Impact Media's SEO Blog

Avoid the fluff and give your visitors more of the good stuff. Plain English is the new ‘keyword optimised’ for online Copywriters, so it’s time to make it easier on yourself and your readers.

There’s no mystery to producing good copy. First of all you need an understanding of your audience. Next you need to have a reasonable vocabulary to communicate your message. Finally you need a way to instantly engage with the visiting public.

The last of these can sometimes be the most challenging though. What are they looking for? How can you write in such a way to entice them to explore your site further? More often than not the answer is to keep it simple and succinct.

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What is SEO Copywriting?

In the simplest terms possible, SEO Copywriting refers to the writing of copy that has been optimised for use on Internet websites.

Whilst a Copywriter in the past may have produced content for advertising or marketing purposes, an SEO Copywriter is required to create site content that seamlessly integrates key terms and phrases. The reason behind it is to create website content that will inform users, whilst helping individual pages to gain strength and rank higher for their unique keywords.
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There are occasions where we look to simplify things, or make them clearer through ‘real-world’ situations. However, SEO and its incumbent offshoots, including analytics, link building and, perhaps most excessively, copywriting, appear to have been almost entirely overrun with mysterious euphemisms, metaphors and analogies.

We’re all guilty of it. You won’t have to search too far through the Impact Media blog to find a tenuous link of some sort. Unfortunately though, whilst some analogies help shed a little light (yes, another metaphor) on a subject, others just serve to confuse it further.
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Copy is far from being a one size fits all solution. Depending on what your website is promoting or who you’re targeting the tone and wording can differ hugely.

Ecommerce is understandably one of the most competitive markets online. With so many stores offering the same or similar products and services, you have to be sure that yours stands out from the crowd. Pricing and other additional incentives can swing the balance in your favour; however, to really close the deal, copy can be your greatest marketing weapon.
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Every now and then the value of the written word is called into question. With the major technology-based epochal shifts that have occurred in the past few decades, it’s hardly surprising that each new medium is seen as the beginning of the end for copywriting.

When I say copywriting of course, I mean the long-standing form of the profession. Years before the computer came into existence, a time when the web was still something that spiders made; copywriting was a way of marketing services, products, or just your own ideas. Whilst keywords, embedded links and H2 headings weren’t a requirement for this form of printed copywriting, most of the conventions have been passed on to the world of SEO and online marketing.
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Business is all about communication. The interaction between a company and their clients, providers and customers is key to building a successful and profitable infrastructure. Online the principle remains the same, however the mode of communication is markedly changed.

Rather than being able to talk to visitors face-to-face in your store or offices, websites have to rely on a whole new method of convincing passing trade that they’re the site for them. Without the opportunity to talk directly to customers, you are instead reliant on copy to do the talking for you.
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People who aren’t natural writers don’t always have the easiest time when it comes to producing persuasive sales copy. Econsultancy yesterday featured an interesting look at how e-commerce site owners often toil with the concept of creating product copy that will really sell.

The aforementioned article raises some important points, not least about how you can overcome that initial fear or even ambivalence towards copy and its role as a sales device. But it also got me wondering how we can simplify the process and remove more of the misconceptions surrounding sales copy. Here is Impact Media’s simple(ish) guide to creating perfect product copy.

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Copywriting is a vital part of the overall SEO process, there can be little doubting that. However, it isn’t necessarily a part of SEO itself per se.

Take, for example, a football journalist. It’s their job to read the game, understand what is happening on and off the pitch and formulate a report as an end product; but that doesn’t make them a footballer. Copywriting, particularly when done online, is exactly the same.

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On reading the headline ‘SEO Copywriting is Dead! Here’s Proof…’  this morning, I was understandably a little taken aback. As a copywriter working in the online marketing sector, SEO is invariably a large part of what I do personally, and of course what Impact Media do as a company.

