Salute Friend

by Karon Thackston © 2004
http://www.copywritingcourse.com/keyword

>From the early days of search engine optimization, keywords and
content have always been vital to achieving your goals. Starting
back in the days when we used to shove every slightly relevant
keyword into our Meta tags, it has been obvious that search
engines love text. The more advanced the engines have gotten
over the years, the more complex and sophisticated many writers
have gotten with their search engine copywriting.

Supposed formulas, saturation levels, and other mysterious
concoctions have been developed to help us outsmart the engines.
However, what we should have been doing all along was writing
for the visitor first and the engines second. Why? Because
creating a site that’s loved by visitors is a prime factor in
linking, ranking, and marketing as a whole. As the engines make
great strides with more personalized and efficient searches
(such as semantic search) natural search engine optimization
writing is even more important.

Rather than just indexing the copy on your site, engines are
learning to “understand” what a page is about. The ironic thing
is, as the search engines get more complex the “formula” for SEO
copywriting is actually getting more simple.

Write Naturally

In the future, search engines will be looking for Web pages that
reflect a natural tone with the copy. Is it obvious that
keyphrases are being shoved in wherever possible? Does every
headline/sub-head, image tag, and comment tag have a keyphrase
included? Does the copy sound fake, unnatural, and stiff? If so,
then spiders and bots will recognize it and possibly flag it as
something to be wary of.

Take a look at this lovely piece of copy I found while surfing
just the other day. (I’ve replaced the keyphrases used in the
original copy with the word “wherever” so as not to embarrass
the site owner.)

Wherever Holiday Rentals

Holiday rentals in Wherever for holidays in Wherever

Wherever holiday rentals directly from the owners. Rent a
holiday villa in Wherever or perhaps a 2-6 bedroom apartment in
Wherever. Wherever vacation rentals for holidays in Wherever are
easily located by searching the Wherever Holiday website.
Wherever Holiday Rentals offer holiday apartments in Wherever
and holiday villas.

Find accommodation in Wherever by clicking on the Wherever map
or the active links. You will then see holiday rental
apartments, villas and townhouses in stunning Wherever
accommodation.

Let’s suppose someone walked into your travel agency and asked
for help. You would most likely ask what they were looking for.
They would reply, “Holiday rentals in Wherever. What can you
show me?” Would you honestly take off on the spiel above? Can
you see yourself talking to a real client face-to-face and
saying, “We offer Wherever holiday rentals in Wherever and can
find you many apartments, villas, and houses in Wherever”? I
don’t think so.

Tips for Writing In Natural Language

1) Vary your keywords/phrases. For example, if a keyphrase you
particularly want to target is “14k gold jewelry” consider also
using keyphrases like “14k gold watches” or “gold wedding bands”
or others along those lines. This will give you a variety of
phrases within your copy.

2) Read it out loud. When you read your copy out loud you’ll get
a better sense of whether it sounds unnatural. If you wouldn’t
say, “We make 14k gold jewelry and have made 14k gold jewelry
for 10 years. If you need 14k gold jewelry just view our
catalog” out loud, then don’t put it in your copy, either.

3) Break up keyphrases. As searchers get more knowledgeable
about finding what they want in the engines, they use longer and
longer search queries some of which just don’t make any sense.
For instance, I recently had to use the phrase “real estate
Pittsburg downtown” when writing a page of SEO copy. Since this
search string was not easily worked in as that exact phrase, I
broke it up. One sentence I used it in said: “When looking for
commercial real estate in Pittsburg check the downtown listings
first for exceptional locations and prices.” The words are still
in the same order with minor breaks in between. When you can’t
use a phrase “as is” this is a very viable alternative.

Keep in mind the direction search engine optimization is taking.
The closer you can get to writing in natural language, the
better off you’ll be. It only makes sense to create a site now
that will last through the long haul. Especially when that site
will have a better chance of favorably appealing to the engines
and your visitors.