Hello, Although I write a lot of SEO copy for clients, I was wondering your thoughts and feelings about SEO copy. Does it really help page rankings or not? I finally have the time to learn more about SEO and this has been a question of mine for a long time. Thanks!
Hello Perly - I look forward to hopefully working together... ( look folks... a copy writer.. he he... ALL MINE!) Anyways, using on-page and on-site factors can have a great effect on ones SEO efforts... That includes; TITLE and Meta-Tags Targeted copy Prominence factoring ( H1-4 tags, Bold, Italics, bulleted lists etc..) Internal linking structure ( navigation and onpage) So the copy can be very important. The better ones on-page work, the less link building they will need to do... a poorly written page devoid of valuable content or lack thereof, takes a heck of a lot more back links than a well optimized/written page.
Yes, copy has a sizeable effect on your SEO efforts. All the backlinks in the world will only be regarded as spam if your content is not unique and, at the same time, relevant.
Totally agree with thegypsy on this one!! Once you get the knack for what copy works best, it makes link building all so much easier.
Totally agree. Better on-page SEO = less work building links. Genghis Khan would probably agree that a balanced SEO strategy is best, rather than just links, links, links.
WOW! Thank you all for your great input and knowledge. (and yes I am a copywriter who can work with everyone) All this time I have had the proper SEO copy, meta tags, embedded links, etc. to use and haven't been implementing it into my own site; sham on me! I'm glad I asked this question as I am going to begin to focus more on my own copy and get my page rank up. Thanks to everyone for the great information.
Heres a video interview on the subject http://videos.webpronews.com/2007/01/22/seo-copywriting-benefit-or-compromise/
place h1, h2 tags, Check for quality links, Do blog posting, Submit enough number of articles in the article directories. All these will help for a good optimization.
I have never been a big fan of SEO copy. You see so many bad examples. The title tag does not have the same power it did a year ago. SEO copy can help but for competitive keywords you will get nowhere without links. Write you copy for you users. If you know what you are doing both should work in union with each other. I believe using on page stuff really comes it to its own when you use it on sub pages where keywords tend to be less competitive. By breaking up content into headers and lists you can successful optimize for the 'long tail' traffic.
Wonderful information! I am taking all this down and beginning to fix my site. I truly appreciate all your help and knowledge.
I have a few tips for you if you are open to them. Mostly quick and dirty SEO stuff. 1. Your page title is not good SEO. Your text is "PearlyWrites.com // writing research and beyond...." Sounds great but I really doubt many people are searching for PearlyWrites.com. Even if they were, you already are #1, you should focus on something else and the title is the most premium advertising space your web site has. Make that a sentence about copy writing but make it pleasing to the eyes as many search results pages show this phrase. 2. When writing your articles, use different words in the anchor text. For example In your dog breeding article (and many other articles of yours) you have the link's text as www.PearlyWrites.com. If you make it english phrases that have to do with copy writing (like "professional copy writer") then you will get extra juice on google searches. The text in your links dictate to a spider what your page is about. By putting a url there it tells spiders your page is about "www.pearlywrites.com" when you are actually a "copy writer for hire". Think about that and get descriptive and creative with your anchor text. Also, try not to use the same thing all the time. To find some great keywords to use in anchor text look at the top of this forum there is a link called "tools". Clicking that will open a menu where you will see "keyword suggestions". 3. Take major advantage of mis-spellings. Most people who search for your people in your line of work cannot spell worth a flip, if they could they would probably write themselves. I would wager there is a wide range of how to spell copy writing, copyriting, copy wrighting, copywrighting, copywriter, copyrighter, etc. Now doing this might make you look like you can't spell but it will attract the clients that desperately need you. Everyone else that is not Lisa. Look at how easily she got a PR4 . . . 188 links. good luck Lisa, you've got a great chance to make this site something that will actually generate business from searches if you put a little effort into it. I think, if I were in your shoes, I would spend some time searching jux2.com. This is a meta search engine that combines the big 3's results in one search. When you look up your keyphrase see which sites rank well in all 3 engines. Then go take a look at them. There no need to waste a lot of time on R&D if they have already done that for you. Don't copy their stuff but use it to generate some ideas of your own.
