By \ January 14, 2013
In some ways SEO (search engine optimization) has become a passé since it no longer takes on the same meaning that it used to. In today’s world SEO not only includes titles, meta descriptions, and keywords but includes all of your site’s content. Good SEO copywriting is not about stuffing keywords into your copy or jamming as many links as possible to that #1 ranking site. Good SEO copywriting focuses on utilizing a balance of great content, a few great keywords, and proper linking techniques to aid your site’s goals of higher search rankings.
KEYWORD DENSITY
The general consensus for optimal keyword density (KWD) is between 3-5 percent. If your page has more than 5% KWD, search engines will tend to think that it’s spam and most likely it will be hard for a regular person to read easily.
There are some apps to help you with this but you can easily figure it out using a simple equations. If your keyword was a single word such as “monkey” and you used it 12 times in a 400 word blog post, you would divide 12/400 = 3% KWD. If had the keyword phrase was “spider monkey” and you used it 8 times in a 400 word blog post, you would divide 16/400 = 4% KWD.
The Formula: [keyword usage]/[total words] x 100= x.xx%
Source: SEO Inc Blog
CROSS LINKING
Part of an SEO PageRank includes two types of links: internal & external. By cross linking pages with related content on your website together, you can increase each page’s and your sites overall value for a specific value. This is easily done for most smaller sites that focus on a single topic. For larger sites it will be important to link only pages with a similar theme or topic. By linking multiple topics to one page you’ll risk making it difficult for users to find related content within your site and search engines will not be able to easily group all of your great content together. You’ll also want avoid over-linking. Over-linking can cause a search engine to (incorrectly) mark your site as a link farm which can drastically lower your PageRank.
Source: SEO Inc Blog
USE HTML TAGS
Google and other search engines scan for professional, well constructed websites. By using the appropriate HTML tags for your content will show search engines what content on your page is most important, leading to higher placements. To do this, utilize simple tags such as the h1 tag for titles and the h2 tag for subheadings. You can also use h3 and h4 tags for other content that needs to be called out, like paragraph titles. This allows search engines to prioritize your data within any of your site’s pages.
Source: Learn Web Stuff Blog
CONTENT LENGTH
This is simple: keep it short. Unless absolutely necessary, most content pages can be kept to a length of 400-750 words. This keeps it easy for people to read and keeps the content to a simple point.
Source: Learn Web Stuff Blog
RELEVANT CONTENT FIRST
Content is King and should always come first. Though it may be tempting to place ads above your content or write a long, colorful intro, pushing your relevant content lower on the page can hurt your site’s rankings. Here’s what Google has to say …
“…sites that don’t have much content “above-the-fold” can be affected by this change [Panda Update]. If you click on a website and the part of the website you see first either doesn’t have a lot of visible content above-the-fold or dedicates a large fraction of the site’s initial screen real estate to ads, that’s not a very good user experience. Such sites may not rank as highly going forward.”
Source: Google’s Inside Search Blog