What makes a freelance SEO writer happy? Success.
This week, for one site, I was able to capture 9 of the top10 spots for my targeted keyphrase. SERP domination like that is what I call success--it made me very happy to line everything up carefully, pull the trigger and watch it all fall into place.
This week, I was able to optimize and launch a new site for a long-standing client. I built it from the ground up to replace the canned Go Daddy template site he had. in doing so, I not only improved his look and feel, but I took his 8 page site and made it into a 60 page site--only creating 3-5 new pages of content. He had extremely long pages full of great information--I simply helped him to re-think the informational architecture, and put the same content out there in smaller, more focused bites. I am writing a case study on this project because his was a very common dilemma, and I think what we did to fix it could help many people.
This week, I was able to look at some traffic stats that showed improvement over last month--slow, steady climbing, which is exactly what I want. While huge dramatic leaps are cool, they also seem to prelude huge dramatic drops as well...when a site continues to build and grow in a steady fashion, it seems to have longer-lasting results.
This week, I was able to mentor 3 up-and-comers, sharing whatever I could with them. We spent a few hours talking about strategies in SEO writing, and what to do or not, and why. They were energetic and plugged-in--I wish them all great success.
This week, the bass started biting...I caught 15 large mouth beauties last night. Looks like freelancing will once again take a back seat to my fishing fetish.
This week, I received 4 Braves tickets as a bonus for doing some good work. Look forward to taking my family out for a nice evening.
And it's only Wednesday!
Wednesday, April 30, 2008
Sunday, April 27, 2008
A Saddened SEO Sigh
So I had an old client, one that I helped about 2 years ago with some SEO work.
At the time, this client was concerned because his company website was not ranking for his targeted keyphrases. I worked with him to help create a new, improved structure, and wrote a bunch of stuff to help him hit his organic goals. The results were very positive--we entered the Top-10 SERPs for most of his targets, all without using anything more than some relatively simple and inexpensive on-page strategies.
So his traffic improved, and the site started doing really well for him. Great!
Here's the Rub
Since his traffic improved and site conversions were up, he decided to upgrade the site. A good move for sure, because the look and feel of the one we had optimized was pretty weak.
He found a new, fairly expensive developer who made him a new site. It was built with some solid UIs (user interfaces), allowing him to update and edit his content on a whim. Sounds great, right? Sounds like he was taking steps toward making the most of his web presence.
The problem?
There was no way for him to build new pages, or add to his basic site structure. Worse still, he had no way to control the meta data or individual page titles in the new site. There was only one page title and one set of meta data--so all of our wonderful optimization and SERP mastery was now for naught.
Sure enough, as soon as the new site was indexed, all of the precious SERP positions disappeared. His new developer was not very SEO savvy, and told him that the single set of meta tags was all any search engine needed (WHAT???!!!)
I wept, quietly on the inside, for my client...I knew he was pretty well hosed by his new, fancy website, and his developer's attitude would prevent him from improving in something very crucial to his success. My hands were tied.
The Moral
Bells and whistles are for trains, not websites. If you want to really service your customer base, make your site appear in the engines when an end user is typing in a search. Help them find you.
For my old client, he came to me imploringly, seeking some SEO juice. I suggested a few things, but told him that he was really missing a valuable piece of the puzzle, and he shouldn't expect it to work as it had for us in the past. I explained why the meta data was so valuable, and suggested some off-page strategies to make up for it. He had spent too much money on his new site to pitch it or start over, so he is doing what he can.
But this caused me to heave a weary SEO sigh twice:
At the time, this client was concerned because his company website was not ranking for his targeted keyphrases. I worked with him to help create a new, improved structure, and wrote a bunch of stuff to help him hit his organic goals. The results were very positive--we entered the Top-10 SERPs for most of his targets, all without using anything more than some relatively simple and inexpensive on-page strategies.
So his traffic improved, and the site started doing really well for him. Great!
Here's the Rub
Since his traffic improved and site conversions were up, he decided to upgrade the site. A good move for sure, because the look and feel of the one we had optimized was pretty weak.
He found a new, fairly expensive developer who made him a new site. It was built with some solid UIs (user interfaces), allowing him to update and edit his content on a whim. Sounds great, right? Sounds like he was taking steps toward making the most of his web presence.
The problem?
There was no way for him to build new pages, or add to his basic site structure. Worse still, he had no way to control the meta data or individual page titles in the new site. There was only one page title and one set of meta data--so all of our wonderful optimization and SERP mastery was now for naught.
Sure enough, as soon as the new site was indexed, all of the precious SERP positions disappeared. His new developer was not very SEO savvy, and told him that the single set of meta tags was all any search engine needed (WHAT???!!!)
