» Intelligent Positioning: News, articles & updates 2011

SEO Copywriting – The Facts

Sam — Mon, 23 Mar 2009 20:17:14 +0000

SEO Copywriting and content development is the key to producing a high quality website and one that is searched for by Google and enjoyed by humans.

SEO Copywritng Tips

Fact: Quality SEO Copy will increase traffic
Fact: Quality copy will increase sales
Fact:Google reads words – not images, make every word count
Fact: SEO does not need to kill the headline
Fact: Good SEO copy needn’t be boring or spammy
Fact: Copy with an emphasis on the customer journey will help with the overall structure of your website
Fact: Quality SEO copy will ensure the user clicks on your SERPS result rather than a competitor’s
Fact: Updating content regularly in a news section or blog will mean Google visits your site more often.

SEO Copywriting

Your website is your shop window to the world, for humans, not robots.

Good, well-balanced SEO copy content is integral to the success of your search engine optimisation strategy. As well as ensuring that your SEO copywritng contains a good range of primary keywords and derivative keywords, all content should be geared towards increasing brand awareness and ultimately sell more products and services.

Clearly defined and interesting directional copy is therefore essential.

SEO Killed the Sub Editor

A well used phrase is that the SEO headline has killed the sub editor. Gone are the days of witty headlines now that we have to fill them up with keyword rich content. Untrue.

Look at some of these classic headlines – without which we wouldn’t have had “Paddy Pantsdown”, or that iconic image of Neil Kinnock, before the Sun Claimed “It’s the Sun wot Won it”

The Sun Famous Headlines

Super Caley

If the editor and all us other writers had to care too much about what is the ideal keyword to use, and whether we are writing the correct captions etc, then creative could die in writing. If it were true the headline below “Super Caley go ballistic, Celtic are atrocious” when Caledonian Thistle beat the giants Celtic in February 2000…

…would have simply read “Caledonian Thistle 3, Celtic 1“*

SEO can be fun

But SEO is not the party pooper, the boring Robot feeding geek nor Mr Creative’s nemesis. Using our knowledge of how to use certain header tags and what Google and the other search engines look for, funny, clever and interesting headlines still have a very important place in all web copy. Just get the keywords in for goodness sake.

To find out more get in touch with me, Sam

*Thanks Jose

The Long Tail Search

Chris — Tue, 17 Feb 2009 20:17:28 +0000

People search for absolutely everything (take the fact that Britney Spears was the most searched keyword last year for example!). With 9.4 billion searches on Google US, the average Google search is just as likely to be three or four words long as it is the common one word search of old.

What is long-tail though? Long-tail search terms are the longer more specific keyword searches. For example; a long tail version of ‘camera’ could be ‘buy Sony DSC Digital Camera online’.

Avinash Kaushik from Google spoke publicly on long-tail trends for the first time this year. His main message was that average Google searches is now a lot more likely to be 3 to 4 words per query.
If you look at today’s Hot Trends on the Google Trends site, you can see that at least twenty of the keyword searches are more than two words long.

People will often do a little Google Insights data to discover their one word “trophy term” and pursue this with real zeal. In certain situations this can be particularly tough though. In many circumstances hunting the tail will provide more meat than catching part of the head.

Does the tail weigh more than the head?

Using our database at Intelligent Positioning we found that 4 word search queries were more popular than 1 word queries. This was especially true for really large sites.

One of our clients received 20,000 organic clicks for a ‘trophy term’ (position 4 in Google) in January 2008. They also received almost 50,000 organic clicks for sixteen 2, 3, and 4 word derivatives of this ‘trophy term’. ‘Stemming’ has a part to play here but the figures show just how many clicks you can gain from long tail searches.

The Advantages of Long Tail Search

So, what can the advantages of long-tail optimization include? Here are two:

1. Even if the searches for a particular term are quite low, the fact that it is a such a specific search term means you often get a high conversion rate

2. Getting a small amount of hits for many long tail searches all adds up

Knowing what tactic to pursue obviously takes expertise, research and the right data. Good SEO companies can do this for you.

Intelligent Positioning use an inside-out approach based on an advanced data system. This means we are able to make the correct decisions when it comes to keyword pursuit. You don’t have to flip a coin to choose heads or tails!

Author Chris L

SEO Content Writing

Jon — Tue, 10 Feb 2009 10:39:08 +0000

Your website needs more than traffic. Most websites, and the internet as a whole, are geared around driving traffic, but like any business you need to think about your brand, customer retention and conversion. Effective SEO copy will help improve your rankings while ensuring that those all-important human visitors are persuaded to convert while on your pages.

Importance of Relevancy

Content is king…only if it is unique and relevant content.

How can you expect to have top ten results for phrases that aren’t even in your website? We have looked at many websites where the owner has put in hundreds of keywords into the meta data (a good place to see what they are after) that don’t appear anywhere else in the website’s content.
It’s no accident that Wikipedia, probably the most content filled website on the net, does so well for many searches – this is for a plethora of reasons, on the whole based around quality, focussed content and website structure.

Get to the Point

Don’t bore your human readers with verbose copy.

What do you do?

A customer only needs to be told once what you product can do and what the USP is. However many websites don’t even do that, and expect the visitor to have a 6th sense in determining the product.
Avoid general irrelevant marketing speak.

“Our products are perfect for your business and help you to get the most out of your working day”
Could read:
“The Acme colour printer, fast, slim and sleek, just £99 – buy it now”.

Use descriptive keywords. What are your products? What industry are you in? What is the key, tangible benefit of your products?

Make it an interesting journey

Ask yourself, what do you want the audience to do next? It’s one thing having a website that people have visited, but if the website is just page after page of product and company information, users will get bored and not sign up or buy your product.

The customer journey is an essential aspect. Eyeballs need signposts on where to look next. Plus we all like looking at imagery rather than a page full of small writing.

Meta Data Writing

When writing Meta descriptions and titles, don’t try and squeeze in all your products and keywords in to that one little area. In the title highlight what the page is generally about, the description should describe the page or product or service in more detail. It should however not be a long list of all your products and services and an opportunity to duplicate all your keywords and different spellings of your company name.

Call To Action

The user needs to feel compelled to read your content and travel through your site wanting to find out more, then ultimately you will want them to get in touch with you by email, phone or visit a store – So tell them what to do next.

To find out more about Content Writing and quality SEO copy call Sam Silverwood-Cope at Intelligent Positioning.

Author Sam