Search Engine Optimisation Copywriting - introduction
This is an area of copywriting which I turn my keyboard to more than any other. It happens to be one of the most demanding areas of copywriting, because you're writing for not one audience but two - the people who visit your website and the search engine spiders which crawl it.
Search engine optimisation copywriting also happens to be one of the most satisfying areas of writing, because the results are easily measurable. You just go to Google and type in the keywords and see if the webpage you've written is on the first few pages. Ideally, it should be on the very first, because few people look beyond the first page of results.
The other area of measurement, of course, is in how this translates to extra visitors, and, most importantly, new customers. Generally, if you've getting the correct keywords ranked highly, the new customers should follow, assuming the site has been well written and designed.
That word 'correct' is also the key in any keyword, so to speak. Researching the best keywords is absolutely essential. They need to be terms that people actually use for searching, yet preferably ones which aren't over-optimised by your competitors.
Beware companies or individuals that guarantee top ranking on Google. They're using spamming techniques which will soon get found and will result in your website being penalised and ranked low or not at all. Or they're using obscure keywords that will rarely be entered into a search box.
More on search engine optimisation copywriting another time. Meanwhile, you can find out more and see some sites I've successfully copy optimised on my search engine optimisation copywriting page
How do people react to search engine results? Part 1
Here's a link to a report by a UK digital agency called Tamar. Or rather 'a search conversion agency', as they call themselves. Coincidentally, I wrote their website about a year ago.
http://www.tamar.com/servlet.cgi?page_id=227;
The report drew on the conclusions of a poll of over 1,500 adults in the UK conducted in February 2007. Some of the chief conclusions of their report are as follows:
• Over half of respondents would switch to a competitor if they see negative comments about a company in the search results.
• 7 out of 10 would abandon a search altogether if they saw negative results.
This particularly affects some of the multinationals. For instance, search for Starbucks and the first page will include links to sites entitled 'I hate Starbucks' and 'Campaign against Starbucks.'
For bigger companies, those are worrying statistics. After all, it's the big boys who generally attract negative publicity. So if your company is on the small to medium side, you've probably got less to worry about.
More relevant to you, however, are the conclusions of the survey with regard to natural and paid search. Of which more next time.
How do people react to search engine results? Part 2
Still on Tamar's report, the poll came up with some very significant statistics as regards natural and paid search:
• 43% of respondents knew the difference between natural and paid search. (That figure rose to over half for anyone under 34.)
• 9 out of 10 respondents prefer natural search to paid search.
• Sponsored links are most effective when targeting 16-24 year olds, but still less than one in eight (12 per cent) preferred to click on them instead of a natural search results.
• Women in particular preferred natural results because they are seen as more relevant.
• Men are cynical of the keyword manipulation tactics used in paid search, and don't trust them.
• Consumers aged 55 and over were the most sceptical about clicking on sponsored links, with 94 per cent saying they would always prefer using natural results.
• The figures were almost as high for the lucrative 25-34 year old audience, with 92 per cent preferring natural search results.
What does this mean for you and your business? More in Part 3.
How do people react to search engine results? Part 3
The previous entry looked at how natural search results are far preferred by consumers to paid for listings. Here's what Neil McCarthy, director of the agency which commissioned the research, concludes:
'Consumers are wising up to how sponsored links work and as the cost of paid search continues to grow, so does consumer scepticism. Online marketers need to take a joined-up approach to their online marketing and avoid over-reliance on paid-search. The most effective online campaigns strike a balance between paid and natural search.'
He continues: 'Consumers who click on natural search links are far more likely to become better customers and leading brands are beginning to place a greater emphasis on their natural search optimisation strategies.'
In other words, there's a place for pay per click, but natural is best.
No argument from me there, but when it comes to small to medium sized companies, I would argue even more strongly in favour of natural listings, for several reasons.
In the first place, as Neil concludes, leading brands are beginning to wise up to natural search engine optimisation. Given their bigger budgets and general clout, this represents a real threat to smaller competitors. This gives you two choices. You can try and match the spend of your bigger brethren with their much bigger budgets. Which sounds like a fast track to penury.
Alternatively, you can pay even closer attention to natural listings. If you've been smart, you've already worked out that natural listings via search engine optimisation are the cost-effective way to go. If not, now's the time to start.
In my final part, I'll look at how to improve your rankings still further.
How do people react to search engine results? Part 4
What's the best way to improve your listings still further? By making sure as many pages as possible are optimised for one thing. As regular readers will know, search engine optimisation copywriting is the single most important technique in search engine optimisation. The beauty of it is that it's easy, flexible and affordable.
It has an additional benefit of making it more likely that prospective customers will go straight to a page where they can see what they want to buy. Rather than, for instance, navigating their way there from your homepage or 'about us' page.
You could, of course, also try to increase the number of relevant inbound links your site has. On an informal basis, such as encouraging customers to link to you, this is always a good thing. However, the more you get into press releases, article marketing and the like, the more time-consuming it gets. And once you reach the level of paid for linking campaigns, it all starts to get very expensive too.
Although expensive, serious linking campaigns and / or pay per click campaigns can be useful if you're in a highly competitive area such as insurance or holidays.
Otherwise, stick to optimising your site's content if you want to get a first page ranking. Not only is it likely to cost you a lot less, but your potential customers will prefer it.
Search engine optimisation copywriting - how much should it cost? Part 1.
In itself, search engine optimisation copywriting shouldn't cost more than regular website copywriting. All you're doing is writing the copy with certain keywords in certain places. So watch out for copywriters who charge a lot more for SEO copywriting than for regular website writing.
Where extra time (and budget) could be needed is in two main areas. Firstly, when it comes to researching and deciding on keywords. Keyword research is an art in itself. You need to pick terms which people are actually searching for (I use specialist software to do this) but not ones which are near impossible to optimise. By that I mean keywords which many other people are optimising, or very simple keywords (often one word keywords). A jewellery site, for example, is not going to get very far simply by optimising the term 'jewellery' as there is going to be so much competition. So all that does take some time and expertise.
I'll look at the other costs involved with SEO copywriting in my next post.
Search engine optimisation copywriting - how much should it cost? Part 2
The other area where SEO copywriting does involve more work - if your SEO copywriter knows what they're doing - is in the various SEO copywriting peripherals.
Making sure the page URL is correct is one example. Writing the various tags is another. Meta tags, alt tags and title tags don't count a great deal these days towards search engine optimisation, but they should be correctly done all the same. In particular, title tags do count for something with search engine optimisation. (Title tags are like a headline for the page - they're those words at the top left hand edge of the page.)
Other factors include linking to and from the right pages, anchor text within those links. This kind of link: find out more about SEO copywriting here is better than this one: click here for details
There's also checking menu and site map text. And other factors too, if you really want to optimise a page to the ultimate.
Some of these you may prefer to do yourself, or give to your technical people to handle. Or you may decide not to bother with at all. But they're all areas to bear in mind. And they can add a little to the time and cost involved.