SEO Copywriter Blog 2011
Latest entry 18 January 2012
If you had to put your marketing budget into one area, what would it be?
A link to an interesting recent survey:
http://www.webmaxformance.com/seo/what-is-the-best-marketing-effort-for-2012-seo.html
Around 2,500 small businesses were surveyed. If they had to invest in only one area in 2012, what would it be: SEO, traditional media, social media, pay-per-click, mobile marketing or anything else.
The winner by a mile? SEO. Not surprisingly, to me anyway - it makes massive sense, and can bring fantastic returns for relatively little investment.
Latest entry 2 December 2011
What happens when you fire your SEO copywriter
There must be hundreds of parodies of Downfall on YouTube now, but the best ones still raise a laugh.
I certainly liked (and identified with) this one:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XcnbJ2c2PTs
Latest entry 28 November 2011
Strange search terms
Inevitably, with almost any website, the number one search term used to find your site will be the URL or some variation of your business name.
I registered my website name "Ideaswise" (plus the .co.uk and .com) many years ago, as a pun on my surname and profession which involved coming up with ideas. I did search for some obvious terms around copywriting or copywriter but they all seemed to have been taken. Hence my decision to go for what I did.
Of course, had I known then what I know now, that Google gives extra weight to searches with at least part of the search term in the URL, then I would have stuck with the 'copywriter' theme.
As it is, a friend of mine cleverly snagged Londoncopywriter.co.uk only about three years ago. It's undoubtedly helped him get to number one for Google searches for 'London copywriter'. (Mind you, at the time of writing, for 'copywriter London' searches, I just pip him.)
Anyway, with a title like Ideaswise.com, my URL it's not helping with the searches. But it does have a small, irrelevant but mildly amusing bonus. My website deos get hits via some strange searches.
The latest of these being 'wise ideas on life', 'wise ideas on strength' and, my favourite, 'wise ideas about weather'.
I wish I could say they came away with what they wanted. But somehow I think my site disappointed them.
Latest entry 22 April 2011
How anchor text gives you a firmer hold on top Google rankings
On website copy, phrases like this are very common:
To read about our services, go here
The clickable link is called the anchor text. Within reason, you can make the anchor text whatever you want. A better way to write the above two phrases would be as follows:
Read about our services
Better still is to get a keyword term into the anchor text, like this:
Read about our freelance copywriting services
Google pays more attention to words in anchor text, which is why it's worth writing them carefully. It's also worth remembering this when you're adding links on other sites that point back to your site, or asking someeone else to add a link for you. This generally involves a link back to your homepage, but you can also promote other important pages that you've optimised and are expecting some searchers to find first (these are known as gateway pages).
As with these two examples:
I'm a freelance copywriter
Read my freelance copywriting costs article
Latest entry 31 December 2010
The importance of geographical locators in keyword terms and why I'm proud to be a London, UK copywriter
For most small or medium sized companies, it's absolutely vital to include geographical indicators in your keyword terms. By that, I mean essential to both search engines and potential customers.
For customers, your location can be vital. If, for example, you're searching for a decorator, you're almsot certain not to find what you're looking for if you just type 'decorator' into Google. Apart from dictionary definitions and such-like, the first results are likely to be big organisations who may or may not operate in your area. Much better, then, to optimise 'decorator North London' or similar.
It's one reason why I optimise keyword terms including geographical modifiers for my own site. For example, both London copywriter and UK copywriter
For obvious reasons, businesses in the UK tend to prefer UK copywriters. And if you're in London, you may also prefer a London copywriter (although I don't often meet clients).
Just as important, it makes sense from an optimisation point of view. Now there are some popular search terms which I'm on or near the first page of Google for which don't feature a geographical modifier. These include freelance copywriter and copywriting services
However, these are terms I've been pushing for a long time. If you're just starting out, you're unlikely to get anywhere near the first page for terms which don't include some geographical indicator.
It can be quite specific. For example, 'copywriter N16'. You are, of course, trading search popularity for position. But it's much better to be at or near the top for a term which gets 50 searches a month than on page 3 or below for one which gets 500 searches. Believe me, the former will get you more hits.