Writing for Search Engines without Shooting Yourself in the Foot

Following with our week long analysis of writing for the search engines, we thought it would be appropriate to conclude this week’s discussion with the topics presented at the Search Engine Strategies conference in San Jose. Our web hosting firm, WebsiteSource.com, sent representatives to the conference to gather helpful information for our web hosting customers. So here goes…

Why should I write if someone else can do it for me?

Good web writing can help bring extremely targeted visitors and then convert them into customers. The value of a good copywriter is under-rated. And for those companies out there that pay for copywriters, you know just how expensive this can be. The purpose of this article is to teach good writers how to become even better writers. If a small business owner can write his/her own text, you may be able to produce copy more quickly and less expensively. Yes, it is a good idea to have multiple writers and editors for your website or blog, but it never hurts to be able to write an article or two yourself. With the money you save, you can take your family to dinner and a movie! And, we all know that the more content you have on your website, the better. But just any content will not do. It needs to be highly targeted for your keywords and written in a manner that your visitors find interesting and of high-enough quality that they will want to link to your article or website.

What kind of text should I write?

We will begin our discussion by talking about the type of text you should write for your website. Text that is readable is the only text that is helpful to search engine optimization. If, for example, you include information about your company’s sales or new products available in an image, then a search engine will not be able to read that text and it will not help your search engine marketing efforts. In addition, there is a law suit in the recent news regarding a large retail site that included important sales information in their images and they failed to use Alt tags for those images. The National Federation for the Blind is now suing Target because the blind visitors to their website were not able to use their text readers to access the information within the images because of the lack of Alt tags. When you use images, use Alt tags. And when writing text for search engines, don't include it into your images.

Should I use a lot of Flash with my copy?

Flash files are not a good place for you to put your important text. Yes, flash is a wonderful tool for creating visually interesting animation for your website (as long as it is done within reason) but the text or hyperlinks within a flash file are invisible to a search engine crawler. So use flash within reason.

What about .pdf files?

Adobe pdf files are popular because visitors can download them and print them more easily than they can using an HTML file. Pdf files are indexable by search engines. The major search engines are able to read them and convert them into html format. One mistake that many website owners make is that they will have a html copy of their text as well as a .pdf copy of the same text (for their users' to download). This will result in both copies getting indexed and will lead to duplicate content penalties. Use a “href no follow” tag when you link to the .pdf file. With this tag, search engines will not follow the link to your .pdf document and it will be not be indexed. The problem, however, can present if someone else links to your .pdf document without the “rel=no follow” attribute. The solution for this scenario is to place all your pdf files within one directory; for example, you can call it the "pdf" folder. Then, in your robots.txt file you can disallow that entire directory from getting indexed. Using this technique, you will prevent search engine crawlers from following the link to your .pdf document and it will not be indexed. Problem solved. Now you are able to have two copies of the same content in different formats without generating a duplicate content penalty.

Should I use Graphic headers? What about CSS?

Don’t use graphic headlines as a substitute for text headlines. Although graphic headlines are pretty (some people call this “eye candy”) and graphic headlines make a nice looking header for your website, it is highly recommended that you use text with H1 tags instead. Search engines allocate more weight to the text located within heading tags and they consider it more relevant. If you absolutely must have graphics in your header, you can still use text header tags and decorate them with graphics using CSS (cascading style sheets). You can use CSS to specify an image for your header tags. In fact, you can do almost anything with CSS and the use of CSS in your website design will make your code more “clean” and easier for search engines to crawl. For more information, please visit tour tutorial on using cascading style sheets.

Create a common theme.

The text located on your home page versus your inner pages is also a topic that will have a big impact on the natural flow of your website as well as the goal of creating a keyword “theme” for your website. What we mean by this is, for example, if a medical site that specializes in thyroid treatment also lists articles that detail knee surgery, the knee surgery articles will “dilute” the thyroid theme. Try to keep the overall theme on your website consistent. The keywords on the home page should be more generic, with the inner pages having more descriptive keywords for your target audience. The inner pages should have detailed descriptions of your products or services.

