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01/02/2007  |  Why You Should Write Search Engine Friendly Copy

In the early days of the World Wide Web, traffic was king. Just get traffic to your website and hey, you were up and running. With the number of websites now, 107m worldwide, there is a need to market your website, or optimise it. Getting your site noticed is a challenge. Most web users search for information using search engines. So you need to design your site in such a way to attract the search engine spiders that index your web pages in order for them to be found.

So, what is search engine friendly copy? Well it isn’t about stuffing your website with target keywords. Indeed, you will probably fall foul of the search engines if you do that. You do need to research your keywords but you need also to write to human beings, not just spiders. There is no point in having a highly ranked website that nobody can understand.

First of all, what is your website for? What does it do? What do you want your visitors to do? Do you want them to spend money while they are visiting? Or is it just an information site? This will have an impact on how you compose your copy.

Bearing in mind that you are designing your website for humans to interact, it is advisable to plan the style of your written content. Short paragraphs and bullet points will attract eager eyes, whereas lengthy essays with few breaks will drive people away.

If you are selling something, you need to make your site look interesting and not just like an online price list. Let’s assume that you are selling nutrition health foods. After Christmas, you might want to run a weight loss special. So you could put a picture of a slim young lady in a bikini on your home page, next to a brief article on how one of your customers lost two stone in just ten weeks by incorporating your low calorie fruit juice into her diet plan.

You could include a link to an article by a well-known weight loss expert who recommends another of your products.

The important thing is to design your content around the appropriate keywords, following your research as to what potential customers are typing in when they are looking for your products or services.

It is also a good idea to incorporate text links into your copy. Getting back to our health foods site, you could persuade your local gym to post a link under nutrition that would lead to a page on your site. It is also good practice to include alt-text keywords with your pictures so that search engines can identify what you are displaying. This is also a requirement under Accessibility legislation.

In conclusion, remember that you are trying to attract the search engines but your website is first and foremost designed for human readers. As a general rule, any site that is written and designed well for people will be search engine friendly.

But if you don't feel comfortable with doing all this or if you are not sure of how to do it properly, you can also ask your SEO agency to do some Search Engine Copywriting for you.