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Internet Marketing
Search Engine Optimized (SEO) Copy - The Down and Dirty Details
Today, being on the first page for your most popular keyword
phrase is like having the most memorable prime time television
commercial in 1973.
Essentially, that's where the power of advertising is going.
It's all about Search. And Search is only going to become more
important over the next ten years. If you can get on that
coveted first page organically, well then, more power to you!
I know you probably have read other articles about writing SEO
copy and how it relates to achieving high search rankings, there
are plenty of them to go around. But some of the articles are
complicated; some are too long, others boring. Still others
don't explain that great SEO copy is rarely effective just on
it's own - in order to get those high rankings (which is the
goal after all), you have to do other things too.
So, we decided
that what most people really needed was a "down and dirty", easy
to understand, ten step method. You ask, and we deliver.
Here
are the official ten steps in order:
1) Check your Competitors
Who are your competitors? Do you know?
If you don't, you may want to go online and do a search for your
product or service. Who is on the first two pages? That is your
target market.
Those are the companies that you want to compete with.
Because right now, they are getting your customers. Take a look
at their websites. Notice the copy. Analyze their business. Are
they successful? What are they not doing right? Look for the
holes.
You're going to meet the needs of their customers (that
they are not fulfilling) so they become YOUR CUSTOMERS.
2) Research your Keyword Phrases
Remember, Keyword Phrase
research is critically important. It can also be a little
tricky. Do you know what keywords or keyword phrases your
customers search for when they look for you? Are you sure?
See
what your competitors are using. You can do this by right
clicking on their home page, selecting "View Source" and then
checking their keyword meta tag.
Next, go to Yahoo Search Explorer, and use
their Keyword & Site Selector Tool. Its great - and its free. You can
also use Wordtracker.com, but it does cost $7.50/day.
3) Write Good Copy
Now its time to start writing or re-writing.
And if you can't write, you can hire a website copywriter to do
it for you. The bottom line is to write about benefits, not
features. Don't tell them how great your company is.
They will
discover that for themselves when you overwhelm them with your
service and deliver the perfect product that meets their every
need. Make the copy to the point and snappy. Make sure it has
impact and asks the potential customer for their business.
4) Integrate Your Keyword Phrases
After you figure out which
keyword phrases you want to use on your site, you need to
integrate them into the copy of your site. The home page and
products pages as the most important pages to use them on.
Essentially, you want to make them concentric on these kewyords. The title, the headers, the image alt tags and the overall message on the page. It's not that hard actually. Just don't use them
all over the place like some stupid copywriters do. This can possibly get you de-listed from the search engines. Definitely use them in
your headlines and sub headlines though without fail. That will get you extra
points, so to speak.
5) Check your Links, Build More if necessary
Do you have any inbound
links pointing to your site? If not, no amount of awesome copy
is going to get your web site high rankings, or at least get them and maintain them. Links are very
important. And even more so for Google.
Go to linkpopularity.com and see what you have. Also check your competitors. If they have
more than you, you need to get some high quality links. You can
either do that yourself or hire someone to do it for you. It can
be time consuming and expensive. But you gotta do it. It makes
you look important to the search engines and gives you credibility. A good way to do it is
to make sure you are listed on a lot of the major directories, including DMOZ and
other industry related sites.
Go to incominglinks.com to see which
ones you should be listed on.
Then write articles around these same keywords and submit
them to article submission sites for syndication. That could potentially give
you hundreds of links and also give your web site the status of an authoritative source on the topic or subject.
6) Use Go Rank's Analytical Tools
GoRank.com is a fantastic free
resource for SEO. They have a Keyword Density Analyzer, Link
Popularity Analyzer, Top 10 Keyword Analyzer, Research, News and
lots of other great stuff. It's a great tool and something I use
every day. It will help you in your SEO copy efforts.
7) Submit to the Search Engines
After you've ensured that your
website copy and all the other important SEO considerations like a search engine friendly sitemap have
been completed, it's time to submit to the Search Engines. Do this
manually to confirm submission to these all important internet directories and search engines.
8) Analyze Results, Change Site Copy and Analyze Again,
Add new content after your site
has been up for a while, go back and take a second look. Ask
friends and customers what they think of it. Can anything be
improved? You'll be surprised what you may hear.
If something
isn't working, fix it. Make it sound better. The other thing
that you should also be doing is adding content regularly. Build
free resources into your website. This will make your customers
and potential customers happy, and it will make you appear to be
more important in the eyes of the search engines.
Adding
articles to your site is a great way to give your customers new,
free content. Write about things that they would find
interesting and worthy of their time and attention.
9) Partner with a Great SEO Firm
You may want to also consider
partnering with a great Search Engine Optimization firm. There
are many very good ones out there. There are also
thousands of bad ones. Whoever you
go with, make sure they have a solid understanding of the items listed in this listing and successful results for other client companies.
10) Measure Your Success!
Finally, measure your success! Buy software that will provide you with some
web metrics and analysis as it pertains to your web site. Analyzes your web statistics and possibly hire a SEO company that can help you analyze on-going progress.
As you can see, Search Engine Optimized copy is only part of the
overall SEO story. There is a lot to it, so make sure you cover
every area. After all, you do want to get your web site to the very
top because that is where the money exists!
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