SEO Copywriting Tips

Don’t get hung up on keyword density

In reality, search engines don’t measure keyword density the way I’ve described above. They’re not actually looking for a density of 5% or 3% or 10%. So don’t get hung up on it. Instead, use density calculations only as a yardstick. A density of 3% will give you a page with plenty of instances of your keyword. If you can’t get a density that high without impacting readability, settle for a lower density. You can have some pages with a high density, and some with a low density, and still attain a high search ranking. The important thing is that you use your keywords more often than any other single word or phrase.

Exact string or just all words in the phrase?

If you’re targeting very specific keyword phrases in your copy, you’ll soon discover that it’s quite difficult to do. If you repeat your keyword again and again, your copy can become very unfriendly to readers.

For example, targeting “shoes” is easy; but targeting “blue tennis shoes California” is a lot more difficult. If your web page has 200 words, your keyword phrase has to appear six times for a keyword density of 3%. That’s fine if it’s a single word, because there’ll still be 194 words of normal copy left. The keyword won’t be so noticeable to readers. But if there are four words in the keyword phrase (as in “blue tennis shoes California”), there’ll only be 176 words left. That would make the keyword phrase a lot more noticeable. What’s more, exact keyword phrases can be difficult to incorporate into your copy in a natural way. Try writing a sentence that includes “blue tennis shoes California”, in this exact order…

Fortunately, however, you don’t have to actually target the exact phrase. (It’s better if you do, but you don’t have to.) You can simply target all of the individual words. So instead of repeating the exact phrase “blue tennis shoes California” six times, you’d simply repeat “blue” six times, “tennis” six times, “shoes” six times, and “California” six times. These individual repetitions could appear anywhere on the page. The important thing is that they don’t have to appear next to each other in the exact string “blue tennis shoes California”. Using this approach, you can more easily achieve the density you’re after without sacrificing readability. I will qualify this: when someone searches for “blue tennis shoes California”, all things being equal, a website that targets the exact string “blue tennis shoes California” will rank higher than a website that targets just the individual words. But when are all things ever equal? As always, the important thing to remember is that human visitors are more important than search engines, and that keyword density is not the be-all-and-end-all of SEO.

What if I want to target more than one keyword phrase?

If you’re targeting quite specific keyword phrases in your copy, you’ll find it difficult to aggressively target more than two keyword phrases per page. You can target a few extras (maybe related words), but only incidentally.

For example, let’s say you want your tennis clothing page to rank well when a customer searches for the following phrases.

• “blue tennis shoes California”
• “green tennis skirts West Coast”
• “purple tennis hats”
• “fastest tennis shoes world”

Let’s also assume 400 words per page. Now, if you try to optimize your web copy for all of these phrases, you’ll find that it becomes very difficult to read. Assuming you’re aiming for a keyword density of 3%, you’d need to include all of the words from each of the above phrases more than 10 times. That would mean approx half of the copy on your page would be keywords! The best way around this is to create additional pages. Have a cluster of pages for “blue tennis shoes California”, another cluster of pages for “green tennis skirts West Coast”, another for “purple tennis hats”, etc. This way, only around 10% of your copy will be dedicated to keywords. This results in much more readable, natural-looking pages. And in the above example, it would also result in a much more logically structured site; a well structured site typically wouldn’t discuss all of the above items on the same page.

Where should I use my keywords?

When identifying your site’s subject matter, search engines try to act human. If humans tend to pay close attention to particular parts of a page (e.g. headings), the search engines will do the same. The logic is that they assume your keywords are more likely to appear in those places. So try to include your keywords in:

• text links
• headings (using <h1>, <h2> and <h3> heading tags in your HTML)
• bold tags
• bulleted and numbered lists
• domain names & URLs

Using keywords in headings

Like human visitors, search engines rely on headings to ‘scan’ your site. This means headings play a big part in how the search engines will index your site, and you should try to make them keyword rich. In fact, think about inserting extra headings just for this purpose. Generally this will also help the readability of your site because it will help customers scan read. For example, if you have a page detailing the benefits of purple tennis hats, you could break it up into logical sections with the following headings.