I wept, quietly on the inside, for my client...I knew he was pretty well hosed by his new, fancy website, and his developer's attitude would prevent him from improving in something very crucial to his success. My hands were tied.
The Moral
Bells and whistles are for trains, not websites. If you want to really service your customer base, make your site appear in the engines when an end user is typing in a search. Help them find you.
For my old client, he came to me imploringly, seeking some SEO juice. I suggested a few things, but told him that he was really missing a valuable piece of the puzzle, and he shouldn't expect it to work as it had for us in the past. I explained why the meta data was so valuable, and suggested some off-page strategies to make up for it. He had spent too much money on his new site to pitch it or start over, so he is doing what he can.
But this caused me to heave a weary SEO sigh twice:
- My client looked to upgrade a successful organic site, but did not consult an SEO before making a success-crushing decision...and the decision made could have been avoided.
- My client's new developer was telling my client bad, uneducated and inexperienced SEO information, and my client (though I thought differently) didn't know any better.
These are things I have always dealt with as an SEO writer and web developer. But it still makes me shake my head...and sigh sadly.
Oh well...there's always more to do.
Saturday, April 19, 2008
A Typical SEO Evaluation
This week, I did an SEO evaluation on a potential new client's site. The things I found were pretty common mistakes, so I thought I would genericize the situation and offer them here. The purpose is to give you some things to look at if your own website (or a client's) is struggling in the search engines.
This evaluation took about 2 hours, and focused only on the site's ability to enable indexing. I'll break it down into the 4 main issues I found, and some simple, cost-effective solutions I offered.
Issue 1: Page titles and meta data were all the same across the board. What it looks like to me, was the site builder created the html header for one page. He then simply copied it into all of the other pages as he built out the site. This can be a good way to build sites from scratch, but the specific information in the head tags needs to be changed prior to launch.
This evaluation took about 2 hours, and focused only on the site's ability to enable indexing. I'll break it down into the 4 main issues I found, and some simple, cost-effective solutions I offered.
Issue 1: Page titles and meta data were all the same across the board. What it looks like to me, was the site builder created the html header for one page. He then simply copied it into all of the other pages as he built out the site. This can be a good way to build sites from scratch, but the specific information in the head tags needs to be changed prior to launch.
- SEO Solution: Use unique description, keyword, and title tags. Focus on a pre-researched list of primary, secondary and tertiary keywords. Lay out a spread sheet with all of the pages and their specific content for each tag. Each page should have a unique, hand created and strategically focused set of meta data.
Issue 2: No alt attributes used in image files. Across the whole site, not a single image I found had an "alt name" attribute assigned.
- SEO Solution: Add alt attributes to the html tags for every image. This markup is to enable users who are visually challenged to still "read" the non-textual parts of your website. It is referred to as "Section 508 Compliance." The use of keywords here is not as important as describing the image accurately.
Issue 3: No Site Maps.
- SEO Solution: Add site maps. Generate an XML site map as well as an html site map that is accessible to the user. If applicable, create an RSS feed. Site maps are not guarantees that every page within them will be indexed. But site maps do tell the search engines what you want them to look at, and they do often help a site get more thoroughly indexed.
Issue 4: No Method of Measurement Being Used. The site owner really has no idea what is happening on the site--who visits, what they are looking for, what they are doing. There are some potential e-commerce opportunities being missed, and the call-to-action is muddled and soft across the whole site.
- SEO Solution: Add tracking and increase visibility and accountabilty of all calls to action. Set a baseline so there is an achievable, measurable goal.
There were other issues in the execution of the site that offered chances for optimizing, but these simple steps above were enough to get them started in the right direction.
From my end, it is pretty easy to optimize these things and make sure the site is getting properly indexed. As an SEO writer, it is important to always do this before doing anything else. It is truly eye-opening to see how many times these relatively simple things can improve a site's ability to gain organic SEO power.
And then the fun can really begin!
Sunday, April 6, 2008
Another Simple SEO Copywriting Tip
About the Death of Keyword Density
Since the last SEO tip was so fun, I thought we'd try another. This one is more directly about SEO copywriting, and the changes that are happening in searching and in the search engines.
See, up until a couple years ago, keywords were the main (almost the only) thing to understand in SEO writing. Keyword density and meta tags were simple things that even horribly untalented people could manipulate pretty easily and see some great results. Stuff a bunch of keywords into a page, and bingo, you could start to rank for them. But, in most cases those days are all but gone, and as an SEO writer it makes me very happy. Why? Because it is going to be tougher and tougher to rank for crap...and this means job security for you-know-who.
