Not so long ago, optimising web pages by writing SEO copy (copy that is written specifically to appeal to the search engines) was the main area of expertise for most search engine optimisation specialists. In many respects, it is now the easiest part of the job although writing copy that is good for both humans and search engines is still quite a challenge for many people. The key to our success in this area is to optimise pages for the search engines without making them impossible for people to make sense of. SEO copywriting is a skill that you can develop over time if you choose. If not, our SEO copywriting skills are available for hire!

Key elements of your pages

When we write SEO copy for your website, we start by focusing on a number of key places on your pages that make a big difference in optimising them for the search engines such as the page title, headings, sub-headings and hyperlinks as well as the body copy itself. Different rules come into play for the best way to use each of these areas to achieve the best possible optimisation results for your pages and our years of experience and in-depth knowledge of the search engine rules and indexing methods means that we can truly optimise your pages for great search engine results.

Page layouts

The second area that we focus on when you hire us to do website optimisation work is the layout of your web pages. Many SEO consultants work as though page layout is not a factor in achieving search engine rankings but the fact is that web pages are not just text and the way that a page is designed can and does impact how the search engines interpret and index it. To achieve the best possible rankings for your pages, we re-organise your pages so that the key content is close to the top of the pages, effectively telling the search engines that it is the most important.

 Copywriting

Once we have covered the key elements of your pages and have re-organised the layout, we then get to work on writing the copy. As mentioned above, SEO copywriting is a skill that can be developed over time; it cannot be taught in a short period of time. It requires practice and experience. However, there are a couple of key aspects that we focus on when writing copy for your website that will come in handy if you plan to do this yourself: 1. People come first. When we're writing copy and we come across a conflict between SEO and copywriting, we always go with the copywriting. There are always other ways to gain good rankings but if your page copy doesn't read well and isn't compelling, then all the rankings in the world won't help you convert your visitors into buyers. 2. Take the time to understand how search engines see text. Knowing things such as the fact that they ignore punctuation will allow you to decide to split a phrase across two sentences. Understanding how search engines treat text can help you a lot and it's worth taking the time to get to know this important area.

Keyword density

Keyword density is a critical factor in achieving good search engine rankings but to achieve truly good results requires a good blend of balance and compromise and this comes only from experience. Obviously, including your keywords is vital to establishing your page in the rankings, but there is also a point that will trigger an "over-optimized" penalty. When writing copy for your pages, we use our experience and a couple of tools to achieve the right balance of keyword density in your pages. If you're planning on writing your own copy, take a look at Total Optimizer Pro or GRKda. Both of these are excellent keyword density tools.

Code compliance

Finally, to complete our search engine optimisation copywriting work for you, we run through the HTML and other code on your website to make sure that there are no errors because errors in this area can be a huge hindrance to your SEO efforts. It's worth pointing out that some SEO consultants will abuse some of the features available with HTML. This is not best practice and is not in line with the way that we carry out our SEO work. For example, some SEO consultants still try and fool search engines by stuffing the ALT tag of images with keywords. This tag is intended to offer a text alternative to people who can't see the image. Filling it with keywords is not just a misuse of the tag, but makes it very difficult for some people to use your site. (See "How to write good ALT tags for images" for a guide on how to use the ALT tags properly). Some consultants also use certain tags like noembed or noscript to hide links and copy from human users but keep them avaialble to search engine spiders. Search engines don't like this practice and your website will be penalised if you abuse these tags in this way. The best way to use HTML is in the manner it is intended to be used and as per the specifications. Do that, and you should never have a problem.