SEO TIPS
An important part of the copywriting work I do these days is SEO (search engine optimization/optimisation). I’m forever looking at websites and grumbling to myself about how much better they could be. Think of Victor Meldrew. Only about 600 years younger, not Scottish and with (cough) more hair. Okay, maybe not much more hair. Always looking at things like title tags and wondering why the webmaster couldn’t be bothered to do just a bit more to make it more attractive to the search engines.
But that’s the way it goes, isn’t it? Before I point out the proverbial HTML splinter in www.I-Love-Halle-Berry.com’s eye, maybe I should first get the beam out of www.daniboy.com’s eye first. It’s always difficult to be objective about things we’re close to. Which isn’t to say that Halle and I are not close; we’re like that and things would be even better were it not for the unfortunate misunderstandings and restraining order.
I’m going to give a couple of really easy tips to help the SEO of your website. SEO is what will help your site get good rankings when people go looking for things on Google, Bing and the rest. It could make the difference between someone skipping right over your site (or even not seeing it, because they don’t go down the list far enough to reach you), and getting a click through to your site.
Give your pages titles the search engine “spiders” can understand
I’m as guilty of this as anyone. Which do you think a search engine will rate more highly when it’s performing a search for the phrase “marketing brochures”:
I know, I know, how obvious does that sound? But it’s something you should check and do for your own site. It’ll be time consuming, but worth it.
Think about metatags
Metatags are not the be-all and end-all of SEO, but are still important enough to spend time on. One of the many jobs they do is to tell search engines how to show your site when it appears in the results pages.
The “description” tag helps with this.
Take how eBay is displayed in Google’s results. The top line is the clickable link. What’s beneath that is the title. In eBay’s case, it says “Buy and sell electronics, cars, fashion apparel, collectibles, sporting goods, digital cameras, baby items, coupons, and everything else on eBay, the world's...” Sounds like a good description of the site, right?
Even so, the last bit of eBay’s description gets chopped in full flow. You only have around 160 characters to state your case before the Ellipsis of Death cuts you off and I personally have been guilty of ignoring that in the past. My site’s main page used to say (hold your breath): “Website Copywriter, Advertising Copywriter, Marketing Copywriter - Experienced COPYWRITER. Everyone needs words; make sure you choose a copywriter who will give you the right ones.”
Anyone still unsure about what my job title is? Do you think I’ve bashed everyone over the head enough?! Not only was it too long and liable to get chopped, it’s so annoying! I did it to make sure the word “copywriter” got noticed by the search engines, of course, but didn’t think carefully enough about how it would look on the page. If I were looking for a copywriter and came across someone that annoyingly persistent, I’d probably zip right past them. And Google, for one, disregards your keywords when you start to repeat them.
So now it’s "Top SEO, Advertising & Marketing Copywriter. Objectivity, skill and experience to give your message an edge." Concise, includes my keywords, and doesn’t try to overstate the case.
This is the HTML you need to do it. Don’t forget to add “<" and ">” brackets around everything:
<META NAME=”DESCRIPTION” CONTENT=”Your content goes in here.”>
You’re very welcome to reprint any of these articles on your website and/or newsletters free of charge, provided:
Daniel O'Connor is a website, SEO and marketing copywriter using the name Daniboy. He can be contacted here. Visit http://www.daniboy.com for further details of his services.
But that’s the way it goes, isn’t it? Before I point out the proverbial HTML splinter in www.I-Love-Halle-Berry.com’s eye, maybe I should first get the beam out of www.daniboy.com’s eye first. It’s always difficult to be objective about things we’re close to. Which isn’t to say that Halle and I are not close; we’re like that and things would be even better were it not for the unfortunate misunderstandings and restraining order.
I’m going to give a couple of really easy tips to help the SEO of your website. SEO is what will help your site get good rankings when people go looking for things on Google, Bing and the rest. It could make the difference between someone skipping right over your site (or even not seeing it, because they don’t go down the list far enough to reach you), and getting a click through to your site.
Give your pages titles the search engine “spiders” can understand
I’m as guilty of this as anyone. Which do you think a search engine will rate more highly when it’s performing a search for the phrase “marketing brochures”:
- www.daniboy.com/marbro.html or
- www.daniboy.com/marketing-brochures.html?
I know, I know, how obvious does that sound? But it’s something you should check and do for your own site. It’ll be time consuming, but worth it.
Think about metatags
Metatags are not the be-all and end-all of SEO, but are still important enough to spend time on. One of the many jobs they do is to tell search engines how to show your site when it appears in the results pages.
The “description” tag helps with this.
Take how eBay is displayed in Google’s results. The top line is the clickable link. What’s beneath that is the title. In eBay’s case, it says “Buy and sell electronics, cars, fashion apparel, collectibles, sporting goods, digital cameras, baby items, coupons, and everything else on eBay, the world's...” Sounds like a good description of the site, right?
Even so, the last bit of eBay’s description gets chopped in full flow. You only have around 160 characters to state your case before the Ellipsis of Death cuts you off and I personally have been guilty of ignoring that in the past. My site’s main page used to say (hold your breath): “Website Copywriter, Advertising Copywriter, Marketing Copywriter - Experienced COPYWRITER. Everyone needs words; make sure you choose a copywriter who will give you the right ones.”
Anyone still unsure about what my job title is? Do you think I’ve bashed everyone over the head enough?! Not only was it too long and liable to get chopped, it’s so annoying! I did it to make sure the word “copywriter” got noticed by the search engines, of course, but didn’t think carefully enough about how it would look on the page. If I were looking for a copywriter and came across someone that annoyingly persistent, I’d probably zip right past them. And Google, for one, disregards your keywords when you start to repeat them.
So now it’s "Top SEO, Advertising & Marketing Copywriter. Objectivity, skill and experience to give your message an edge." Concise, includes my keywords, and doesn’t try to overstate the case.
This is the HTML you need to do it. Don’t forget to add “<" and ">” brackets around everything:
<META NAME=”DESCRIPTION” CONTENT=”Your content goes in here.”>
You’re very welcome to reprint any of these articles on your website and/or newsletters free of charge, provided:
- you don’t change the article in any way
- you include the writing credit below (including all website links)
Daniel O'Connor is a website, SEO and marketing copywriter using the name Daniboy. He can be contacted here. Visit http://www.daniboy.com for further details of his services.
