In this part we consider how to go about using effective copy writing and Search Engine Optimisation (SEO) to drive traffic to your site and sell your product to people who visit the site.

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“SEO is more than titles and tags – those little bits of script that don’t immediately appear on a web page, but still get indexed by search engines.

When we talk about SEO, we’re also thinking about the text on the website itself and the practice of include effective keywords and keyphrases in the text of your website itself. You need to optimise the text of your site around your keywords, creating the information-rich copy that search engines just love to index.

First things first, though: what exactly is a keyword or keyphrase?

Keywords and keyphrases are the words and phrases that you expect people looking for your products to enter into search engines like Google. This could be a word, like “windows”, a short phrase, like “double glazing”, or a more specific keyword such as “uPVC windows in East Midlands”.

Longer, more specific keyphrases are normally better because they can include several keywords and are only searched for by people who want your product in your area.

You want to pick between 5 and 10 keyphrases; phrases that you think would most likely lead visitors to your product or service – be that locally of nationally – and try to weave them into the text, page file names even image filenames and titles throughout
your site.

So, as a short exercise, let’s try creating some copy for the website of a Double Glazing company in Derby. Let’s imagine that the first paragraph of their old site read “Pride Park Windows have been in business for 27 years. We work from our purpose built Derbyshire premises, and will provide you with all your double glazing needs”.

That’s no good. A search engine will look at that and say this site is about ‘business’, ‘Derbyshire’ and ‘Pride Park’. How about we re-write in, taking into account our keywords of ‘Double Glazing’, ‘Windows’ and ‘uPVC’:

“Get quality double glazing, replacement windows and uPVC conservatories from Pride Park Windows, for Derbyshire home owners. Professional supply and fitting of Double glazed windows, doors and conservatories all across the East Midlands area from our purpose-built Derby-based premises.”

Can you see how we have filled the text up with the phrases we want people to search for?

The current popular thinking (there are no exact sciences here i’m afraid) is that you should close your text in the last paragraph, repeating your 3 best keyphrases in reverse order e.g. “Pride Park Windows are confident that home owners in the Derby area will find the largest choice of replacement window and doors available locally with our double glazing featuring award winning upvc profiles and security.”

You can see how, with a little forward planning, you’ll find it easier to write the text for your website with your keywords and phrases in mind. Of course, you’ll be able to follow the same rules with all the pages on your site, optimising the text for each individual page: so if you have a page on conservatories, for example, you’d want to use your conservatory keywords.

It can take a bit of time settling on the best keyphrases. There are a number of tools available on Google and the Internet as a whole that can help show you what phrases are most used, but these are usually a guideline only. If you’re confused as to which keywords to search for, you might want to get in touch with our experienced IT team, who can help you get started.

Don’t forget to optimise for your company name as well. It may be that a customer, perhaps even a past customer, remembers your name but not where you are or your web address, so they may just type in your company name. Have you tried typing your company name into Google and seeing where you come in the search results?

The biggest threat to any optimisation is that the search engines decide to change theor searching program. Old ways of optimising go out the window and many hours (some of them costly) can be wasted as everyone adjusts to the new ‘rules’ and busily re-optimises.

In general, good content will always win. If you can make your site as authorative as possible, attract inbound links from on topic websites or socially market your site with blogs etc then you should do alright.

You won’t come top for every phrase but you stand a better chance.

If it’s vital that you come first page for a particular key phrase, you could consider pay-per-click program with Google. Then you can make your ‘adverts’ visible against more specific searches like ‘double glazing derby’. Here at Price Engines, we can help you with this, too – we have years of experience managing effective online advertising campaigns. Get in touch to find out more about what we can do to help

Next Chapter – pictures speak a thousand words, but it’s important to try and use the right photographs and optimise them properly for web use. Yes we’re talking file size and dpi in chapter 3.

Price Engines Top Tip: Ask your web designer about country specific tags. These help identify your website to search engines as being suitable for a particular country’s search results, such as a uk only search. It could be the one difference that puts your website above your competitors.