Divine Write Copywriting Blog

The short answer is no.

The long answer follows…

As soon as you start optimizing your web copy, you’ll realise that it’s quite difficult to repeat your keyword again and again, without your copy becoming very unfriendly to readers.

This is particularly problematic when you’re targeting very specific keyword phrases. For example, for me, targeting “copywriter” is quite easy, but targeting “SEO website copywriter Australia” is a lot more difficult. If my web page has 200 words, my keyword has to appear six times for a keyword density of 3%. That’s fine if it’s a single word, because there’ll still be 194 words of normal copy left. The keyword won’t be so noticeable to readers. But if there are four words in the keyword phrase, there’ll only be 176 words left. That would make the keyword phrase a lot more noticeable.

What’s more, exact keyword phrases are difficult to incorporate into your copy in a natural way.

Fortunately, however, you don’t have to actually target the exact phrase. You can simply target the individual words. So instead of me repeating the exact phrase “SEO website copywriter Australia” six times, I’d simply repeat “SEO” six times, “website” six times, “copywriter” six times, and “Australia” six times. These individual repetitions could appear anywhere on the page.

Using this approach, I can achieve the density I’m after without sacrificing readability.

I will qualify this: it’s my understanding that when someone searches for “SEO website copywriter Australia”, all things being equal, a website that targets the exact string “SEO website copywriter Australia” will rank higher than a website that targets just the individual words. But when are all things ever equal?

As always, the important thing to remember is that human visitors are more important than search engines. What’s more, keyword density is not the be-all-and-end-all of SEO. (Please see my previous post on keyword density in your SEO copy.)

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If you’re targeting exact strings in your SEO copy, you’ll find it difficult to effectively target more than 2 keyword phrases per page. This is particularly true if you’re targeting very specific keyword phrases.

For example, let’s say you want your tennis clothing page to rank well when a customer searches for the following phrases (i.e. they type EXACTLY what you see below).

• “blue tennis shoes in California”
• “green tennis skirts on the West Coast”
• “purple tennis hats”
• “fastest tennis shoes in the world”

Let’s also assume your tennis clothing page can’t exceed 400 words before it becomes too text-heavy (and looks like a spam site).

Now, if you try to optimize your web copy for ALL of these exact strings, you’ll find that it becomes very difficult to read. Assuming you’re aiming for a keyword density of 3%, you’d need to include each of the above phrases more than 10 times. That would mean approx half of the copy on your page would be keyword strings!

There are two ways to work around this:

1. Don’t target exact strings – Instead, target the unique words from the phrases, not the phrases themselves. In the above example, the unique (and meaningful words) would be: blue, tennis, shoes, California, green, skirts, West, Coast, purple, hats, fastest, world. (Notice that I didn’t include “tennis” or “shoes” more than once, and I also didn’t include words like “in” or “on”.) If you include each of these words approx 10 times anywhere in your copy, you’ll achieve much the same result as if you had targeted each exact string. (I say “much the same” because when someone searches for “purple tennis hats”, all things being equal, a website that targets the exact string “purple tennis hats” will rank higher than a website that targets “purple” and “tennis” and “hats”.) But even if you do this, you’ll still find it difficult to make the copy readable because over a quarter of your page will be keywords!
2. Create additional pages – This is normally the best way to go. Just make your pages more specific. Have one page for “blue tennis shoes in California”, one for “green tennis skirts on the West Coast”, one for “purple tennis hats”, etc. This way, you only around 10% of your copy will be dedicated to keywords. This results in much more readable, natural-looking pages. And in the above example, it would also result in a much more logically structured site; a well structured site typically wouldn’t discuss all of the above items on the same page.

NOTE: When thinking about keyword density, please bear in mind my previous entries on keyword density in SEO copy.

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Although you shouldn’t get too hung up on keyword density (see my previous post on SEO copy keyword density for an explanation), if you’re aiming for a density of around 2-3%, you’ll find that this isn’t easy to achieve, without compromising the readability of your copy.

The easiest way to do it is to be specific. (In fact, in most cases, this is the only rule you’ll need to follow.) As you write every sentence, ask yourself, “Could I be more specific?”  For example, don’t just say “our computers” or “our products”; ask yourself if you can get away with saying “our cheap second hand computers” (assuming, of course, that that’s your keyword phrase). Similarly, don’t say things like “with our help”; instead, say “with the help of our cheap second hand computers”. Once you get the hang of it, you’ll find there are more than enough opportunities to replace a generic term with your keyword phrase.

Obviously, there’s a bit of an art to it. Sometimes it ends up just sounding like you’re repeating your keyword phrase over and over again. If this happens, you may just need to restructure the sentence or paragraph.

The most important thing to remember is, your site reflects the quality of your product or service. If your site is hard to read, people will infer a lot about your offering… Readability is all-important to visitors. And after all, it’s the visitors who buy your product or service, not the search engines.

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One of the most important aspects of optimizing your site for search engines (SEO) is your web copy. Google and the other search engines read the words on your page to figure out what your site is about and which searches they should display it in.

