea of where to set the bar for my own copy.

I would love to be able to say that there’s a set keyword density formula for all the top search results in Google—unfortunately, there isn’t. After testing out several phrases and comparing the top 5 results for each one, there is typically wide disparity between the keyword percentages on the page. I found some pages that had percentages as high as 40% and 50% for the targeted keyword phrase and others that didn’t even have the searched phrase in their title tag, resulting in an overall percentage closer to .23%, or less than 1%. This shows that there are several other factors being considered within those tricky search engine algorithms. But we all already knew that! So remember to keep keyword density in perspective–it’s only one component of a well-optimized page, but a relatively easy one to nail with the handy tools listed below:

http://www.keyworddensity.com/

At first I didn’t like the idea of having to find a second page when I was focusing on the density of the page I was building out, but it’s pretty interesting to compare the top ranking pages for your targeted keyword phrase. This tool is one of the only free resources I found that will let you enter the keyword phrase that you would like the resulting percentages to be based on. I think it’s a great starting place when trying to test out the keyword density of your content, but I wouldn’t use it as the only source for your data.

http://www.webjectives.com/keyword.htm

Webjectives offers another free tool that allows you to enter the keyword phrase along with the URL of your webpage. There are 2 check boxes that allow you to perform partial keyword matching and decide how to deal with case sensitivity. For example, “Technical Recruiter” would be a different keyword than “technical recruiter.” The results page breaks down the density using the individual components on the page–such as Title, Body, Meta and Alt tags, as well as giving you an overall total percentage. It very nicely counts all the words on the page for you and gives you a final weighted keyword density for the entire page.

http://www.seochat.com/seo-tools/keyword-density/

This is a second type of tool that doesn’t ask you to input the keyword phrase, instead you enter the URL and check-off a handful of different options, including the number of keyterms to display, the elements to include such as alt tags and meta tags and the number of words per phrase, 1, 2 or 3 words. This tool is a bit limited if you are trying to optimize for some long-tail terms that may have more than 3 words. The result is simply a list of phrases and their corresponding percentages or density on the page. This tool is useful when trying to determine which keywords your competition is targeting since you don’t have to have a specific keyword phrase in mind when performing the analyses.

http://www.keyworddiscovery.com/

KeywordDiscovery, my current keyword research tool of choice, offers a density tool with their subscription service. It’s not technically “Free” but it’s included if you purchase their other keyword services, starting at about $70 bucks per month. Their keyword density tool is among those that don’t ask for specific keywords but return a list of phrases with the highest density. This tool allows up to 4 words per phrase, so it’s a bit more focused if you are targeting specific search terms. The chart includes the keyword phrase, density percentage, actual word count, number of searches for the term and whether the term is located in the title, description, and the link-text or heading of the page. Once again, this a great tool to see just how optimized your competitors’ web pages are. One quick glance allows you to see which words they have gone out of their way to target and how competitive they are.

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