Use multiple keywords in your paragraphs and advertising.

Single words don’t count. Turn them into phrases that describe in full detail your products or services. Try and keep your articles to a minimum of 800-1200 words. If you do not have an extensive keyword list, you can use wordtracker.com to do keyword research. For only a few dollars, they will provide you with a list of highly-targeted keywords in your industry which have proven to be searched upon in the major search engines. Try and keep your keyword list extensive, especially if you intend to launch a pay-per-click ad campaign. Studies have shown that companies that use an extensive list of 3,000 to 5,000, keywords in their pay-per-click campaign can limit their budget to a smaller dollar amount and effectively increase their return on investment at the same time. Why do a high number of keywords matter? The reason is because if you are using keywords that are less popular to your high-bidding competitors, you can effectively obtain traffic that is less costly but still used by visitors looking for your products or services on the Internet.

Scale down your keyword lists for an article.

Take the narrower list of your keywords and use them in your copy. Within one article, you should not use more than 4-5 keywords. Don’t dilute the effectiveness of the article. Remember, you are trying to achieve a “theme” for the article, not a mish-mash of keyword stuffing (which can get you penalized for in the search engines). Write like you speak, in a natural flow. If you are not sure if a paragraph makes sense, read it out loud and your common sense will determine if it is a well-written article. If the article does not read well and sounds like a repetition of keywords over-and-over, then it probably is stuffed with keywords. In this case, you need to toss the article in the trash can and start over. It is not worth the chance of getting your site penalized.

Use multiple words.

Use keyword phrases instead of just one-word keywords. People search using multiple words and you will increase the chances of being in the SERPs (search engine results page) if you are more descriptive. Don’t rely on stemming – plural and “ing” – search engines understand that a plural word is the same as a singular word. Use all variations of your keyword; it also helps to avoid repetition. It sounds better and flows more naturally.

Be consistent.

Some words have multiple spellings – for example, ecommerce and e-commerce. Don’t use both forms on any one page. It looks like a typo if you use the different forms of the same word on any one page.

What kind of widget?

Instead of using the text “finest Napa establishments” use “finest Napa restaurants”. In this example, a bed and breakfast is not really interested in showing up for the keyword restaurant, but if they do, it is a bonus. Bonus phrases are not your targeted keywords, but they are still descriptive and relevant. They might be searched upon and you may end up getting some interesting leads from the use of these words in your copy. These phrases can lead to your site accidentally getting listed for a specific keyword. Even if the resulting keyword listing in a search engine is not on your keyword list, it can still lead to traffic and any visitor can possibly evolve into a lead or a sale.

Be descriptive.

Be descriptive when writing your copy. Design for your users not for search engines. The goal of the article you are working on is not about sprinkling keywords; instead it is about being descriptive. For example, don’t use “our team”. Instead use “our local league baseball team in Austin, Texas”. To write descriptively, ask your self “what kind of team”? If you are more descriptive, you can get keywords in the article and it will flow naturally. Remember, nearly 1/3 of a successful search engine campaign consists of well-written, keyword-rich content. Content that is updated daily, if possible, weekly at the least. If your website becomes “stale” and out-dated, your visitors will know and they will not return. And search engine crawlers that visit your site will know that your content has not changed, or new content has not been added and they will determine that your website is not as important as your competitor’s website who updates his content daily.

Most web hosting companies offer free Blogging tools. Use them.

Blogging is an easy way to keep your website content fresh. Blogging software is usually offered by the more professional web hosting companies and should be included for free with your hosting account. Bloggers are becoming a driving and influential force on the Internet. Most blogging software has the ability to ping some of the major blog directories after you make a new post. This way, the major bloggers will know when your blog has been updated. Blog about anything!

Write, write and write some more.

Keep your site current and filled with interesting, relevant, well-written content and watch your traffic grow!