Bo Cakmak

I have been reading a lot of articles lately regarding the writing of effective SEO copy and I must say that I am not all that impressed. Too many articles focus on tactics that are borderline keyword stuffing for their SEO copy and to me that is not an effective method. One of the prime rules of optimization is to optimize for the user and not the search engines and I stand by that rule whole heartedly when writing copy. No one wants to read copy that has nothing but a set of three keywords constantly repeated in every sentence.

On that note here are a few thoughts on how to write effective SEO copy.

1. Always check your keyword density on both single keywords and keyword phrases to ensure that you are not stuffing your page with your keyword set too much. I typically try to aim between 1.5 % and 3% for the keywords that I have decided to optimize for.

2. While many articles I have read say to use the same phrase in the Title, Meta Description, H1 – H6 tags, and repetitively throughout the copy I actually do not support this method. From what I have found it is more detrimental than helpful to use your keyword phrase throughout all of those elements without supporting copy than it is helpful.

Bad Example: Title, Meta Description, Header Tags and Copy all have the keyword phrase SEO Copy as standalone copy.

Good Example: All elements incorporate the key phrase SEO Copy but have supporting words such as “Learn How to Write SEO Copy” or “Find New Methods for Writing SEO Copy”

3. Your key phrases do not always have to be used in exact order. They should be used at least once in the order you intend but throughout the copy you can still break up the phrase and be effective. For instance, if I am optimizing for “effectively using keywords” then I can write sentences such as “Using Keywords is one of the best ways to optimize your site effectively”. While the phrase is not in exact order your site will still gain relevance for the whole as well as the individual terms.

4. Always keep in mind that first and foremost you are writing for your visitors. If you write SEO copy to bring visitors to your website and then those same visitors never return because the content was not satisfactory then you are sabotaging your efforts before you ever truly achieve success. SEO is the tool to bring visibility but the typical end result is a desired conversion which can only be influenced by design, content, and reputation once the user is on the site.

5. Try to make sure that your copy contains a minimum of 350 words and keep in mind that keyword density is a percentage. I don’t know about you but I would much rather make 3% of 1,000,000,000 dollars than 3% of 10 dollars. The search engines regard keyword density in much the same way when determining page relevance at least as far as my observations have found.

With all that said I believe that I have covered the primary bases of effective SEO copywriting and wish you success with your projects!

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