Copywriting for seo

Copywriting for SEO

Training for IWK Editorial
November 2012
Brian Pereira

Topics
• Introduction

• How search engines work

• Page ranking, relevance, organic & inorganic search

• Definition of SEO

• The structure of a Web page (HTML basics)

• How the CMS is used for SEO

• SEO copywriting – techniques & best practices

• Keyword selection strategies & tools

Introduction

• What this short course is about

• What it isn’t

• At what levels can SEO be done?

• Why is it important to do SEO?

How Search Engines work
• Search engines have three components:
– Database
– Spider/Web crawler
– Search tool / user interface /query processor

Video
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BNHR6IQJGZs

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=h0xUHykOPtY

• Further reading:
http://computer.howstuffworks.com/internet/ba
sics/search-engine.htm

What Web crawlers pick up

• Page Title (in our case same as story title)

• Keywords (Tags in CMS)

• Description (Summary in CMS)

• Keywords in a link (links on page)

• Words in Bold face

• Repeated words on the page

Search terminology
• PageRank
• Page Relevance
http://www.prchecker.info/check_page_rank.php

• Organic (natural) vs inorganic (paid/PPC) search
• (Ex: Type “Resorts” in search box)

• VIDEO
• https://www.google.com/settings/u/0/ads/preferences/?hl=en#gen
eral
• Tags, meta tags
• ALT text

Why your page should be listed on top
of search results
• People usually click on links on the first page

• Rarely look beyond the second page

• More visitors to your site mean more page views

• Advertisers look for no. of page views and want
to do lead generation activities with you

• Leading to more revenue for you from online

Definition of SEO
• SEO – The techniques used to design, code
and write content for a Web page so as to
give it a high page ranking and relevance in
search engine results

• SEO done at different levels
– Text (SEO copywriting)
– Coding
– Image, video

Video

http://www.seomoz.org/learn-seo
http://www.seomoz.org/beginners-guide-to-
seo

Learn more:
http://www.seomoz.org/beginners-guide-to-seo

The structure of a Web page
(HTML basics)

The structure of a Web page
(HTML basics)

• A web page - a series of instructions plus your
content (text, images etc)
• The “instructions” are a series of HTML tags or
commands. HTML tags are used in pairs; not case
sensitive.
• So a Web page is regarded as an HTML document
and its file name has a .htm or .html extension

HTML document
• The document is structured in two main parts:
• A. Header
• B. Body

Basic commands
<HTML>
<Head>
………..
………..
………..
</Head>
<Body>
………..
………..
………..
…………
</Body>
</HTML>

Optimization tags

<HTML>
<Head>
<Title> InformationWeek – Business value of Technology </Title>
<META NAME=“DESCRIPTION” CONTENT=“This is the summary of
the story”>
<META NAME=“KEYWORDS” CONTENT=“Web exclusive, Big Data,
Analytics”>
</Head>

<Body>
………..
………..
</Body>
</HTML>

View source code
• To see the page source code

• Firefox - Ctrl + U

• Internet Explorer – View > source

• Chrome – Ctrl + U

How the CMS is used for SEO

<Title> = Story title in CMS
The story title also becomes the page’s URL

<META NAME=“DESCRIPTION”
This is the Summary field in CMS

<META NAME=“KEYWORDS”
This is the Tags field in the CMS

SEO Copywriting
Techniques & best practices

SEO Copywriting

• Write original content that’s relevant to your readers
• Write information rich copy
• Use keywords in your copy that people are likely to
type in search engines
• Repeat these keywords in your copy
• Don’t try to trick search engines by stuffing keywords
that are not relevant
• Copy should make sense to humans first, then engines

SEO Copywriting

• Use links in your copy; link to other pages on
your site.
• Repeat keywords in your body copy, but the
copy should make sense.
• Use keywords in the story title (because it
becomes part of the page URL)

Keyword selection strategies
& tools

Terminology
• Search Volume

• Keyword Difficulty

• Current ranking

There are tools that let you test your keywords against
each of these parameters

Ideally you want to find keywords that are high in Volume
and low in Difficulty

Tools
Search Volume
Trellian Keyword Discovery(free trial)
http://www.keyworddiscovery.com/
Google Adwords – http://adwords.google.com
Word Tracker Keyword Research tool https://freekeywords.wordtracker.com/

Keyword Difficulty (competition)
Google Search-based keyword tool (Google Adwords)
http://adwords.google.com
SEO MOZ http://www.seomoz.org/keyword-difficulty

Current ranking - SEO MOZ Rank Tracker tool
http://www.seomoz.org/rank-tracker
http://www.seocentro.com/tools/search-engines/keyword-position.html
http://download.cnet.com/Keyword-Ranking-Tool/3000-18485_4-10972753.html

Keyword Research Tools
• Search-volume research tools
• Keyword Discovery
• Keyword Discovery free search-suggestion tool
• Wordtracker
• Wordtracker free keyword-suggestion tool
• Google AdWords
• Google AdWords free keyword-ideas tool
• WordStream free keyword-research tool
• Microsoft Advertising Intelligence: Keyword research add-in for Microsoft
Office Excel 2007.

• Keyword-difficulty research tools
• SEOmoz Keyword Difficulty Tool (paid version)
• Google Search-based Keyword Tool

Process
1. Note down all the keywords in a column in a
Spreadsheet

2. Use the various tools described and check
the Search Volume, Keyword Difficulty , and
Current Ranking for that keyword

3. Note the weightages or scores in columns in
the spreadsheet

Testing keywords
• Look at your keywords in the spreadsheet
• Eliminate keywords from the list that have high keyword difficulty
or very low ranking
• Eliminate words that are not relevant to the article
• Eliminate words that you cannot repeat 3 – 5 times in your copy
• Sort the list by Search Volume (highest to lowest)
• You should arrive at 3 – 5 keywords or phrases
• Use these in your story title, sub-heads, lead-in, conclusion,
embedded links and throughout the story
• Try to use 3 – 5 word phrases instead of single keywords

Keywords Tips
• Put together longer phrases of 3 – 5 words

• Don’t use single words

• From your list of keywords, select words that are high in Search Volume
but low in Keyword Difficulty (be more specific)
e.g. Instead of ‘Pets’ use ‘Pet care in India’

• Combine high and low volume words in a single phrase e.g. Buy Apples
(high) + Kashmiri Apples (low)

• As you go from the Home Page to the sections within the site, use more
specific keywords

• Home page has all the highest-volume keywords

Learning SEO
• http://www.seomoz.org/learn-seo
• http://www.seomoz.org/beginners-guide-to-seo

• http://styleguide.yahoo.com/
• http://www.sitepoint.com/google-seo/
• http://computer.howstuffworks.com/search-engine-optimization.htm

• http://www.dailywritingtips.com/a-freelance-writers-basic-guide-to-seo/
• http://www.slideshare.net/mherzber/seo-for-writers
• http://www.selloutyoursoul.com/landing/seo-course-for-writers/
• http://webdesign.about.com/od/seo/a/seo_content.htm

• http://www.youngprepro.com/seo-for-writers/
• http://www.seocontentlab.com/

Thank you
• Brian.pereira@ubm.com
• brian9p@outlook.com

Copywriting for seo

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