Getting the copy right for your website is essential in order to improve both the performance of your website and its search engine rankings. You should never forget that your site is aimed at human beings who appreciate clear, readable content, but there are a few tricks you can employ within your website wording that should improve your search engine performance.
Keyword Research
A good place to start is to conduct a little keyword research. Think of this as an extended exercise in working out what terms people who are interested in the types of things your website provides will search on. Once you’ve worked that out, you can include the terms in your copy so that your site is right there when they search. So, the first thing to do is make a list. What words and phrases would you Google for if you were after the type of product on your website?
That list is your starting point. From here, it’s really helpful to use a keyword suggestion tool to try to expand on your suggestions. If you have one of our higher end Hypersubmit SEO products you’ll have one included in that, but there are also great tools available from Google and SEOBook. Just type in the words and phrases you’ve come up with and see what suggestions you get.
By way of an example, if I type ‘web hosting’ into Google’s tool it comes up with a list of related keywords. More importantly, though, it also gives an idea of the volume of searches for each term and gives an idea of the level of competition for that term, so I can now run through that list and rank it in order of desirability for inclusion on our website. This is always something of a balancing act - if you sell a popular product or service, the single word that best describes it will be extremely widely used, so while you do want it in your copy you might like to think about using it in a phrase which is still widely searched for but for which there is a bit less competition. In other words, if you’re running the website for a firm of solicitors don’t just put all your energy into trying to rank high in the search engines for ’solicitor’ - try including phrases which include the name of your town and the type of law in which your firm specialises. There will be less competition for this more specific phrase, so when someone local needs your services they’ll be much more likely to find you.
You’ll also need to consider whether different keywords will be appropriate for different areas of your website - if you offer various products and services, then your descriptions of them should be aimed at describing each item as enticingly as possible - with the most relevant keywords for that particular product.
Keyword Placement
Once you’ve established which keywords you’d like to target for which general areas of your website, you need to work out how to use them to best effect.
We’ve talked before about keywords and the Title tag, so here’s a few other things to consider.
1. Keep it natural
Remember that if your copy is going to impress your human visitors it needs to be clear, informative, and concise. While it’s important to make the most of your chosen keyword phrases, if your site starts to read like a bunch of similar phrases strung together by a few ‘ifs’ ‘ands’ and ‘buts’ you’re going to lose visitors. With a little creativity, you can include keywords and important phrases in copy that flows beautifully, so please - while you’re following the below advice, no torturing of the English language in order to shoehorn an errant word into place!
2. The F principle
People have been shown to read web content in something approximating the shape of a capital F. We scan the title, drop down to scan the subtitle, and then zip down the site with the emphasis on the left-hand side (here’s the science). Broadly speaking, the same holds true of search engines. So, to simplify it, for every single page on your website you need to determine which is the keyword or phrase you most want to rank for and get that as close to the top and the left as you can - without compromising readability. Rate your list of keywords in order of priority and work from this ordered list.
3. Headers
It goes without saying that you’ll use your chosen keyword term as the heading for your page. There’s a little more to it than that, however.
Firstly, you need to make sure that your heading is in text - since search engines can’t ‘read’ images then plonking a graphic, however beautifully crafted and highly relevant, in the most important real estate on the page will do you no favours whatsoever. If you want to include the pretties, use them for background only and make sure any text is overlaid html that’s legible to search engines.
Secondly, try to use the html that search engines expect to see for headings. This is where the <H1> tag comes in - if you put your page header within that tag, it will be recognised as such and should be granted greater importance by the search engines. So, drop in that most important keyword on which you’ve decided and you increase your chances of a search engine realising, when someone searches using that term, that your page is highly relevant. Don’t try to fool them with more than one <H1> tag, though - they’re wise to that sort of sneaky behaviour! You can always use <H2> for subtitles and <H3> for sub headings or paragraph headings if necessary to split out your copy.
4. Follow that F!
Once you’ve got the header and subtitle out of the way, write the rest of your text in such a way that the keywords which you consider to be next in importance to your header and subtitle are closer to the top, preferably over towards the left hand side of the copy. Just work down your list and try to keep your copy as natural and succinct as possible. You can still try dropping in what look like more outside keyword possibilities further down the page, of course.
5. Be bold
If you use bolding sparingly, to highlight important items (like the start of each new point in this list), it will be easier for readers to skim your page and determine that it’s relevant to them. There’s also a school of thought that suggests search engines give greater importance to bolded words and phrases, so a little bolding of your keywords is worth a try. Emphasis on ‘a little’, though - no-one likes to feel they’re being clouted with the bolding hammer every other sentence!
Earlier articles in our Search Engine Optimisation series
Search Engine Optimisation - An Introduction
SEO Tips: Maximising Meta Tags
