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Keywords Are Crucial In Web Copywriting
SEO copywriting is based on a foundation of keywords. You need to determine the most important words people use when they look for your goods or services.
With the right tools you can now pinpoint exactly how many people per day in particular country use a particular combination of keywords to look for something and how many competing web pages there are for those terms.
You want to target keywords for which there is high traffic and low competing web pages (unless you have a massive budget and can invest in other web strategies to maximise your results).
In the past you could just guess your keywords. This is no longer the case. These days you need to know exactly the difference to your proposed traffic that the addition of the letter "s" can have on the end of a word, or the exact order of the keyword phrases to make sure you are not optimising your site for the wrong words.
You now need science to back up your keyword identification otherwise you could be targeting words that no one is looking for, or for which there is too much competition so you will never be found in the search engines.
Keyword identification is not a one shot thing. I personally run the stats on my site's keywords every 4 months, to pick up shifts in how people are using language. Words change over time and your site needs to reflect those shifts in order to unlock maximum results.
Keywords need to appear in the right places. Once you have found the right keywords, they need to appear in the right places on your webcopy. Ideally your keywords need to be in:
* Your URL
* Your domain name
* Your page title tag
* Your page description metatag
* Your keywords metatag
* In your body copy - people debate the actual percentages. Some people demand 3%-6% keyword density which means each keyword is mentioned 3-6 times each 100 words. This detracts from the human persuasion factor so it is a balancing act.
* Header and sub header tags (H1, H2, H3)
* In bold, italics etc in your copy
* In the first sentence of your copy
* At the bottom of your copy
* In internal and external page links
* In Alt tags for images
There's a lot of debate about the relative importance of different factors, but all of these elements need to be considered when writing your web copy.
There is also research about how many are too many keywords, over-linking, the quality of links to and from your site, the length of your copy on your page and the age of your pages vs. fresh content. All of these factors need to be taken into account when crafting your website pages.
Remember, when you write web copy you must balance both the science of human persuasion with the science of SEO. You also must balance the art of your writing and the energy of your writing for maximum results.
It is only when all of these elements are put in place and balanced that your web copy will generate search engine results, clients and actions.
About the Author Ingrid Cliff is a freelance writer and the Chief Word Wizard of Heart Harmony - a writing services studio that helps put your business into words. For a free copy of the "7 Secrets of Compelling Copy & Powerful Words" visit her website www.heartharmony.com.au .
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