But behind the headline, there is in fact a very good series of arguments that suggest heavily optimised copy is no longer the force it once was. Whilst some of the points within this article may be stronger than others, the key message is one of quality above keywords.
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It’s often not until you’ve actually tried to do copywriting yourself that you realise just how difficult it is. Of course, in essence, it is much the same as any conventional form of writing. However, there are so many additional factors that you have to consider – not least balancing readability with SEO strength – that it is a far more complex skill than some give credit for.

There’s a fine line between a categorical success and a stratospheric disaster; particularly when it comes to marketing your own website. So to help you steer clear of lexical limbo, we’ve put together this list of 5 copywriting faux pas that you should look to avoid:

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If you’ve been left wondering “how can I boost my website’s visibility?” you’ll be relieved to know that there are a number of potential avenues to explore. PPC advertising, strong links and improving content to be more keyword orientated are just a few of the common methods.

Leading search engines have their own methods of analysing and ranking websites. One thing that they all look for though is good quality new content that is regularly updated. So rather than going through your site and adding or adjusting existing pages to boost visibility, why not set up a news section or blog?

Blogs are a simple and highly effective marketing device. By writing exclusively about your industry, using personal insight and knowledge where applicable, you can provide an exceptional service to clients, both existing and potential, as well as to your site’s online presence. It’s an extremely straightforward way of providing an added dimension to a company website, whilst also helping boost your content and hopefully your online visibility.

Blogging for Business Success

Remember, a blog needn’t be simply stating the daily facts and figures within your own company. Whilst it is good to keep customers informed of what is going on, there’s a whole world of related information and news that can serve the same purpose. Relating your company’s activities with the latest industry news and events can provide an interesting spin on the latest breaking stories, helping generate additional interest from organic searches.

If you visit any successful website, you can be sure that there will be a blog in one guise or another; in fact many include a whole range of them for individual sectors. The quality of content is obviously integral to its credibility. If you don’t employ an SEO copywriter in-house or anybody else who can provide the same high level of focussed copy, then you may need to outsource to a specialist just to ensure that you’re getting the very best results from your blog.

Unique copy, written to the very highest standards with thoroughly researched keywords and titles used throughout, is what every business website should look to achieve on each and every page. This of course is true of a blog too. Your blog articles should be about creating an immediate impact, but always keep in mind that they can also help boost your long-term rankings too. As they are archived and stored on your site indefinitely, articles can really aid optimisation of the overall content; providing a vital additional source of keywords and phrases.

Boost Your Site’s Search Engine Visibility

Successful blogs generally tend to have a unique niche or something else that distinguishes them from any others. Creating a preferred writing tone, perhaps reflecting that used elsewhere in your site, whilst also maintaining regular updates will help visitors build up a trust of your company. This credibility boost may even help turn sceptical visitors into long-term clients or customers.

Best of all, blogs needn’t take up too much critical time. A short post here and there throughout the week, along with a few more detailed articles when larger news stories break, will help keep your site fresh and new, whilst also drawing in those search engine spiders for a closer examination. If you have the time to dedicate to it and are able to produce useful and informative articles with greater regularity, the results should follow suit.

As with anything in business though, you tend to get out of it what you choose to put into it. Regardless of your site’s status, the ability to improve its visibility is at your fingertips. Site content is quickly becoming the most important aspect in any SEO strategy. So whether creating a cutting edge blog or just filling your website’s pages, quality and clarity of the copy used is essential in improving your popularity with the search engines and your intended market.

Internet marketing professionals and SEO copywriters are always discussing the importance of keywords; but what exactly are they and what can keywords do for your site?

A keyword by its very definition is simply an important term, phrase or, of course, word. Whenever you visit a high ranking website you can be sure that someone somewhere has been optimising the site for keywords throughout. As with any SEO technique, they are designed to coincide with, and even premeditate, what Internet users are searching for in search engines.

Keyword Optimised Site Copy

The frequency with which the keywords are used, obviously within reason, will ultimately help your site achieve a better ranking for particular phrases. Some keywords are clearly more popular than others, so an important part of any good strategy is picking up on special niches. In a crowded marketplace like the Internet you have to find ways to make yourself visible, which is where a watertight SEO strategy, backed up by keywords, is invaluable.

