Search Engine Optimisation (SEO) Specialists

Archive for the ‘SEO Copywriting’ Category

Bad content and how to avoid it

Tuesday, August 24th, 2010

Even people who have no familiarity with the ins and outs of search engine optimisation will be familiar with what bad SEO content looks like. We’ve all come across it. You click through to what seems like a decently-designed site, and find that its pages are filled with content that looks like it’s been written by a five-year-old. All too often, the pressure to place keywords in content leads site owners to mess up.

Writing with SEO in mind can be daunting at first. Although most people have had to write to a particular subject at one time or another, very few people have had to write pieces including specific words. It’s a skill. This is one of the reasons many businesses source their content from professionals, and you can talk to us at SEO Consult Australia about this.

1. Everyday keywords. It’s astounding that people have so much trouble with their main keywords. If your keywords are one or two words long, there really is no excuse for content that reads awkwardly.

Usually, the problem comes from writers who are trying to fit keywords into the content instead of trying to write content that will fit the keywords. If your keyword is ‘dog kennels’, then it’s going to be difficult to fit that keyword into an article about pets in general.

Content needs to be written with keywords in mind. This is actually the reason keywords exist in the first place. The search engines look for keywords because, after long study, they realised that these words are the indicators that the whole page is relevant to the search. If you’ve run out of ideas for that particular keyword, it might be time to source some content from a professional.

2. Long-tail keywords. These are a little more difficult, particularly if you’re trying to get them in a piece a couple of times. Again, it’s important to form the content around the keyword. The important thing is to keep them sounding natural, and to do this it’s best to keep the instances as far apart as you can. Having ’super cheap dog kennels in Melbourne’ twice in one paragraph gives the game away.

3. Extended keywords. Along with your general keyword list, it’s very likely that you’re going to have a side-order of extended keywords. These are the sort of keywords that include local terms or modifiers, for example ‘dog kennels Melbourne’ or ‘wooden dog kennels.’ These keywords, which are a little stilted by themselves, can be very tricky to squeeze into content, even for an experienced writer.

You still have a couple of options when it comes to these more difficult keywords. For example, ‘dog kennels Melbourne’ is always going to read badly if just stuck in place of the keyword ‘dog kennels.’ However, you can talk about ‘dog kennels in Melbourne’ without messing up the keyword, or, to be super tricky, separate it with something like ‘when it comes to dog kennels, Melbourne is a great place to shop.’

The three most magnetic forms of content

Saturday, August 21st, 2010

It takes a lot of hard work to get inbound links. Building a link profile can take a whole chunk of time out of your SEO schedule if you’re not careful. The absolute best way to get links is to simply attract them. Instead of hunting them down, let them come to you.

Deciding to attract links and being able to actually do so are two different things, of course. It helps if you can pin down the most magnetic forms of content for your industry. Although this will vary from industry to industry, and target group to target group, here are some of the more magnetic forms of content that may give your links a boost:

  • Quizzes and surveys. These are absurdly easy to set up and feature on your site, and have proven endlessly attractive. You can go two ways with quizzes and surveys. There is the entertainment quiz, such as ‘Which Star Wars character are you?’ which is about providing entertainment to the user. There is also the genuine quiz or survey, which is about gathering information from your target user group. Both types have their attractions, but different user groups will be attracted to one or the other.
  • Flash applications. Internet users tend to be attracted to Flash applications because they seem like something valuable that the host site is giving away for free. There’s a feeling of giving.

Flash games do require a little investment to create, but on the plus side, they do not tend to age as swiftly as other forms of content. A good game might attract regular visitors for years, unlike an article, which has a limited return value. The use of a game or application as an attractor is common enough now days that you can commission one fairly cheaply.

  • Info-graphics. Info-graphics have been around since the dawn of publishing. Every time you see a chart or graph, or look at a visual representation of a piece of information, you’re looking at an info-graphic. Info-graphics work well on the net because they present complex information in a way that can be absorbed easily.

Info-graphics are an attractive form of content because they take two of the most attractive forms of content and meld them together. People love to look at pictures, and they also love statistics. Stick the two together, and you have an info-graphic.

This last form of link-attracting content has been the subject of a fair amount of hype in the search engine optimisation and marketing community. The main reason for this is that info-graphics are so easy to create. The hardest part about creating an info-graphic is selecting your topic and choosing the appropriate format to display it.

It’s important not to get too carried away with info-graphics. While they break up text and can be quite visually attractive, they can just as easily stop the flow of a reader’s scan pattern and look quite boring. You need to select your info-graphic’s topic carefully, and not over-use the medium.

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