We have posted before about SEO for interactive copy writers and web designers, but this time we are talking about the things NOT to do for SEO Copy writing.
1. Don’t shove as many key phrases into the copy as humanly possible. Which pages land at the top is decided through a series of calculations far more complex than any simple ratio. When you overload copy with keyphrases you sacrifice quality and user experience. Don’t hack up sentences and stuff them un-naturally with search phrases
2. You have two audiences with SEO copywriting: the search engines and your site visitors. Balance between writing good, quality content that will keep your visitors interested, want to hare the information and keep coming back for more and keeping sure that your keyword densities are proper and pages are designed well for search engines rankings.
3. Don’t use keyphrases that don’t apply to the page. If you operate a site about web design, don’t try to force a search term about web development into the copy just because it pulls a lot of traffic. (A) Unless you sell, web development, it won’t be applicable. (B) Even if you manage to get the page ranked well for the phrase [web development], once the visitor clicks to your site and realizes you have nothing to do with web development, they will leave.
4. Don’t use misspellings and correct spellings on the same page. Sometimes we understand that misspellings will come up in search engine results but, it makes for a poor user experience for your visitors.
5. Don’t use keyphrases the exact same way every time. There are lots of ways to use keywords in copy, not just one. In order to sound natural, get creative with your keyphrase usage. One way is to break up phrases using punctuation or using conjugations of words. Since search engines don’t pay attention to basic punctuation marks, you can easily write something using the search term, while the punctuation such as periods and commas are omitted in the spider’s eyes.
6. Don’t use all types of search phrases for every situation. Long-tail keyphrases should be reserved for pages deeper in your website that get more specific than on the home page. Broader terms are typically best for a home page.
7. Don’t neglect ALT tags/image attributes. These tags are the ones associated with images on your pages and they carry a good deal of weight especially if the image is used as a link. The ALT text counts the same as anchor text in a text-based link.
8. There’s a method to the SEO copywriting madness. The idea is not to get as many different keyphrases onto a page as possible. Rather than having 12 different search terms used only one time each, you should use two to four keyphrases (depending on the length of your copy) per page. The title, META tags, ALT tags, other coding elements and on-page copy need to support each other as far as keyphrase use goes. Your goal is to let the engines know that you have original, relevant content about a narrow topic. Pick two or three terms which are closely related and use them several times each along with mentioning them in your tags.
When your copy writing, web development and design follows these SEO guidelines, you’ll find your copy flows much better, is more natural-sounding and ranks higher.