So is Keyword Density Gone Completely?
Short answer: no. But as with everything in search, it is only one element, so manipulating it and it alone won't work for you anymore...at least not like it used to. It is now measured and balanced with other all other aspects of organic search, and is much less important than most things, things like backlinks or good page titles. Like everything about organic development, the value of keyword density varies by search engine--some of the "short bus" search engines still value density pretty highly, but I don't typically care too much about them as they simply don't drive the traffic I need to call something a success. Call me a search snob, but the numbers don't lie.
Personally, I used to measure my keyword density as part of creating every page. I had targeted levels to reach and if my finished page did not meet the targeted keyword density, I figured out a way to include more instances. I was pretty smooth at it so it wasn't always obvious...but it still always felt kind of slimy to do things like that. But that was then, my friends--and times are better now. I have not had to sweat density since about mid-2004, and the last time I did, it was only because the client very specifically wanted me to do so. I tried to explain it might not really be the best plan, but as the freelancer for a major client, I pretty quickly shut up, and did what I was told. They were happy, I got paid, and their pages did fine. But this was not only because of the density levels I met on every page--there were many aspects to this site that made it a big one.
But in the past 2 years, more than once I have also made pages rank for a targeted keyphrase without having a single instance of the keyphrase appearing in the body copy. Let me repeat that: NOT A SINGLE OCCURENCE of the keyphrase in the body copy, and I still got a #1 ranking in Google for my keyphrases (and held them easily for over a year, BTW). How? By refining the keyphrase, manipulating the page title, metadata and backlinks properly, and having generally solid content on a trusted domain. I did it all very intentionally, and it was really quite an eye-opener for me. I saw it as a huge leap forward, because it reduced the amount of time I would have to spend cramming in a few more instances of the keyphrase to reach some arbitrary number that seemed to make the algorithm click my way.
Make It Good, and Make It Stick
Now don't think that this means you can ignore keywords--nothing could be farther from the truth. But in my experience, from the user's side of search, keywords are slowly being replaced by much more specific keyphrases. Instead of typing in 1-2 keywords and sifting through the results, people are more comfortable typing in longer strings to get what they want. I saw some stats on this recently, which I will try to dig up to share, but it basically stated that the average search was edging closer to 4-5 words, where it was still 1-2 only a couple years ago.
So the engines are going to look for these longer tail searches in the content, which makes density manipulation pretty difficult. They are also starting to connect contextual content more and more often--which is partly why I was able to rank for a keyphrase without actually using it. I was talking about the same subject matter but used synonyms and the like and still had great success.
The key is to make a page of content good, solid writing first. Actually, just stop there. Make it good, and it is much easier to make it stick.
Spend Your SEO Writing Time Wisely
The same amount of time I used to spend manipulating density is now applied to better understanding search nuance. The end result is better pages--both for me as the writer, and for the users. The users reward me with more links to my pages, more time spent reading them, and more completed calls-to-action.
So if you are intent on becoming a better SEO copywriter, you should know it is more about being a good writer than being a keyword magician (or worse, a spamming stuffer). Spend more time doing keyword research, understanding your audience's needs and search habits, and creating good content. If you have a good page, people will spend more time with it. They will be more inclined to link to it, or take a specific action. Keyword density in itself is pretty darn easy to manipulate...good writing is more of an art. Bully for us!
Since the last SEO tip was so fun, I thought we'd try another. This one is more directly about SEO copywriting, and the changes that are happening in searching and in the search engines.
See, up until a couple years ago, keywords were the main (almost the only) thing to understand in SEO writing. Keyword density and meta tags were simple things that even horribly untalented people could manipulate pretty easily and see some great results. Stuff a bunch of keywords into a page, and bingo, you could start to rank for them. But, in most cases those days are all but gone, and as an SEO writer it makes me very happy. Why? Because it is going to be tougher and tougher to rank for crap...and this means job security for you-know-who.
So is Keyword Density Gone Completely?
Short answer: no. But as with everything in search, it is only one element, so manipulating it and it alone won't work for you anymore...at least not like it used to. It is now measured and balanced with other all other aspects of organic search, and is much less important than most things, things like backlinks or good page titles. Like everything about organic development, the value of keyword density varies by search engine--some of the "short bus" search engines still value density pretty highly, but I don't typically care too much about them as they simply don't drive the traffic I need to call something a success. Call me a search snob, but the numbers don't lie.
