SES: Writing For Search Engines

Kevin Ryan, Heather Lloyd-Martin, Jill Whalen

The first topic for Heather was SEO Copywriting and an example was AmsterdamEscape.com. The problem presented was that the site:

• Had bad duplicate content issues
• Was banned from Google for 18 months
• Had to spend $4,000 a month in AdWords for traffic

Solution:

• Explained to client that content is king
• Got them to build the site with this as main focus
• Created pages such as “Do’s and Dont’s when visiting Amsterdam”

Once they were back in the index, they starting ranking for terms such as “Amsterdam nightlife” and “Amsterdam apartments” through their new content pages. The new traffic allowed the site to scale back on PPC and save $48,000 a year.

That is a great example, but as I do research on the information I can’t substantiate any of it. The Alexa ranking is 357k which tells me that the site gets less than 100 uniques a day. All of my “spy” tools show no history of advertising in AdWords … even in the local flavor of Google.

The recommendations were as follows:

• Do a site: command and see what the Titles and Descriptions are for each page.
• All Titles should be unique.
• Don’t “Keyword Stuff” the Titles.
• Make sure the Landing Page is relevant based on the Title/Search term.
• The Keyword Phrase(s) should appear in the body text naturally.
• Create “Stubby Content” which is about 250 words.
• Don’t pack your keywords into the first paragraph of your content.
• Target the keyword phrase in the Page Title, Heading and Subheading.

Here is what I would recommend instead:

• The site command is fine, but you can’t detect duplicate or near duplicate Titles that way. You have to be able to sort the list. That is why Leslie Rohde’s OptiSpider is my favorite product in detecting problems with Titles.
• Not keyword stuffing your Title seems to be a no-brainer, but too many SEOs still do it. I say it all the time, treat the Title like an ad and you will be far better off.
• I come from the camp of testing keywords through PPC BEFORE optimizing them … so I make sure they convert. That’s pretty important information to know. In Google AdWords, in order for me to receive an EXCELLENT score, my page must be relevant to the keyword I am targeting, it must be in the Title, in the Headline, and throughout the body of the text. Hmmm. Sounds like SEO to me. So, instead of “blindly” trying to figure out what Google wants, all I need to do is run an AdWords campaign, which will benefit me anyway, and in the end I will have a highly optimized page for organic search.
• “Stubby Content” is old … today what converts visitors is giving them the content they need in order to feel good enough to buy. How many words is that? Every market is different, so you must test. I would run four tests. 125, 250, 350 and 500 words (of course these numbers don’t need to be exact).
• You can pack your keywords anyway you want as long as the text is compelling and it works. For example, your first paragraph might be a bulleted list with all of your keyword phrases. There isn’t any wrong with doing that. When in doubt, do what converts best.

The next round of tips:

If your content isn’t converting, don’t just edit the content, consider rewriting it from scratch. That way, you will be better able to integrate the keywords that you are working with.

Before you invest in a content rewrite, it would be helpful to know if the content is what is failing. Stay tuned in the membership section as I will have a good list to run through to verify that what you are about to change is part of the problem and not part of the solution.

Look at adding in marketing messages that will stand out from other results on a search page. Think to yourself “why would someone click on my listing?”. Don’t necessarily target your company name, it’s something that you should test. Your product may convert better than your brand.

This is great advise and should be followed closely. You must place yourself in your prospect’s shoes and realize that your listing is surrounded by competitors. You must stand out, and just ranking #1 isn’t enough.

If you have copywriters in-house, consider giving them training on how to write with SEO in mind. If you don’t have copywriters, outsource the work or look at hiring either a specialist SEO content writer or train a new employee to do so.

Be careful here. This can create a bigger problem. Training copywriters with SEO in mind can either be a huge success or a bitter failure. It takes time and they must have confidence in you to change their way of writing. Having results in hand to show how a slight change resulted in a huge gain must be in your possession. If you are just speaking “in theory” with no real results to back up your claims, you voice will fall on deaf ears and you may be “ambushed” by your co-workers and out of a job in the very near future.

Outsourcing is another major issue as you are giving out your company data to a non-bonded person or company. It is far better to get permission to change the Page Titles and Descriptions first, and then go after getting a content box added to each page with “related search terms” to be inputted. Doing these three things should allow for the rankings to move up enough to get the attention of the right people.

Jill was up next and pointed out that Search Engines can’t read content in graphics or flash, you can use ALT attributes although they’re not as valuable as real text. PDFs are indexable, so publish any documents and press released that are not currently linked to on your website.

It is always good to hear the “old standbys” … Graphics and Flash can’t be read by search engines … well, Flash can be indexed, just do a search for “Loading, Loading, Loading …” (hat tip to Mike Grehan who I first heard say that at Webmaster World in 2005 - it still makes me laugh). Great info on ALT text as well, make it focused on the graphic only, don’t keyword stuff. See How Important is ALT Text in SEO that I was quoted in two years ago. The info is still relevant today.

As for PDFs, I don’t like them to be indexed. To me, content in PDFs should be blocked from searches. They should be “print” versions of articles or content that is downloaded. I have never been able to monetize search traffic that lands on a PDF. All it does is drive up the bandwidth bill.

Remember that users come first, make sure that everything makes sense to real people and not just purposely sprinkled with keywords. Be descriptive in links and page titles e.g. “Our B2B Marketing Services” rather than “Our Services”. Optimize for key terms and not for keywords, because ranking top for single word terms is not possible for most people. Don’t rely on stemming (search engines considering word variations as the same), use plurals, past tenses and other similes in your website. Consider words with multiple spellings, don’t use both spelling form on the same page - include variations deeper within the site.

Users will always come first. I will say it again. Use the terms that convert visitors into buyers. Ignore all the hype of KEI and other keyword research myths. What matters most is making that cash register ring. Who cares how many people walk through the doors of the store. It is how many are walking out with product instead of empty handed.

The goal is to sell. And always keep your eye on the goal.