Depending on the size and content of your site, the keywords could range from just a few essential phrases to hundreds of individual terms. Ultimately they are a reflection of what your company offers; whether that’s something as simple as a single specialist product or a complex construction of various brands and categories all from a range of different fields. Driving traffic to a site is no simple task though, so ensuring each page is optimised with relevant wording and as much quality content as you can muster is absolutely essential.

Boost Website Search Engine Visibility

Whilst Internet copywriting is, or at least should be, a largely organic process, keywords help to give you added focus and ensure that your copy remains on target; both for your audience and search engine spiders. In the bad old days you could fill pages with impenetrable language offering a keyword density that was so baffling it rendered the text unreadable. Search engines such as Yahoo, MSN and Google have made huge strides in eliminating such sites from their rankings; they have instead given greater weight to those who offer copy that is relevant, regularly updated and offers genuine quality.

Therefore you need to avoid the temptation of endlessly repeating the same phrase in the misguided hope that it will convert to ranking domination. There’s a fine balance to tread and everyone has their own opinion of what density is acceptable these days. But as long as your keywords are used within a free-flowing and informative body copy and in a natural manner, you should be on to a winner. Including them in Header 1 (H1) tags, Meta tags and sub-headings (H2 tags) will also help to really optimise your site’s content.

Copy plays a large part in the success and failure of any site. Attempting to cut corners and doing it all yourself or outsourcing to the cheapest available supplier can invariably end in disaster. Impact Media offer a professional SEO copywriting service to suit businesses of all sizes, helping to provide quality copy that can really make a difference.

On the 7th Day of Christmas, Impact Media gave me 7 copywriting tips:

1. Scanability
Website visitors are fickle, and if they can’t find the information they want on your website, they will move on. Make sure that when people arrive at your site they can scan the page and understand your content straight away.

2. Write for the Web
Don’t go overboard with your website copy. By all means write your text with search engines in mind, but always remember its people who read your website and too much text means confusion.

3. Use Headings

Not only will Heading tags (H1, H2, H3 etc.) break up your bulky text to make the page more readable, it will also help the search engines determine the subject of the page. Pick your headings with care and be sure to place your most keywords within them, else they are wasted.

4. Use Bullet Points

Using bullet points will help break your content into small pieces which will allow your visitors to scan the page easier.

5. Keywords Usage

Do not over use keywords in your content. It will be very tempting to stuff your keywords into the page to ensure you are ranked for it, search engines hate that, and your visitors won’t thank you for it either.

6. Anchor Text

Add keywords to your internal links to give credibility to the content. Avoid generic phrase such as ‘click here’.

7. Call to actions

Don’t just end your content with a statement, finish with a Call to Action. Determine what your want your visitors to do and write your whole copy with that in mind. finish with a link or clear direction to the next step of the process.

We are often asked to perform Search Engine Optimisation on sites that have little or no meaningful content, i.e. relevant text. Images are great but if you have a site and want to boost your natural rankings, you need to give the search engines a clue about your site’s purpose.

There’s much talk and spin about SEO copywriting but, for me personally, the very fact that ‘SEO’ and ‘copywriting’ get used in this context is a mistake.

If you are a website owner, you should focus on copywriting but not for SEO; you should create your content in the same way as any other marketing medium, i.e. for your visitors.

Having said that, here are a few pointers that you should consider when developing your web pages:

• Write naturally, i.e. the text should be created with the visitor in mind not SEO.
• Despite the reference to writing ‘naturally’, keywords that your page is about need to appear on the page. Sounds obvious? It is, but equally surprising how many times this has been over-looked.
• Use Header Tags, where appropriate. Break your paragraphs down with header tags which help with both your natural rankings and your visitors when they are reading the page.
• Internal linking helps with SEO, i.e. don’t use ‘Click Here’ or ‘More’ for internal hyperlinks. Try to use the title (or close variant) of the target page.

In summary, certainly think about the structure of your site and the way your content is developed but make sure you read it back. If it doesn’t flow naturally, consider changing. If you get tempted to ’stuff’ keywords in to your copy, don’t!