But they don’t read like humans. We actually make sense of the individual words and their combinations, (phrases, sentences, paragraphs, pages, page hierarchies, etc). We even take visual design and aural elements into account.
Search engines aren’t that sophisticated (even Google!). In fact, they don’t really process meaning at all; they categorize a site’s subject matter based on the words that are used most often in the body copy, headings, links, etc. The logic behind this behavior is that if a site is about widgets, the word “widgets” - and similar words - will naturally appear in these places at quite a high frequency. (That’s a little simplistic, but it’s about as much as most of us need to know about how search engines work. Their indexing algorithms involve incredibly complex maths - more than my little brain can handle! Learn more about how search engines evaluate content.)

So if you want your site to appear in the search results for “cheap glazier”, then you’d use that phrase relatively often throughout your site. This is known as ‘keyword density’. Simply put, keyword density is a measure of the number of times your keyword appears on a page expressed as a percentage of the total wordcount of that page. For example, if your page has 100 words, and your keyword phrase appears 5 times, its density is 5%. (Here’s an easy-to-use keyword density calculator.)

Keyword density is a particularly problematic concept, mostly because people place great emphasis on it, when, in fact, the search engines don’t measure density like that at all. So when you hear all the rules about what density you should be aiming for, always bear that in mind. Don’t start thinking that the search engines are looking for a density of 5% or 3% or 10%; they’re not. Just use density calculations as a yardstick. A density of 3% will give you a page with plenty of instances of your keyword. If you can’t get a density that high without impacting readability, settle for a lower density. The important thing is that you use your keywords more often than any other single word or phrase.

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As mentioned in my previous entry on using links in SEO copy, keywords in the links within your copy are particularly important in SEO.

Unfortunately, however, search engines and humans like different things when it comes to links. Search engines like to see your keywords used toward the top of the page. So if you’re using keywords in your links, it makes sense that you put the links at the top of the page.

Humans, on the other hand, tend to find this distracting. And because they start clicking on links before they’ve finished reading the whole page, they become easily lost and don’t grasp the intended message (or worse, don’t continue with the purchase). In most cases, visitors prefer a text link at the bottom of the page.

But there is a solution; if you have links within the main body of your copy, simply make them unmarked (i.e. remove the blue font colour and the underlining). To do this, include the following in your CSS file:

<style type="text/css">
<!--
a {text-decoration: none;}
-->
</style>

When assessing what your website is about, search engines pay close attention to the words you use in your text links and headings (and it’s also argued that they pay more attention to the copy at the top of the page than to the copy at the bottom of the page). So make sure your copy in these areas is keyword rich.

Using keywords in links

For both internal and external links, try to use your target keyword as the link text (the part that’s normally blue and underlined). For example, on your “Cheap Second Hand Macs” page, you could include a text link to “Cheap Second Hand PCs”.

Using keywords in headings

Just as customers rely on headings to scan your site, so to do search engines. This means headings play a big part in how the search engines will index your site. Try to include your keyword phrase in your headings. In fact, think about inserting extra headings just for this purpose. Generally this will also help the readability of the site because it will help customers scan read.

For example, if you have a page detailing the benefits of cheap second hand computers, you could break it up into logical sections with the following headings.

• “The cost benefits of cheap our second hand computers”
• “The technical benefits of our cheap second hand computers”
• “The support benefits of our cheap second hand computers”

Using keywords at the start of the page

Many SEO experts believe that the search engines see words at the start of a page as more representative of what your site is about than words at the end (i.e. prominence). So it’s a good idea to make sure you use your keywords toward the start of each page. This normally happens fairly naturally, anyway, so don’t put a lot of effort into making it happen.

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As a rule of thumb, it’s easier and more effective to target keyword phrases than single keywords in your SEO web copy. Why? Because:

1. The more specific the keyword, the fewer websites there will be targeting it. This means you’ll move up the rankings faster, and you’ll find it easier to achieve a high ranking.
2. The search results for the more generic keywords tend to be dominated by the big multinationals. E.g. Search for “computers” and you’ll see there are nearly 200 million results and the top rankings are dominated by the Apples and Dells.
3. Internet users are learning that by searching for more specific strings, they find the information they want quicker (I read a report on this recently, with real statistics and everything! Can’t seem to find it right now. If anyone can cite something useful in this regard, it’d be much appreciated…).
4. Customers tend to use generic keywords in early searches (e.g. during their initial research) and more specific keywords in later searches (e.g. when they know what they want to buy and they’re looking for someone to buy it from). So by targeting a more specific keyword, you’ll attract more qualified traffic.

Unless you dominate your domain and you have a global presence, you’re better of going with a specific keyword phrase. For example, when it comes time to write your SEO web copy and meta tags:

• target “cheap second hand computers” instead of “computers”
• target “tax accountant Sydney” instead of “accountant”
• target “thai restaurant delivery” instead of “restaurant”
• target “small blue widgets” instead of “widgets”
• target “direct response copywriter sydney” instead of “copywriter”

TIP: If you really want or need to target a generic keyword, start out targeting a very specific keyword phrase that includes the more generic – hotly contested – single keyword. For example, you’ll notice that the keyword phrase above, “cheap second hand computers” includes the single keyword “computers”. This way, you’re really targeting both at once. As your site’s importance (or PageRank) and search engine presence increases, you’ll start to rank for the single word as well. In time, you’ll start ranking well for “computers” even though you’re only actively targeting “cheap second hand computers”.

