Saturday, March 28, 2009

SEO Copywriter Tip

Been a while since I shared an honest to goodness seo copywriting tip. Here's a good one: don't work too hard.

I don't mean don't spend all of your time writing - we both know how foolish that would be. I mean instead, to simply write good pieces and don't sweat the seo tweaking...at least not right away.

If you're writing an article, do a little research so you can pull in some quotes or links that punch up the validity of your argument. Links out to other resources are good SEO practices, and they help your article too. Why? Because if you build the validity of your argument, you build your validity (over time) in the search engines.

Of course, the competitiveness of your niche matters a lot here. But from an seo copywriter's perspective, the approach is always from the same point of origin: reaching the audience in a unique way. So the SEO copywriter tip is don't spend too much time on SEO copywriting tricks...spend it on reaching audiences through the power of your writing.

Blending Strategies
Here's another SEO tip for Writers: Don't Underestimate Press Release titles
I had an experience a few months ago, where one of my clients was blasting a press release written by another PR firm. They asked my opinions on some of the potential SEO value we could get-we had a couple days to look at it before the scheduled release. So I worked with the PR firm to revamp the title, and the edit the first few lines of text. It was a few simple, but strategic changes, bringing some specific keywords to the front of the piece.

This was a good example of blending team strategies to reach a better conclusion for everyone. Knowing this article was going to be blasted and then heavily scraped (and it was), we were able to re-tool the title and introduction and get lasting results for the targeted keyphrases. The PR firm were experts at what they did, and my clients made the right move by bringing me in to help when they did.

9 months later, a direct-match search on the targeted keyphrase still shows 8 of the top-10 Google results are where this article was picked up--my client's site being in slots 2-3 at the moment (it varies in the top 12 slots). Many of these scraped articles have the links I embedded in them, many are instead straight up text. But the point is, for this key phrase a user is likely to read about my client 8 out of 10 times on the first page. And by having this article on some very reputable news sources, my client gets instant credibility and direct connection to the keywords I placed in the title.

I don't normally search too deep, but I am certain I have a really nice chunk of the top 100 slots for my client in some way here.

So this project, a press release, was really a huge success because the client had the foresight to bring in the elements they needed as they needed them. The event was covered by a PR firm, experienced in spreading the news. It was tweaked by an SEO Copywriter to get a little more mileage from the effort. The client probably spent about $2,000 to pull it together.

The results are traffic, links, and a direct match for this valuable keyword that will likely last for a good long time. A related conversion can be worth tens or even hundreds of thousands to this client, so even one sale more than justifies the cost.

So, the tips I leave you with are to work on a piece of writing to make it effective. When it is a solid piece of writing, look back over it with more of an SEO slant. Weave in a few keywords, if possible, to the title and first few paragraphs...but don't sacrifice readability for keywords. You're better off with a tighter, simpler article than one forced into answering objectives involving word count, keywords, or anything else sometimes evaluated by SEO writers.

Show the value of your skills by blending into team situations. Respect project hierarchies, but don't be afraid to suggest changes based on your expertise and experiences...it is usually why you are in the room to begin with. When you can seize an opportunity that offers long-term value, don't be afraid to make an investment, or to jump in with both feet.

SEO should stand for Search Engine Opportunity, if you ask me.

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