Search engines are online directories that list millions of websites. Internet users looking for information can log into a search engine and type a search string or a keyword. Statistics reveal that Google (with 90% market share) answers more than 1 billion questions a day from people in 181 countries and 146 languages!
While millions of websites are listed with these search engines, their challenge is to return the most comprehensive and relevant results. Search engines operate around a set of dynamic rules to give users the most up-to-date and meaningful results. While the exact set of rules is their business secret, we do have a fair idea about what these are.
The Mantra to Ace SERPs : Write for the reader and stay honest to the topic – Google will find you and reward you.
Easy-to-read websites with clean codes
Simple and intuitive navigation structure
Resourceful websites with hyperlinks (through meaningful anchor text) to useful resources
Unique, Original, and Relevant content – updated regularly
Accurate description of the page content (META Tags)
Pages that carry accurate, up-to-date, and comprehensive content for the said keyword
Web pages with little indexable content, too many images, unnecessary redirects
Plagiarism – Websites with little or no original content
Duplicate content within the same website
Unnecessarily long drawn content
Keyword stuffing, invisible text, doorway pages and other black hat SEO practices
Incomplete or common titles and descriptions
Gibberish and dynamically generated URLs
It is well known that Google regularly (over a thousand a year) tweaks its search engine algorithms (search rules) with several minor and often a few major changes to yield better search results. Most of these are aimed at weeding out websites that are spam and carry low-quality content.
Some of the key updates are:
For Fighting The “Fake News” Issues (2017): Google updated its algorithms to identify and prioritize ‘authoritative content’ and to demote misleading and offensive content. It also introduced features for users to report offensive or bad results.
Google Mobile-friendly Algorithm (2015-2016): Acknowledging the massive surge in search through mobile devices, Google rolled out several updates to identify and promote websites that are mobile device friendly. i.e. websites that are developed such that based on the device being used to access the website, the most compatible version is presented.
PageRank (2015): PageRank ranks a website based on the number and quality of hyperlinks into a page. This helps determine the importance of the website. If more and more relevant external websites link to a website, Google considers it as a mark of approval/endorsement and ranks the website higher.
Google Pigeon (July 2014): Pigeon attempts to customize local searches by improving their rankings. This algorithm gives preference to local searches, and this is a call to push content on local online media.
Google Hummingbird (September 2013): Hummingbird is a huge step forward in the field of ‘conversational search,’ because Hummingbird does not just use keywords to search for relevant pages. It takes a semantic approach by considering the whole query and its meaning. Therefore, ‘high quality, original content’ still rules Google’s algorithm. Hummingbird also uses the other elements like PageRank, Panda, and Penguin to bring back quality results.
Google Penguin (April 2012): Penguin was an update launched in April 2012. The target was the websites that spam their search results. Penguin particularly focused on sites that buy links or obtain links from networking sites primarily to boost their Search Results Page Ranking (SERP). The algorithm helped websites with genuine, natural links and ranked them higher in the SERP.
Google Panda (February 2011): Panda was designed to improve user experience by demoting sites that do not provide useful original content or add much value and promoting those high-quality sites that carry original content and information such as insightful analysis (e.g. business blogs), opinions, and research.
Apart from being a medium to share information, websites are excellent sales and marketing tools. If your objective is to generate business inquiries and sales through your website, you need your web content to be optimized for search engines. This helps your website rank higher when a user runs a related search query.
A good web copywriter needs to develop certain additional skills to become a successful SEO copywriter. There are certain concepts to be learned and some guidelines to be followed. In addition, a working knowledge of the web designing process with understanding of HTML/CSS coding comes in handy.
Keyword Research
SEO content writing requires search keywords. Keywords are those terms or phrases that your prospects are likely to type in a search engine. Therefore, they are an integral part of the SEO process. Google offers a free keyword planner (which has recently replaced the Google Keyword tool) for identifying, listing, and sorting the best keywords for your subject.
Keyword Usage
Once shortlisted, the right sets of keywords need to be used in the on-page and off-page (META) content of your web content. Maintaining an optimum density (frequency of usage), achieving a natural flow of thought, and using the right keywords without straying from the topic are the traits of a good SEO copywriter.
When making decisions about SEO, think like your prospects would. Remember to:
Optimize your website for the information they are likely to seek
Make it easier to find that information
Avoid broad or generalized keywords – For example, a person looking for home loans would not type ‘loan,’ because such a search would return websites related to all types of loans, loan definitions, history of loans, loan frauds, and more unwanted information. In this case, the correct keywords would be ‘avail home loan’ or ‘get a home loan,’ etc.
LexiConn is a trusted content partner for end-to-end SEO copywriting mandates. We work with our clients, digital and branding agencies, web development companies, web strategists, and online marketing consultants to create content for targeted SEO campaigns.
Our teams are equally adept at the subject matter, technical, ethical, and creative aspects of web writing. We can also help you research and shortlist keywords for your business while managing the entire process – from strategy to execution, and content calendar creation to maintenance.
Visit us www.lexiconn.in or drop us a line at content@lexiconn.in.
LexiConn also offers a free 30-minute content consultation session to help you with your content strategy.
Contact Us to know more about our SEO copywriting services and to discuss the various best practices we have picked up over the years.
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