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Use Semantically Related Words

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Semantically related words cement your relevance for your keywords.Major search engines use semantically related words to figure out what each web page is really about. Using semantically related words can help reduce the sense of keyword stuffing on your pages, and cement the concept you’re trying to get across.

What are semantically-related words? How do they help search engines figure out what your page is about? Take a couple of simple examples. Paris might be a city in France, and Hilton might be a hotel chain. But used together on a page suggests the page is about a famous woman.

A tiger is a wild feline, and the woods might be where Little Red Riding Hood’s grandmother lives. But when used together, those words indicate to Google that the page is probably about golf.

Using a proper mix of semantically related words on your page can improve its relevance score in the search engines’ ranking algorithms.

To find out what other words Google finds related to a given keyword, search for a keyword and add a tilde (~) in front of it. Google will mark the related keywords in bold on the result page. It seems that Google finds the phrase “car repair” is closely related to “automotive repair”, for example.

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Write Customer-Focused Copy

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Write customer-focused copy.Karon Thackston, an SEO copywriting expert, wrote a very helpful article in High Rankings Advisor about customer-focused copy. [Update: that website has been lost to antiquity.]

Customer-focused copy won’t help or hinder your rankings in the search engines, but SEO is not really, in the ultimate sense, about rankings. It’s about sales — selling your products or services.

Getting high rankings can bringing tons of visitors to your site, But that’s useless if the content on your site drives visitors away before you have a chance to sell them what you do or sell.

Customer-focused copy is all about conversions: engaging your visitors so they convert from visitors to customers, clients, or patients. Karon writes:

I am literally shocked that — after decades of marketing evangelists preaching “It’s not about you!” — website owners still don’t get it. What’s not to understand? Copy that focuses strictly on your company and practically or completely ignores your prospects doesn’t work nearly as well as copy that speaks to your target customers in their language and about the benefits they will receive.

Is your website focused on your customers?

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Karon provides a couple of revealing before-and-after examples and introduces us to a Customer Focus Calculator. This is a neat tool that will reveal how customer-focused (or YOU-focused) a page on your web site is, compared to how self-focused (or ME-focused) it is.

One of our clients has a site which I’ve advised him seems too ME-focused. I ran his home page through the Customer Focus Calculator and he got a score of 83% self-focused and 17% customer-focused. Then, with my fingers crossed for luck, I checked the Rank Magic blog. Whew! We scored 70% customer-focus and 30% self-focus.

Try it on your own web site.

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How to Write for Search Engines

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Copywriting - how to write for search engines

First principle: Don’t

Here’s an important principle at the core of good content writing for search engines. Always write for your target market  – people  – before you even think about search engines.

Keyword stuffing and awkward prose will drive visitors away from your website before they even consider doing business with you.

With that caveat out of the way, let’s get into some specifics.

How to write for search engines

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How to write for search engines

  1. It’s all about content. And that’s more than just the words on the page. Content includes headings, page titles, tags, and links (both to other material on your site and to external sites).
  2. A keyword-rich and compelling Page Title is essential.
  3. Use heading tags for your headings and sub-headings, and use your keywords in these headings.
  4. Focus. Keep to one topic per page. A page that’s all about lots of things is not really “all about” any of them.
  5. Use your keywords naturally in your body copy.
  6. Use keywords in the meta description tag, in link anchor text, and image file names & alternate text.
  7. Get to the point quickly.

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Article Marketing Brings One-Way Links

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Are you building inbound links to your site?

Link building is essential to good rankings in the search engines. The number and quality of other web sites that link to yours builds your link authority, and that affects your rankings. Especially in Google. While reciprocal links (you link to me and I link back to you) are excellent to have, one-way links are even more powerful. One excellent way to get such links is through article marketing.

Articles can make good inbound links

Published articles bring incoming links to your site.Webmasters are always in need of good, relevant content for their web sites. Do you have well-written articles about your area of expertise in one of the several article repositories on the web? If so, your articles will be found, picked up, and reprinted on other web sites. When those webmasters use your article they almost always include your own “About The Author” blurb at the end of the article. A blurb in which you just happen to include a link to your web site.

There’s no reason you can’t include such articles on your own web site, of course. But the links from marketing articles on other related web sites are what you’re really after here.

Article Marketing Can Help You Show up Better in Search Results

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Article Quality is Critical

Excellent copywriting skills are priceless.It’s essential that your articles not be commercials for you; they need to be useful and informative, with information that readers will find valuable. There are two very selfish reasons for this. First, articles that tout your products or services are least likely to be picked up for inclusion on anyone else’s web site. And second, a great article with lots of informative content is more likely to entice a reader to click on your link at the bottom and visit your web site.

If you have something unique to say about what you do and have expertise in, consider article marketing to get your name out there — along with a link to your website.

Need a little help?

Not all of us are capable of writing compelling articles that can both inform and entertain, but don’t let that stop you. We work with some excellent copywriters who can “ghost write” articles for you. The ideas, of course, have to be yours, but the words can be crafted by someone who specializes in that. Some of the copywriters we’re familiar with and can recommend include Anne Lazo of Eagle Soars Consulting, Scott Stadler of Words By Design, Chris Reardon of Reardon Commmunications, and Lisa Fahoury of Fahoury Ink.

Struggling with getting decent rankings in Google searches? Reach out for some help!