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From the perspective of a business owner, webmaster, or marketing manager,
the change exhibited by the Internet is profoundly exciting, yet profoundly
disturbing. The information (and misinformation and disinformation) it offers,
the business benefits it promises, and the rules it is governed by change at
such a rapid rate that it’s almost impossible to keep up.
These changes have led to a growing appreciation of the value of quality web
copy. This appreciation has, in turn, led to an influx of opportunistic ‘copywriters’
promoting themselves as website copywriters or SEO copywriters. Don’t get
me wrong, there are quite a few excellent SEO copywriters out there, and you
should definitely shop around. The purpose of this article isn’t to scare
you; it’s to help you find the SEO copywriter who’ll deliver honest
service and excellent results.
So with that in mind, take a look at the following ten tips. These are the
things you have a right to expect from anyone wearing a name badge that reads
"website copywriter", "SEO copywriter", "internet copywriter",
or "web copywriter"… (See also http://www.divinewrite.com/websitecopywriter.htm
and http://www.divinewrite.com/makethemost.htm.)
1) An understanding of SEO
Obviously, your SEO copywriter must have a solid understanding of the essentials
of Search Engine Optimization. They must know that ranking is essentially the
result of a website’s relevance (i.e. keywords) and importance (i.e. inbound
links). There are a whole lot of other factors involved, but if your SEO copywriter
doesn’t understand these two basics, you should look elsewhere. If you’d
like to ensure your SEO copywriter knows a little more than just the basics,
take a look at http://www.divinewrite.com/SEOCEO.htm, http://www.divinewrite.com/seocopy.htm,
http://www.divinewrite.com/seotradesecrets.htm, http://www.divinewrite.com/webcopyenough.htm,
and http://www.divinewrite.com/seoarticles.htm for some clues as to what you
might like to ask in order to assess their knowledge.
2) Proven experience
The proof is, as they say, in the pudding. It’s not enough that your SEO
copywriter can talk the talk; they must also be able to walk the walk. Ask to
see some examples of websites for which they’ve obtained some good rankings.
Note that it may be very difficult to find an SEO copywriter who has actually
worked on both keywords and link generation, so if you find one who has, and
they write well, snap ‘em up! They’ll have a very broad and useful
working knowledge of search engines.
3) An understanding of how many keywords to use
You don’t want to fill every page up with every keyword you’re targeting.
This simply dilutes your site’s relevance and reduces readability. Ask
your SEO copywriter how many keywords they would recommend targeting on each
page. Hopefully they’ll suggest no more than 3, preferably 2. By targeting
2 keyword phrases per page, you can use them a lot without impacting readability.
4) Clear agreement on who will provide keywords
Someone needs to perform a keyword analysis in order to figure out what words
you should be trying to rank highly for. Your SEO copywriter should be able
to do this for you, but it’s quite often more cost-effective if someone
a little closer to the business does it. Either way, make sure your agreement
with your SEO copywriter makes it very clear who is performing this task. Don’t
assume the SEO copywriter is going to do it, because they may assume you’re
going to do it, and then you’ll blow your budget.
5) Keywords or keyword phrases
Expect your SEO copywriter to offer some advice regarding how specific you should
be with your keywords. In most industries, the competition for keywords is so
fierce that you’ll be forced to target very specific keywords in order
to rank – at least at the outset. For instance, if you’re in IT, you
probably wouldn’t start out by targeting the keyword "IT". The
competition is immense (at the time of writing, there were approx 3,240,000,000
results for this search in Google.com) and the IT giants already dominate the
search engines for this keyword. Instead, try using a more specific keyword
phrase like "IT infrastructure consulting new york" (at the time of
writing, there were only around 4,000,000 results for this search in Google.com).
The other benefit to targeting more specific keyword phrases is that you’ll
generate more relevant leads.
6) Agree on word count per page
Always make sure your SEO copywriter gives you an indication of the number of
words they expect to write per web page. While it’s necessary to have a
decent body of words on most of your web pages, you certainly shouldn’t
have too many. What "too many" is all depends on your industry, the
objective of the page, and the needs of your audience. It’s always a delicate
balance, but it’s certainly possible to rank highly with only 100-200 words
per page. So don’t be fooled into paying for copy you don’t need!
7) Density targets & measure
SEO of a web page is NOT guess-work. A good SEO copywriter will talk about density
measures. This is a measure of the number of time the keyword phrase appears
on the page. It’s expressed as a percentage of the total word count of
the page. So if your page has 200 words, and your keyword phrase appears 10
times, its density is 5%. As a rule of thumb, your SEO copywriter should be
aiming for a density of approximately 5% for your primary keyword phrase and
3-5% for your secondary keyword phrase. If your density measures are much higher
than this, readability will be reduced, and you’ll risk being perceived
as spam by the search engines. Make sure your SEO copywriter understands keyword
density, is prepared to state the target density for each keyword phrase, and
is also happy to be measured by that standard (should you decide to measure).
8) Where to place keywords
The question of keyword placement has been the subject of much debate amongst
SEO copywriters. While it is still unclear how much impact placement has, there
is a general consensus that it has SOME impact. Be sure that your copywriter
is aware of this impact. Popular opinion has it that keywords are more effective
if they appear in headings, bolded text, links, and generally toward the beginning
of the page.
9) Some comment on structure & links
Websites are generally better indexed by search engines if their spiders can
traverse the entire site using text links. This means your SEO copywriter should
be linking each page to every other page using text links. If your site is complex,
this may be impractical, so your SEO copywriter will need to create a hierarchical
structure for your site. First, they should break your subject material down
into categories. Then for each category, they should write a summary page. These
summary pages should be accessible from higher level pages via text links. They
should also be accessible from each other. Each summary page should link –
using text links – to a number of pages discussing the finer details of
the category. And each detail page in a particular category should link to every
other detail page in that category (once again, using text links). This way
the spiders are able to travel from the top of your hierarchy to the bottom,
and from left to right across any level.
10) Don’t believe grand promises
SEO copywriters can play a significant role in increasing your search engine
ranking. But they can’t do it overnight. By optimizing your site for your
target keyword phrases, an SEO copywriter is simply declaring the relevance
of your site. If you engage an SEO copywriter to write helpful articles containing
a byline with a link back to your site, you can then submit these articles for
publication on the Internet, and this will steadily increase your ranking. But
if an SEO copywriter tells you they can dramatically increase your ranking in
a matter of hours or days, be wary. NOTE: Your SEO copywriter should be able
to submit your articles to various submit sites on the Internet. These sites
are closely watched by hundreds of thousands of publishers of e-newsletters
and article pages from all around the world. High quality articles are quickly
snapped up and published prolifically. And each time your article is published,
you’ve got another link back to your site, thus increasing the importance
of your site (to the search engines). If you’d like to submit your own
articles, your SEO copywriter should be able to sell you a list of 50 or more
submit sites for as little as USD$99.
Conclusion
An SEO copywriter is a valuable addition to your marketing function. But you
need to make sure you choose wisely. When you know what questions to ask, the
battle is half won.
Happy hunting!
About the Author:
Glenn Murray is an advertising copywriter and SEO copywriter and heads copywriting
studio Divine Write. He can be contacted on Sydney +612 4334 6222 or at mailto:glenn@divinewrite.com.
Visit http://www.divinewrite.com for further details or more FREE articles. |
