Once pages have been identified, search engines order the results according to relevance. Relevance can be determined based on dozens and dozens of criteria, such as keyword prominence (how often your keywords appear on a page, and where they appear). Crafting Your Page As you begin to start thinking the way a search engine does, most copywriters will realize that they are being too verbose in the first few paragraphs. It also occurs to them as they are writing that the title tag for the page they are working on doesn’t have the most important keywords listed first, but rather last. Moving the most important keywords for that page to the beginning of the title tag, as well as moving those keywords to the top of the page copy, can really help to boost your page ranking.

It is also important that you do not go overboard with what is called “keyword density”. This refers to the number of times your keywords appear on a page. Too many occurrences of your keywords and the page will trip the spam penalty algorithm, which will damage your page’s rank. Also, if you are going after a particular keyword phrase, your web page will appear more relevant if the individuals words in that phrase appear together in your page copy.

In addition to placing your selected keywords at the beginning of your title tag and also in the first paragraph or two of page copy, it also helps to emphasize your keywords by enclosing them in heading tags (i.e. <h1>). Think through how you can best structure the information on your page so that your keywords appear inside heading tags, body copy, and other tags while still writing something interesting and compelling.

Once you have thought about each of these points, it is time to start writing. Try to write at least a couple of hundred words of page copy. This is not a rule, but a good guideline to follow. When you are creating links from text, be mindful to include good keyword-rich text in your link text. Avoid using phrases such as “click here” and “more information” in your links, and instead choose words that are relevant to the page the link will go to.

Test The Waters

At this point, you presumably now have well-written, interesting and useful page copy that includes your most important targeted keywords in all the right places. However, don’t just assume that you have gotten it right, especially if you are new at this. Run your copy past a human being or two to ensure that it is interesting, engaging, and communicates your message effectively. If it doesn’t, it’s time to start again and rethink your copy.

Once you have human approval, it’s time to run the draft page through a search engine spider simulator such as the one at searchengineworld.com/cgi-bin/sim_spider.cgi. This tool, and others like it, will tell you how many times you used each keyword. It will parse the text just like a search engine would, and occasionally you will see that another keyword comes through more strongly than you had intended and a more important keyword is dwarfed in comparison. Don’t worry, now is the time to fix this, and with a little practice you will have a good gut feeling far what will rank well.

The final test, of course, is linking your new page to the rest of your website and seeing how it performs with the real search engines. If the results are lower than expected you can make some adjustments by moving text around, adding and subtracting copy, and so forth. Pay particular attention to your title META tag as this is given the most importance by the search engines out of everything on your page.

Another way to help convince visitors to click through to your website is to write a descriptive summary of your page to be included in your description META tag. Make sure that your description contains the targeted keywords that you have chosen for this page, and be brief. While this does not help with your search engine ranking, having a compelling description is just good form and worth doing.

This article appeared in the December 2005 issue of Practical Ecommerce magazine.

Irishman Gerry McGovern, an internationally acclaimed guru on website content, spoke at a recent Wellington conference on the topic. McGovern has spoken, written and consulted extensively on web content and knowledge management issues since 1994. He’s published two books: Content Critical and The Web Content Style Guide, and a third, titled Killer Web Content, is due out later this year.

McGovern reckons most websites, until recently, have been administered rather than managed. Stuff was put up on them and then left there. Here’s his 12 tips on creating and maintaining killer web content:

Quality over quantity: Publish the size of website you can manage easily. Too many websites are a dumping ground for obsolete or irrelevant information. The value you deliver matters more than size.

Fresh: Continually ensure your site has accurate, up-to-date content. This is a growing problem, particularly for government websites. At past workshops, McGovern asked web managers to stand up if they could swear in a court of law that all of their website content was accurate. Nobody stood. He asked the same question at the recent Wellington conference. Again, everyone remained seated.

Have a common web information layout: This is especially true for all government websites. If every government website looked the same from a layout point of view, it would save citizens a lot of hassle. Otherwise, site visitors have to spend time figuring out how the website works, instead of completing the task they came to the website for.

Task completion: Identify the top three tasks for your website and make sure they shine. Task completion is the only real measure of website success.

