The copy on each of your web pages should be created to serve two specific purposes.
Firstly, your copy must be engaging and compelling for the reader. If your web copy is really interesting it will encourage your visitors to remain on your site for longer and also visit additional pages within your site.
Secondly, your copy must be properly optimised for the relevant keywords you wish to target and made as search engine friendly as possible. This will ensure that your web pages receive the maximum exposure to potential customers searching for the products or services that you offer.
Here are my top 6 SEO copywriting tips that will help you to improve your websites copy and rank more highly on Google and the other major search engines such as Yahoo and Bing:
1) Keyword Research
Conducting some form of keyword research will help you to identify the top performing keywords to target on each page of your website. This is absolutely crucial to the success of your SEO copywriting project. See our Keyword Research blog post on our sister site, for more information on the importance of investing time in keyword research for search engine success.
2) Use H1, H2 or H3 Tags for your main headings
Make sure that your main headings are placed within H1, H2 or H3 tags and that the heading text contains your important keywords. Search engines place greater importance on keywords contained within these tags.
3) Use bold text to emphasise keywords
When you emphasise a keyword with bold text, again search engines will place greater importance on these keywords.
4) Internal linking
Create Links within your copy to other pages of your site which contain relevant information. This will benefit your visitors and increase the amount of time they spend on your site.
5) Use a minimum of 400 words per page
Try and write a minimum of 400 words per page and more if possible. Content is king as far as the search engines are concerned and the more text the better. The greater the amount of text on a page the easier it is to optimise for your targeted keywords. This will also help in avoiding any keyword density penalties.
6) Optimise your images
Search engines do not see images on a web page. However it is possible to embed text within your images that will be seen by the search engines, by using image Alt tags.
The easiest way to write high quality, search engine friendly web copy is to use your common sense more than anything and get the balance right between optimising your pages for your targeted keywords and creating compelling copy that will engage your visitors. If your SEO copywriting project can achieve this, you will create a website that not only ranks highly in the search engine ranking results, but also entices quality visitors that are more likely to convert into paying customers.
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As ever, please feel free to comment on this post
Thanks for this useful info on SEO. I have one question. What would you recommend as far as nay plugins that would help protect posts on privately hosted WordPress blogs from content theft? Do you think the WordPress plugin Wp-Copyright would work or does it hurt search engine ranking to disable right clicks on the site?
Thanks again!
When search engines index a web page they crawl the actual HTML code, not the information you see via your browser. Therefore disabling right clicks on the site will not have any effect on your search engine ranking results.
Marvelous piece of writing. I think these top 6 tips helps to improve websites copy and rank more highly on Google and the other major search engines such as Yahoo. Thanks!!
We fully appreciate your website post. You can find a multitude of techniques we could put it to very good use by means of no effort in time and capital. Thank you so much regarding helping make the post answer many problems we have experienced before now.
Marvelous piece of writing. I think these top 6 tips helps to improve websites copy and rank more highly on Google and the other major search engines such as Yahoo. Thanks!!
All good points Robert — thanks!
One point I was unaware of until quite recently is #4 — internal linking.
Closely related – If your test link contains keywords such as — “Robert Smith for Prime Minister” — it’s far better than if it merely reads “click here”. This holds true for internal links and for your back-links from other sites.