Copywriting For SEO

As well as the copy on the web page, HTML tags  and Meta data are also used by an SEO copywriter. In addition to assisting you with structuring your content, these tags indicate relevancy and context to search engines. Some of the tags are used by screenreaders, and so they assist visitors with disabilities to access your content. The Meta description can also be used by search engines on the search engine results pages (SERPs).

A keyword refers to the word or words that are used in a search query. Multi word keywords are sometimes referred to as key phrases.

The first step in SEO copywriting is keyword research. Having identified the themes of your web site and web pages, keyword research should be used to identify what keywords your target audience uses when searching for you. 

Each page should be optimised for a primary key phrase, and can be optimised for a secondary and tertiary key phrase as well. Usually a web page is optimised for three key phrases, but can be optimised for up to five (though only if the page is very long). Any more than that and you are better off creating new, niche web pages. In the chapter on search engine optimisation, there is more detail on the process of keyword discovery and keyword selection. 

Below are guidelines for using key phrases on a web page:

Page URL 

The main key phrase for the page should be used in the URL for the page. Often, the URL is generated from the page title, so using the key phrase in the page title should ensure that it is in the URL as well.

Page title

The page title appears at the top of a user’s browser and should be able to tell them (and the search engine spiders, of course) what the main theme of the page is. The page title is limited to 66 characters (including spaces). The key phrase should be used as close to the beginning of the title as possible.

Meta description
The Meta description is a short paragraph describing the page content. This summary is usually shown on the SERPs if it contains he search term searched for, which means that it needs to entice users to click-through. The spiders use the Meta description to deduce the topic of the page and the use of targeted key phrases is important here. Copy is limited to no more than 166 characters (including spaces).

Meta keywords

The Meta keywords are a list of the words and phrases that are important on a web page. The use of targeted key phrases is important here, but remember: no keyword stuffing. The meta keywords are limited to 200 characters (including spaces).

Headings and Sub-headings

Spiders assign more relevance to the text used in headings, so it is important to use your key phrases in the headings on your page. It also helps to structure your content.

Heading structures:

<h1> Page heading

<h2> Sub-headings

<h3> Information under the sub-headings

Having a good heading hierarchy is important as spiders use it to move through your page. The hierarchy indicates what is more important and how the content is broken up.

Page Copy

The number of times you use the key phrases is entirely dependant on how long the page of copy is. You want to optimise the page for the key phrases without their use being overt.

For SEO effectiveness, a page of web copy should not be less than 250 words. On a 250 word page you could use the primary key phrase eight times ( this includes use in Meta data, headings, title and body copy) and the secondary key phrase four times.

The page should not be so long that the user needs to scroll and scroll and scroll again to get to the end of it. If you find the page is getting exceptionally long, consider breaking it into different sections. This way you could add more pages of optimized copy focused on one theme, instead of one very long page.

Links to your optimised page

The text used to link from one page to another is considered important by the search engine spiders, so try to ensure that your key phrase is used when linking to the optimised page. The anchor text of links should include the key phrase of the page being linked to, and not the page being linked from.

Images: alt text and title tags

Alt text refers to the “alt” attribute for the IMG HTML tag: this is the text that appears in the caption. It is used in HTML to attribute a text field to an image on a web page, normally with a descriptive function, telling a user what an image is about and displaying the text in instances where the image is unable to load. While this is handy for readers we also do it for another reason: search engine spiders can’t read images, but they can read the alt text. The image title tag is what shows when you hover with your mouse over an image and can also be read by the search engine spider.