Action versus reaction: If a visitor to the site does something on your web site that then results in a lengthy wait they won’t bother coming back. The time they spend on their action should be matched by the time it takes the website to react. For example, clicking on the File menu tab only takes a second, so the time it takes for the menu bar to appear underneath should take no more than a second.

80/20 rule of content: For many sites, less than 20% of the site content accounts for over 80% of the page views. On Microsoft.com, 1% of content accounted for 99% of the page views. In fact, 35% of its pages had never been viewed. That’s well over a million pages of content, which people at Microsoft worked hard to write — for nothing. Focus your efforts on the copy that will be read, not on the copy that won’t.

Columns: Readers use their peripheral vision to keep track of the beginning of the next line down while they are reading across a line. So it becomes difficult to read text that has a long line width. McGovern recommends a three-column format, with 20% or so of the width going to the first column (use this column for navigation), 60% dedicated to the middle column, and the remaining 20% or so for the right hand column.

Call for action: Always end your pages with a clear action for the reader to take. Never leave the reader hanging, wondering what to do next. The centre column at the end of the body copy is a critical piece of real estate for these calls for action.

Links: Links in the middle of body copy distract readers, making it difficult for them to read the paragraph. The message you’re giving them is, “Click on me, the rest of this text is really boring!” Instead of embedding links within the body copy, consider using the right hand column for the related links. You can also repeat them underneath the body copy in the centre column.

Simplicity: Einstein purportedly said, “Everything should be made as simple as possible, but no simpler.” Apply this to your web copy. Web readers tend not to read long copy. Typically, with a 300 word page, 50% will read it to the end, 20% will read 500 words, and 5% will scan 1,000 words. McGovern advises headings should be around four to eight words, summaries 30 to 50 words, sentences 15 to 20 words, and paragraphs 40 to 70 words.
Kill your darlings: If there’s a particular expression or way of saying something that you’re particularly fond of, delete it from your copy, because you’re probably overusing it.

Search engine optimise: Incorporate words into your page that people care about an type into the search engines. People are unlikely to find you under search words you don’t use yourself in your body copy or page titles. Tools like the one at inventory.overture.com can help you find out what words are popular with searchers.

It’s hard to tell who engaged high-priced marketing consultants and who turned to the online “BS Generator” tool for the smoke and mirrors. Apparently, Genesis Power is “partnering the community to provide innovative energy solutions”. Baycorp Advantage is “committed to assisting companies worldwide to liberate their potential and maximise their returns”. Zespri is “grown in partnership with nature”. TelstraClear is going to “champion competition and deliver the benefits to your doorstep”, while Ceritas fancies it “creates innovative application and support solutions”.

If you are sick of websites full of meaningless blather, your customers probably are, too. So do something about it. First, run the “BS Detector” over your website to check for marketing-speak. Then deploy and action these tips:

• Convert your online visitors into customers by inviting them to act. Every page should have a clear call to action to get your visitors to take the next step.
• Cut to the chase. People scan web pages, they don’t read them, and they read at least 30% slower off the screen than off paper. Use active verbs rather than passive ones. It saves words and is more persuasive.
• Use “you” and “your” at least five times more than “we” and “our”. Your customers are interested in what’s in it for them. Meridian Energy’s homepage has 17 instances of “we”, “our”, and “us” but only two of “you” and “your”. I can’t see a customer reading this testament to the company’s ego.
• Don’t over-hype. Avoid exclamation marks and words like “premier”, “leading” and “cutting-edge”. In other words, keep it real. Frucor shouts from its homepage: “A market leader driven by a thirst for success.” Please.
• Search engines are your audience as much as humans, so incorporate lots of good keywords into your copy. Pick keywords that are not only relevant but also popular with search engine users. New Zealand Post’s homepage is comprised solely of images - not much for search engines to work with. Put the keywords near the top of the page, such as in the first sentence. Don’t waste this prime space with “Welcome to our Home Page”.

Still not satisfied with your website? Check out Net words: Creating High Impact Online Copy by Nick Usborne and Guide to Killer Copywriting by Debbie Weil, a downloadable e-book that’s free when you subscribe to Debbie’s free email newsletter.

By Stephan Spencer. This article first appeared on Unlimited in December 2002.