Personally, I used to measure my keyword density as part of creating every page. I had targeted levels to reach and if my finished page did not meet the targeted keyword density, I figured out a way to include more instances. I was pretty smooth at it so it wasn't always obvious...but it still always felt kind of slimy to do things like that. But that was then, my friends--and times are better now. I have not had to sweat density since about mid-2004, and the last time I did, it was only because the client very specifically wanted me to do so. I tried to explain it might not really be the best plan, but as the freelancer for a major client, I pretty quickly shut up, and did what I was told. They were happy, I got paid, and their pages did fine. But this was not only because of the density levels I met on every page--there were many aspects to this site that made it a big one.
But in the past 2 years, more than once I have also made pages rank for a targeted keyphrase without having a single instance of the keyphrase appearing in the body copy. Let me repeat that: NOT A SINGLE OCCURENCE of the keyphrase in the body copy, and I still got a #1 ranking in Google for my keyphrases (and held them easily for over a year, BTW). How? By refining the keyphrase, manipulating the page title, metadata and backlinks properly, and having generally solid content on a trusted domain. I did it all very intentionally, and it was really quite an eye-opener for me. I saw it as a huge leap forward, because it reduced the amount of time I would have to spend cramming in a few more instances of the keyphrase to reach some arbitrary number that seemed to make the algorithm click my way.
Make It Good, and Make It Stick
Now don't think that this means you can ignore keywords--nothing could be farther from the truth. But in my experience, from the user's side of search, keywords are slowly being replaced by much more specific keyphrases. Instead of typing in 1-2 keywords and sifting through the results, people are more comfortable typing in longer strings to get what they want. I saw some stats on this recently, which I will try to dig up to share, but it basically stated that the average search was edging closer to 4-5 words, where it was still 1-2 only a couple years ago.
So the engines are going to look for these longer tail searches in the content, which makes density manipulation pretty difficult. They are also starting to connect contextual content more and more often--which is partly why I was able to rank for a keyphrase without actually using it. I was talking about the same subject matter but used synonyms and the like and still had great success.
The key is to make a page of content good, solid writing first. Actually, just stop there. Make it good, and it is much easier to make it stick.
Spend Your SEO Writing Time Wisely
The same amount of time I used to spend manipulating density is now applied to better understanding search nuance. The end result is better pages--both for me as the writer, and for the users. The users reward me with more links to my pages, more time spent reading them, and more completed calls-to-action.
So if you are intent on becoming a better SEO copywriter, you should know it is more about being a good writer than being a keyword magician (or worse, a spamming stuffer). Spend more time doing keyword research, understanding your audience's needs and search habits, and creating good content. If you have a good page, people will spend more time with it. They will be more inclined to link to it, or take a specific action. Keyword density in itself is pretty darn easy to manipulate...good writing is more of an art. Bully for us!
Saturday, April 5, 2008
SEO Copywriting Tip
I know I promised some SEO copywriting tips, and have not yet delivered...so here's a really simple one for you to chew on.
Crosslinking Your Content
So you have a nice site, you have it built well, and everything is ready to go. You have plenty of good content, the navigation is clear and works well, and you have both an html and an XML sitemap in place. How else can you help to increase the assumed relevance of your content? One simple answer is crosslinking your content.
Why do It?
The engines might clearly see the pages you have out there, but what do they think of them? If each page only has a navigation link, and a link from the sitemaps to it, it is what I call a "dangler," which means it is kind of floating out there. Think of a tree branch with a single leaf on it.
Danglers might be important pages to you and your site, but the spiders only see it dangling...so they don't understand that these are so important to you. Cross linking your pages from within the body content gets rid of this situation--and instead of a site filled with danglers, the spiders start to see it as a nice little compact web of information.
It's Easy.
All you need to do to crosslink your pages is to link important words to pages that help illustrate what those words are. They don't have to be exact matches to work well either. For example, let's say you have a site about getting small business money containing a page giving loan details, and you want this page to really stand out among the rest.
Look through the other pages, and find out where you are talking about loans, financing, money, or other similar ideas. Hyperlink these references to the loans page. They might be single words (like loan, loans, financing, money, etc.) or might be short phrases like "getting business loans" "small business financing options" and so on.
I have found that a contextual reference is increasingly important--meaning simply that you don't want to only look at linking the word "loans" to make the page for loans work. If it is a related idea/term, it will help you to associate it with your loans page...the engines (especially Google) are doing this more and more as time rolls on. Think of it like anchor text..because that is, after all, exactly what it is. And just like you don't want every anchored link on someone else's site to say the same thing about your site, the same holds true within your own architecture. Show the engines that your loans page is about all things related to loans, and you will find the juice you need.
How Many Links are Enough?