• Stylish purple tennis hats
• Tennis hats - purple and practical
• Comfort comes first with purple tennis hats

However, when writing your headings, try to make them a little different from your Title tag, as there is speculation that this may cause penalties. Also, it’s important that you instruct your web developer to tag these headings with the appropriate level heading style (i.e. <h1>, <h2>, <h3>). And finally, try to include your keywords close to the start of each heading. But don’t do this if it stops your headlines from being engaging and compelling.

Using keywords at the start of the page

Many SEO experts believe that the search engines see words at the start of a page as more representative of what your site is about than words at the end (i.e. prominence). So it’s a good idea to make sure you use your keywords toward the start of each page.

Bolding keywords

The jury’s out on whether bolding your keywords is worthwhile for SEO. My personal opinion is that bolding should be used to help visitors scan your page. If keywords aid this cause, use them; if they hinder it, don’t. In practice you’ll probably find that your keywords will make it into those bold sections quite a bit. After all, they’re key to your subject matter, so it’s logical that they’ll occasionally help readers who scan.

Using keywords in bulleted and numbered lists

Although it’s logical, there’s no hard evidence (that I know of) supporting the claim that search engines pay particular attention to the words you use in bulleted and numbered lists. Once again, my recommendation is to use lists for scannability. If your keywords happen to end up there, all the better. If not, no big deal.

Using keywords in domain names and URLs

Once again, the jury’s out. Some people argue that having a domain name that includes your keyword is useful, while others argue that it’s only useful if it’s an exact match. Some say it’s a good idea to separate keywords with hyphens, others say hyphens raise trust issues. And some say it’s completely irrelevant! In any case, most of the time, you won’t have much say in domain names and URLs.

Writing an SEO Copy

The trick to optimizing your copy is using the most important keywords frequently and in the right places, without compromising readability. But how do you define “frequently?” And what are the right places? What if you want to target a few different keywords?And for that matter, what should the wordcount of your pages be? Below are a few tips that will help you out.

What should be the word-count of a page?

You’ll hear a lot about the importance of a lot of content. While I definitely agree that ‘content is king’, there’s no need to write volumes for every page. I recommend approx:

• 100-150 words for your homepage - usability studies show that you should never make your reader scroll down on the Homepage.
• 250-400 words for pages lower in your hierarchy - increase word count as you increase your level of detail.
• 300-1000 words for blog posts

Search engines don’t count your number of words and strike you off the list if you’re too high or too low. They’re only interested in your word count insofar as it’s an indication of the helpfulness of your website. Typically a helpful website will have a lot of words. Note that they consider a lot of other factors as well, not just word count.

How many times should I use a keyword?

You don’t want to fill every page up with your keyword.That’s called ‘keyword stuffing’ – a form of search engine spam. More importantly, it reduces readability, so your visitors won’t stay for long. A good rule of thumb is to try to use your keyword phrase once in every 30 words. This measure is referred to as ‘keyword density’, and it’s expressed as a percentage. A keyword density of around 3% is what you should be aiming for. I’m talking just the copy here. This doesn’t include your menus, footers, sidebars, image captions, etc. e.g. If your page has 200 words, and your keyword phrase appears 6 times, its density is 3% (6/200 x 100). Some SEO practitioners recommend a higher density than this some as high as 10%, but in my experience, this usually results in trashy copy.

Increasing keyword density without undermining readability

When you actually sit down and try to write some SEO copy, you’ll see that a keyword density of 3% isn’t easy to achieve. At least to begin with. The easiest way to do it is to be specific. As you write every sentence, ask yourself, “Could I be more specific?” For example, if you sell cheap second hand computers, don’t just say “our computers” or “our products”; ask yourself if you can get away with saying “our cheap second hand computers”.

Similarly, don’t say things like “with our help” instead, say “with the help of our cheap second hand computers”. Once you get the hang of it,you’ll find there are many opportunities to replace generic wording with your keyword phrase. Obviously, there’s a bit of an art to it; sometimes it ends up sounding like you’re repeating your keyword phrase over and over again. If this happens, you may just need to restructure the sentence or paragraph. Always remember: your site reflects the quality of your product or service. If your site is hard to read, people will infer a lot about your offering. Readability is all-important to visitors. And after all, it’s the visitors who buy your product or service, not the search engines.