Website Copywriter Blog 2012
30 January 2012
Google webmaster help on YouTube
Sometimes in the course of my work I come up against differing points of view as to generating effective SEO.
If it's a client, the question may be something along the lines of how can you guarantee I'll rank at the top of Google? To which the only honest answer is that you can't - unless, that is you essentially cheat. Either by massively spamming a certain phrase, which can work, but only in the short term, or by choosing a phrase that almost no-one ever searches for.
If the discussion is with an SEO company, it's more likely to be along the lines of whether different elements of SEO practice are effective.
On a larger level it's content versus links (to which the answer should be there's no versus about it - both are important).
More likely though, it's on some small aspect of SEO. Like putting words or phrases in bold. Or the way to write page addresses.
Now Google is, quite rightly, always changing its algorithm - the way in which it decides where to rank a site for a given search. There are around 200 different elements in that algorithm and over time some become more important, others less so, some new ones are added, others drop off altogether. This is as it should be. If we knew exactly what made up the Google algorithm, then the quality of a website would become less important than the amount of money behind it and the amount of time and effort put into promoting it, and we'd end up in a kind of arms race.
However, there are ways of discerning what Google is thinking over time. One is looking at their webmaster tools. Another, particularly useful for a website copywriter like me, is to regularly check out their Webmaster Central videos on YouTube.
Here, they give all kinds of advice on every aspect of building and promoting a good website. It also gives some clear steers on certain aspects that can be contentious, such as whether it's a good idea to have a large keyword density. (The answer, for those SEO companies still stuck in SEO from five or more years ago is that it isn't.)
You'll find it at Google Webmaster Help on YouTube
29 January 2012
Website copywriting and SEO copywriting - blog changes
Just to let you know that I'm going to be reducing the number of blogs I have and that this blog will hold all posts related to both SEO copywriting and general website copywriting.