Hi! First of all, I LOVE your name! Thank you for all the great advice and yes, I was very shocked I got a PR4 as well. I will def do everything you suggested because I really want to and if I am advertising SEO consulting services, I should be in a better position as well in the search engines. This has been an amazing forum where I have learned so much in such little time. Just doing the slight changes, I made a few more cents than I have in one year! Quick question: Under my sample page where their is copy, do the search engines even see those or do I need to have pages connected to my Website for the keywords to be picked up? I am working on articles about copywriting. Oh yea, and about the spellings; I use to have misspellings on my page and got REEMED out by other copywriters and editors about how I CANNOT have that. They kept telling me it shows that I do not know what I am doing (regarding writing wise). I'll find a way to work it in; I'll be creative
Thanks. Some love it, some hate it. It is very descriptive for what my directory is about (users creating content and categories) and it's kind of catchy. PDFs will be picked up by engines. They even read the links inside them. You can tell by this search that google has indexed all pdf, doc & even swf files on your site. No problems there. Your competition probably reamed you because they want that traffic. 90,700 results in Google for "copyrighter", 88,800 for "copy righter". Whatever you do don't ignore this audience. If you don't want to scatter mis-spellings around your site (understandable as it is does smear your name) do a page dedicated to mis-spellings like this --> copyrightwitness[dot]com/copyright/miss_spellings (no link juice given here. The other option you have is drop some mis-spelled links on other sites to your site. For instance when someone mis-spells dericktory in an engine then there is a decent chance my site will show up after this page (and that link) gets indexed. Why? Because that link above just pointed to my site. Worst case scenario, the page you are reading right now shows up in the SERPs and there is a link to my page guiding them to me. I would also guess that the competition for copywriter is stout (4,680,000 results). You could have a PR8 & a domain name of copywriter.com and not come in the top 10 results there. If you focus on that phrase you run the risk of coming up empty and having little to no search engine traffic. And nothing is worse than a billboard in the wilderness.
Meta description and back of the title are great places for mis-spelt words. Because mis-spellings aren't as competitive, I find I can rank well without having to use the word in the paragraph content (which is where you will get pegged for looking unprofessional). Don't let anyone tell you not to go for the misspellings. It's a copy writing skill to use wrongly spelled words in your site content without looking unprofessional. You just need to get creative.
Good content is the king. SEO copy writing plays an important role in sites ranking. When you write, there should be a balance between search engines crawlers and human visitors. That’s where SEO copywriting comes into picture.
WOW WOW WOW!!!! Wonderful information! I really appreciate all these great replies and doing everything you are suggesting. The misspellings are a great idea and YES, I have to get creative with it. Since I teach English, somehow I'll use that or create a lesson or something. Will have to do some brainstorming to see how to get it on the site. Def will add the misspellings into the tags and titles. Should I be posting content on pages and then having them forward to my main page?
We have plenty of sites without PageRank but great SEO copy that rank number one on Google for their keyword
I wouldn't normally post this kind of link, but it's quite relevant to this discussion and I think a real life example is needed, so here goes. Mods, delete if you feel otherwise. This page is a good example of how to legally use misspellings on your page. It's a gay sauna site, so if this kind of thing bothers you, don't visit the link. Replace htp with http htp://www.centuriansauna.co.nz/47/centurion-sauna/ The business is called "Centurian Sauna" and we found lots of people were searching for "Centurion Sauna", but not finding the site. I added the page above to explain the meaning of the name, but the real reason was to get ranked for a common misspelling of the name. Does it work? http://www.google.com/search?hl=en&q=centurion+sauna&btnG=Google+Search You bet.
My experience is that SEO results depend on both the competiton and on the search engine being targeted. I have a client site that had bad code so the spiders could only read the title tag but no content. Guess what? With good backlink quantity and quality and good title tags we still got a page 1 ranking on MSN and Google for multiple terms. Yahoo was the exception for reasons stated below. ----------------------------------------------------- Google: Rankings heavily depend on number and PR of backlinks, title tag. Yahoo: Very heavy weighting for on-page content. MSN: Heavy weighting on domain name, title tag and backlinks.