How do copywriters develop 'Search Engine Friendly' copy? A layman's brief introduction

First we need to understand how Search Engines like Google, Yahoo and Ask find your website when Joe Public keys in a request for information (a search)?

Search Engines use a number of techniques to determine the relevance of your website to public searches. In the good (bad?) old days, it was based primarily on something called 'meta tags' - key words that describe the content of your site, hidden from humans but placed exactly where the Search Engines could find them. Inevitably, this resulted in web designers stuffing their site with as many meta tags as possible, irrespective of their true relevance. Today, meta tags play a very minor role.

Today, Search Engines make extensive use of Spiders - highly sophisticated software routines that scurry all over the web, assessing each site. There are two key elements that can give your site a high rating:

The number of relevant links into your site from other websites (and they do need to be relevant)
The content of your site - and content means words. The spiders use fiendishly clever mathematical algorithms to assess your website copy.
For the purpose of this short piece, we will concentrate on the second point - the copy.

Let us suppose that you are a supplier of garden furniture. The first task would be to ask yourself what words might Joe Public use when searching the web? 'Garden furniture', certainly. Possibly 'wooden garden furniture,' or 'low cost garden furniture', 'garden furniture companies near Milton Keynes'.

Having identified potential search terms, it is the job of the copywriter to weave them into the written content of your website. They need to be there for the search engine spiders to find, but they also need to occur naturally within the text for human readers.

A professional website copywriter will have the knack of developing the right amount of copy that is relevant, search engine friendly and, for the humans, a compelling read.

See some of my own websites

SEO Quick Tips

Never use a ‘free server’ for your website. www.megagoblets.tesco.com won't stand a chance. Business web hosting costs pence per day, so don't cut corners

Content is King. The more content your site has, the more chance of a higher ranking

Spiders can only read text, so avoid those whizzy designs with lots of animation. They are developed using something called Flash. They look great, but to a spider, they are just an empty website

Have at least 6 pages

Each page should have at least 200 words of visible text (ideally 400-600)

Ensure they include your ‘keywords’

External links from other (relevant) websites are heir apparent (avoid link farms)

Spiders love site maps

Never use a ‘Welcome’ page that has little else in it. Spiders, and a lot of humans - hate them

Use the (free) tracking software that is available from any reputable web host company. It will tell you how many visitors (forget 'hits', they mean nothing. You want visitors) you are getting each day, how long they stayed, which pages they found interesting, at which page they chose to leave your site and so on).

NEVER use ‘’black hat’ optimisation (companies guaranteeing to get you into the top ten rankings. They cheated and cheaters are treated with contempt by the search engines. BMW was black listed recently for using 'black hat' techniques)

Remember to submit your site!

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