SEO Copywriting for Humans

SEO Copywriting for Humans Melanie Seibert

About me I have a BA and MA in English. I worked as an in-house copywriter for a catalog and web retailer for 4 years. Also worked as a technical writer for a total of 3 years. Now doing tech writing, content strategy, and freelance web writing, including SEO.

Part 1. Search is big.

http://www.readwriteweb.com/archives/facebook_wants_to_be_your_one_true_login.php

495 comments later...

...and counting.

Lesson: Many people navigate the web Some don’t know how to use the address bar.

Part 2. Elements of SEO.

Where do high search rankings come from?

No one knows for sure. But professional SEOs have some ideas.

Broad algorithmic elements to Google’s rankings http://www.seomoz.org/article/search-ranking-factors

SEO copywriting is not a magic bullet. High rankings come from many factors. Most are off-page factors. These are important. Work on them.

So why do we even worry about SEO copywriting? Two reasons.

Reason 1: The 15% represented by on-page factors are completely under your control. Take control.

Reason 2: Whatever you want your site visitors to do, optimizing your content for them will help them do it. Increase conversions.

Part 3. SEO Copywriting for... Robots?

“A Web crawler [robot] is a computer program that browses the World Wide Web in a methodical, automated manner or in an orderly fashion.” — Wikipedia

Back in the day...

This is bad because: It clutters the site. It makes it harder to ﬁnd what I want. It hurts the site’s credibility.

So how should you optimize your copy? Your web copy should be: • ﬁndable • usable

Copy that ranks well, Helpful copy that vs. but doesn’t help no one can ﬁnd. humans. Both are equally useless.

“SEO copywriting is not about trying to trick search engines by stufﬁng content with unrelated keywords or with so many keywords that the copy sounds silly. Good SEO copywriting makes your page more readable for both search engines and humans.” — Yahoo! Style Guide (emphasis theirs)

What do you need your copy to do?

Part 4. SEO Copywriting for Humans

1. Keywords

Pick keywords that: •are searched often •have less competition

Useful keyword tools: SEOmoz keyword difﬁculty tool (paid) http://www.seomoz.org/keyword-difﬁculty/ Google search-based keyword tool (free) http://www.google.com/sktool/# Trellian Keyword Discovery (free) http://www.keyworddiscovery.com/

The best keywords are key phrases (3-5 words).

Localize if you can.

Example Keywords: – “Toronto virtual tours” – “Toronto real estate photos”

Trial and error is your friend.

2. Page title <title>

Examples:

Title tips: •Don’t forget it. •Front-load it with keywords. •Limit it to 65 characters.

3. Headings and subheads <h1> <h2> <h3>

4. Links <a href=“”>

Click here.

For internal links, use keywords and key phrases. External links to pages about a similar topic are ﬁne. Don’t overdo it.

5. Metadata <meta name=”description”> <meta name=”keywords”>

Example

•Remember your keywords. •Use 160-250 characters. •Use a different description for each page of your site.

6. Content

•Update frequently. (Blogging helps.) •Some experts recommend 300 words per page. •Make it useful and actionable. •Keyword density should be below 5.5%

Helpful tool: Scribe — http://scribeseo.com/

Result: Happy humans. Happy robots.

References •SEOmoz.org •Copyblogger.com •Yahoo! Style Guide Thanks! •StoneHome Photo (Peter Rzazewski) •Houston Apartment Help (Barbara Aquino) •Sitesquared (Shanna Cote) •Lindsey White •Molly Rodriguez

Comments or questions? Twitter: @melanie_seibert www.prosekiln.com

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SEO Copywriting for Humans

by Melanie Seibert

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