A Few Secrets of SEO Copywriting

Irina Ponomareva |

October 1, 2004

Category: SEO Copywriting |

This article may be reproduced in its entirety provided the proper credit to the author is given, and a valid link to http://www.spiderfriendly.co.uk | added.

SEO copywriting is the core of the overall SEO process. If your site contains no copy, search engine spiders will have nothing to work with. If your copy is not properly written for SEO purposes, it will never bring you really good search engine rankings. Conversely, if your copy is written with only SE spiders in mind, it will repel your human visitors and detrimentally affect your business reputation.

How do we find a balance between an optimal keyword density and a good marketing pitch? How do we please spiders without displeasing humans? It already sounds complicated. You might already be thinking of ways to feed one variation of your page to search engines and another to your human audience - if you are, stop here! The point is to make the same copy equally attractive to both types of site visitors, not to deceive or abuse. We are here not to discuss spammy SEO methods.

An optimal keyword density is not 60% or 80% - that would turn your text into unreadable nonsense, and smart search engine algorithms will immediately see it is artificially stuffed. They know how to tell natural from unnatural language, so the good news is that you won't lose out by using your normal writing style when copywriting for search engines. Just remember about your keywords - it is easy to include them for the simple reason that they are relevant to your topic. SEO copywriting - conveniently enough - becomes your best friend when you wish to make your copy clear and descriptive for human readers.

What is an optimal keyword density? It is widely believed that it is somewhere between 3% and 4%, but that is not a rule. With directories, it is often higher, but that's good, too. It is not the result of artificial manipulation - it just happens when you include titles and descriptions of all the listed web resources, which, provided the directory is categorised well, should be relevant to the same theme.

But directories are directories, and SE copywriting is another thing. There is really no need to count the words or calculate the percentage of keywords. If you are not sure that it is optimal, put your keywords into the Google toolbar and click the highlighter to highlight your words in different colours. It helps a lot. With experience, you will soon see if your page is under-optimized - or worse, over-optimized - and make the necessary corrections.

SEO copywriting tips

Be subtle. Nobody but a very experienced SE optimizer should guess at a glance what you are targeting.

Be creative. Targeting words for SEO purposes doesn't mean your copy should become poor. All the general rules of good copywriting still apply. Humans should enjoy reading your copy and easily grasp your ideas.

Be logical. Include your targeted key phrases in link anchor text to send your visitors to related pages, but do it for usability's sake first and SEO purposes second. Never abuse the method; it looks highly unprofessional when abused.

Be descriptive. Optimize your title tags, headers and sub-headers. Include your key phrases in them - but again make sure you do not overuse them here. The first rule of good quality SEO is never overuse or abuse.

Be expressive and friendly. Yes, spiders are insensitive to human emotions, but remember that your readers are more important to you and that people react emotionally. Spiders are said to be insensitive to emotions ... but are they really? Sometimes it looks as if they are as emotional as we are - rewarding our spider-friendliness with good search engine rankings and penalising us for being indifferent.

If you think of spiders as your adored pets, your SEO campaign will be successful and your SEO copywriting perfect and skilful.