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Before you can start optimizing your web copy and meta tags, you need to know what words you’re optimizing it for. What words do you want to rank well for? To answer this question, you need to know what words your customers (or potential customers) are searching for. This is called performing a keyword analysis.

Keyword analysis involves a bit of research and a good knowledge of your business and the benefits you offer your customers.

There are several websites specifically designed to make keyword analysis easier. Two examples are:

1. Overture’s inventory tool. This tool is free and very easy to use and understand, but (last time I looked) it only tells you how many searches have been conducted in the previous month for your keyword (and similar keywords).
2. WordTracker. WordTracker is a much more powerful tool, but you have to pay to use it (you can subscribe for a day for around $10). WordTracker helps you find the most appropriate keyword for your site by telling you what people are really searching for. Here’s how it works… You type in a word which summarizes what you do, and it tells you how many times that word has been searched for in the last month. It also tells you how many other websites are using that word as a keyword (i.e. targeting the same customers you are). Based on this information, it rates the word. The ‘best’ keywords are the ones that a lot of people are searching for but which few websites are targeting. WordTracker even suggests and rates alternative related words.

TIP: When you’re using WordTracker, bear in mind that it’s just talking about numbers, and numbers don’t always tell the whole story. So don’t just jump in and use the best rated keywords; you need to consider your own situation. It may be the case that you’re forced to select a keyword phrase which is not rated particularly highly. There are two situations in which this might happen:

• You’re in a niche market with relatively few customers searching for the keyword. In this situation, you’ll probably find it relatively easy to reach the top of the rankings, but you won’t generate a huge volume of traffic when you get there. 
• A lot of your competitors are targeting your keyword (it’s hotly contested) but it’s the only one you can use. If you target it, you’ll just have to work a bit harder on your backlinks in order to rank highly. When there’s a lot of competition for a keyword, it’s likely that the traffic payoff is good once you reach top.

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Search engines don’t see websites the way you and I do. They require your site to be designed a particular way. If you don’t observe a few rules of thumb, you can severely hamper your search engine presence.

Following is a list of the main things you need to be aware of. I’m no web developer, so don’t take the below as gospel. Just discuss these things with your developer first. If you engage an experienced SEO web designer, they’ll already know all the issues (far more than are listed here).

Do’s…

1. Design your site in HTML – i.e. HTML based copy and headings and text based links at the base of each page as per existing site
2. Use static URLs
3. Use standard rollovers and/or CSS formatting for navigation menu
4. Create a robots.txt file. This file is used to inform the search engine spider which pages on a site should not be indexed.
5. Alternatively, you can do a similar thing by placing tags in the header section of your HTML for search engine robots/spiders to read. These tags are as follows:
6. tells the spiders to crawl and index your entire site
7. tells the spiders not to index anything.
8. says don’t index this particular page, but follow its links to other pages (e.g. for use on secure or private pages).
9. says to index the page but not follow its links.
10. Create a 404 error handling page, and place a sitemap on the 404 page.
11. Create a text based site map containing links to every page in your site (see http://www.divinewrite.com/site.htm for an example).
12. Create a Google Sitemap (Read an overview of Google Sitemaps and download a great tool for generating Google Sitemaps)

Don’ts…

1. Don’t embed your copy within a graphic (the search engines won’t be able to read it)
2. Don’t use frames (this is a contentious one - some people use frames quite effectively)
3. Don’t use internal JavaScript or Flash (ditto)
4. Don’t use “&id=” as a parameter if you want maximal Googlebot crawlage (many sites use “&id=” with session IDs that Googlebot usually avoids urls with that parameter)

Hope this helps.

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You’ve no doubt heard a little (or a lot) about SEO. Chances are, not all of it has been very clear. Hopefully this entry will shed some light on the subject for you.

SEO stands for Search Engine Optimization. Basically, it’s the art of increasing your site’s search engine ranking (in the natural search results - not the paid listings down the side, like Google AdWords).

There are two main steps involved:

1. Tell the search engines what your site is about, so they know what searches it should appear in. This is commonly referred to as ‘on-site optimization’. Your site needs to be search engine-friendly so that the search engines can access it properly, and you need to use the right keywords in your HTML code and in your copy. Generally speaking, ‘on-site optimization’ - by itself - won’t increase your ranking much, if at all. But it’s a necessary first step.
2. Prove to the search engines that your site is important in its field (i.e. most relevant). There are millions of sites out there; only one can be first in the search results. At the moment, the search engines figure this out mostly by counting the links TO your site, and considering where they’re from. TIP: Think of the Internet as a big election, where every site is a candidate and every link TO a site is a vote for that candidate. The candidate (site) with the most votes (links TO it) wins! (Of course, not all links are equal, but that’s a discussion for another day…)

In my next few entries, I’ll be discussing the ins and outs of optimizing your site and generating links to your site. So stay tuned…

But in the meantime, feel free to do a little advance study by visiting our SEO glossary.

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