There is no single answer to how many links are enough...but don't go completely crazy with this idea. Ultimately, you are linking these terms and phrases to help the user learn more. If you overdo it, it becomes kind of a hassle to look through your site, and it starts looking like you are simply trying to manipulate the system which is never a good thing.
As a general starting point, if I have about 300 words on a page, I might look to hyperlink about 10 of them to other pages. It may be more, but not too often less. This gives some depth to the contextual content without going nutsy with it...and it has never had an adverse effect on me doing it this way. I am reasonable with what I am trying to accomplish, not spammy. If I have one page I am trying to really boost, it will get linked from a bunch of pages, but I try to mix it up and "spread the wealth" across all the pages as best I can.
When your page is linked from a couple or more places in your site, it takes on a little different stature in the eyes of the spiders (do search bots have eyes?). It will diminish the dangling, and overall, make the search engines happier with what they find on your site. Will it boost rankings? Probably not...but it will make each page stronger, which will increase the assumed strength of the domain--which definitely will end up helping you in organic search.
Just do it.
Internally cross linking pages is one of the easiest, and cheapest ways to help you get more mileage out of your SEO efforts. I am surprised at how many people don't employ this simple strategy...but look at the sites doing well in your niche, and I'd be willing to bet that they are doing it. Just jump on in--as long as the links all work (very important--don't allow broken links in your site!), it will have a positive effect. Hard to measure perhaps, but positive nonetheless.
Get linking!
Crosslinking Your Content
So you have a nice site, you have it built well, and everything is ready to go. You have plenty of good content, the navigation is clear and works well, and you have both an html and an XML sitemap in place. How else can you help to increase the assumed relevance of your content? One simple answer is crosslinking your content.
Why do It?
The engines might clearly see the pages you have out there, but what do they think of them? If each page only has a navigation link, and a link from the sitemaps to it, it is what I call a "dangler," which means it is kind of floating out there. Think of a tree branch with a single leaf on it.
Danglers might be important pages to you and your site, but the spiders only see it dangling...so they don't understand that these are so important to you. Cross linking your pages from within the body content gets rid of this situation--and instead of a site filled with danglers, the spiders start to see it as a nice little compact web of information.
It's Easy.
All you need to do to crosslink your pages is to link important words to pages that help illustrate what those words are. They don't have to be exact matches to work well either. For example, let's say you have a site about getting small business money containing a page giving loan details, and you want this page to really stand out among the rest.
Look through the other pages, and find out where you are talking about loans, financing, money, or other similar ideas. Hyperlink these references to the loans page. They might be single words (like loan, loans, financing, money, etc.) or might be short phrases like "getting business loans" "small business financing options" and so on.
I have found that a contextual reference is increasingly important--meaning simply that you don't want to only look at linking the word "loans" to make the page for loans work. If it is a related idea/term, it will help you to associate it with your loans page...the engines (especially Google) are doing this more and more as time rolls on. Think of it like anchor text..because that is, after all, exactly what it is. And just like you don't want every anchored link on someone else's site to say the same thing about your site, the same holds true within your own architecture. Show the engines that your loans page is about all things related to loans, and you will find the juice you need.
How Many Links are Enough?
There is no single answer to how many links are enough...but don't go completely crazy with this idea. Ultimately, you are linking these terms and phrases to help the user learn more. If you overdo it, it becomes kind of a hassle to look through your site, and it starts looking like you are simply trying to manipulate the system which is never a good thing.
As a general starting point, if I have about 300 words on a page, I might look to hyperlink about 10 of them to other pages. It may be more, but not too often less. This gives some depth to the contextual content without going nutsy with it...and it has never had an adverse effect on me doing it this way. I am reasonable with what I am trying to accomplish, not spammy. If I have one page I am trying to really boost, it will get linked from a bunch of pages, but I try to mix it up and "spread the wealth" across all the pages as best I can.
When your page is linked from a couple or more places in your site, it takes on a little different stature in the eyes of the spiders (do search bots have eyes?). It will diminish the dangling, and overall, make the search engines happier with what they find on your site. Will it boost rankings? Probably not...but it will make each page stronger, which will increase the assumed strength of the domain--which definitely will end up helping you in organic search.
Just do it.
Internally cross linking pages is one of the easiest, and cheapest ways to help you get more mileage out of your SEO efforts. I am surprised at how many people don't employ this simple strategy...but look at the sites doing well in your niche, and I'd be willing to bet that they are doing it. Just jump on in--as long as the links all work (very important--don't allow broken links in your site!), it will have a positive effect. Hard to measure perhaps, but positive nonetheless.
Get linking!
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