Web copywriting and keywords: six (6) winning rules for SEO that will help your website rank better.
By following these 6 practical rules of Web copywriting you strengthen your website’s SEO, and as a result you improve the likelihood that search engines, namely Google, will consider ranking your website on its first pages.
NOTE : For the uninitiated and to avoid any possible confusion, as I’ve seen it happen, this article is about copy-writing, and not copy-righting which is a legal term. The word «copy» in copywriting stands to mean «the wording»; in copy-righting, it means «making a duplicate».
Read this if you are a business owner or marketing person responsible for making your website perform better on search engines, namely Google.
This article is not about you becoming a web copywriter, but since you deal with website designers and writers it is very useful for you to understand what is meant by “optimizing website written content” and how that is a good SEO practice to apply to your site.
The simple yet important role of web copywriting for SEO
Web copywriting, also called text content optimization, is the writing of the text content of a website taking into account the keywords for which we want to reference this site; in doing so, good web copywriting increases the potential for a favorable ranking of the same site on the first pages of Google and other search engines.
In practical terms, web copywriting serves two purposes:
1. present your information clearly, interestingly and dynamically to your website visitors, so they take the time to read what you have to offer;
2. tactically and appropriately pepper the text with keywords so that your site can be favourably ranked by search engines.
This is done in the website’s text by placing and repeating specific keywords and key phrases that are used by your target visitors when they query search engines.
N.B. Web copywriting has to do mainly with the written content in your website for your visitors to read. As such, keep in mind that there is still a whole series of technical SEO actions that need to be done in the website’s structural elements; that subject merits its own article (in the works).
Web copywriting, it all starts with a research and a strategic keyword planning
Keyword Planning on the subjects of your website gives one a list of keywords that people are using when querying a search engine for your type of product, service or activity.
Just as an example, for an IT consulting firm, the keywords could be:
KEYWORDS: information, technology, experience, succeed, resources, servers, technicians, best, consultants, experts.
KEY PHRASES: information technology, it consultant, server technicians…
Web copywriting: here are the 6 SEO rules
1- Include keywords in each part of a webpage text, as follows:
Depending on its length and the complexity of the information to be transmitted, any text would have, as the case may be, the following elements:
• title
• if needed, short descriptive paragraph
• if needed, subtitles of the content paragraphs
• the actual information paragraphs
So a web copywriter would go about using the keywords throughout those elements just mentioned.
If we continue with the example of keywords for our fictitious IT firm, the text of the SERVICES page on its site could be as follows:
The title:
The best technologies for your network success
Descriptive paragraph (can also be a sub-title)
ABC-CONSULTANTS use the best network technologies to help you succeed in business.
Examples of different paragraph titles:
> The most reliable servers
> Technology know-how at your service
> Experienced IT consultants
The actual content of the paragraphs
You will understand then the explanatory content of the paragraphs would also contain the relevant keywords.
2- Use an acceptable density of keywords
To avoid «keyword stuffing», which is known as a black hat type of SEO practice, search engines have set the acceptable keyword density at a ratio of 1 to 3 keywords per 100 words of text (1% to 3%). It is also expected that the flow of words can be read naturally. In fact, anybody trying to artificially boost that ratio to have a better ranking, will see Google and others penalize that person’s site.
3- The longer the text, the better for SEO … but careful!
At this moment, it is recommended to have a text that contains at least 300 words, and more if possible. In fact, several studies show, graphs in hand, that pages with 1,500 words and more (some have more than 3,000 words) are ranked more favourably by search engines.
Why?
Because the longer the text allows for more keywords to be used while still respecting the acceptable density of 1% to 3%.
So, even if you say “it’s way too much text”, when it comes to SEO, we must think that the longer text is better for ranking!
But careful!
There is also the quality of the text to be considered, since a text of 500 to 1000 words, well formulated, will keep the interest of your visitors longer than a redundant and dull text of 2000 words. And for Google, the time spent on a page is just as important, if not more, than the number of words on that page.
In conclusion one should aim at having an interesting and useful text written with at least 1000 words.
4-Describe images with keywords
When displaying an image on the web, it is recommended to always describe it in relation to the keywords.
For example, the description of this image here could be : « Our experienced consultants competently surf the information technology universe.» As you can see, in this description there are the keywords “consultant and information technology.”
5-Structured internal links
Beyond the actual writing of the texts, there is a technical task of sorts that falls under the web copywriter’s job. One of the criteria that search engines use to rank websites is the number of internal links, that is to say, links that connect to each other the different but relevant sections and pages of a website. The web copywriter must be aware of and, if appropriate, indicate these links in his copy.
In other words, in the process of writing one must plan how the text in one page of a website can be used to lead to another page or to a form that is elsewhere. This serves among other things to keep the visitor longer on the site; which is another SEO ranking criteria.
6- Use keywords, in naming the internal links
This just means that rather than writing “For more information click here,” in web copywriting one should re-phrase the sentence to include keywords that will be used for the hyperlink, such as : “Click here for our best IT practices.” In this way the search engines recognize the internal link and count up the keywords.
One last word, or two, on web copywriting…
As mentioned in the introduction of this article, web copywriting has to do mainly with the written word to be read by humans; however, to really close the loop it will be up to the web programmer-integrator to insert said keywords into the technical structure of a site – which is not seen by humans, but so much appreciated by robots 🙂
So whether you do the web copywriting yourself or outsource the task to a professional writer, make sure that the text follows these 6 web copywriting rules for better SEO results.
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Vincent [Vincenzo] Sciullo
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