Melanie Seibert is a freelance writer who specializes in technical writing, content strategy, and SEO copywriting. She has a BA and MA in English and has worked as an in-house copywriter and technical writer. The document discusses how to write optimized content for both search engines and human readers. It provides tips for incorporating keywords, writing effective page titles, headings, links, metadata, and content on pages. The goal is to make content findable by search engines and understandable and useful for human readers to help increase conversions and rankings.

1. SEO Copywriting
for Humans
Melanie Seibert

2. 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.

3. Part 1.
Search is big.

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

6. 495 comments
later...

8. ...and counting.

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

10. Part 2.
Elements of SEO.

11. Where do high search
rankings come from?

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

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

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

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

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

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

18. Part 3.
SEO Copywriting
for... Robots?

19. “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

20. Back in the day...

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

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

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

25. “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)

26. What do you need
your copy to do?

27. Part 4.
SEO Copywriting for
Humans

28. 1. Keywords

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

30. 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/

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

33. Localize
if you can.

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

35. Trial and error
is your friend.

36. 2. Page title
<title>

37. Examples:

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

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

40. ...

41. 4. Links
<a href=“”>

42. Click here.

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

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

45. Example

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

47. 6. Content

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

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

52. Result:
Happy humans.
Happy robots.

53. 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

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