Styling Your Copy for Search Engines AND Visitors
By Scott Buresh April 08, 2003
Since all of the major search engines use the
words that appear on web pages as an important
factor in their ranking algorithms, it is important
to make sure that you let the search engines know
exactly what your pages are about. However, it
is just as important that you do so in a way that
will not compromise your marketing message or
turn off your visitors. To demonstrate how it
is possible to style your copy for search engines
without diminishing the visitor experience, it
is perhaps easiest to create a fictional example.
Our Company
Borrowing from the Road Runner cartoons, weÕll
call our company Acme, and assume that
our company is engaged in making widgets. LetÕs
also assume that we have gone to Wordtracker
and established that one of the prime keyphrases
for our site is "Widget
Manufacturing" (for more about keyphrase
selection, please see my past article Selecting
and Evaluating Keyphrases for Search Engine Marketing).
Below is how the headline and first few sentences
of our current homepage read. Please keep in mind
that, for the sake of brevity, weÕve only included
the top segment of the fictional page copy. Ideally,
there would be 200 words or more in total- enough
to give our visitors a compelling marketing message
and enough to feed the search engines with the
content that they crave.
Acme, Inc.
Acme has been making custom widgets for over
a decade. Widgets have changed throughout the
years, but our commitment to quality and unprecedented
customer service has not. Every step of our
time-tested process, from instigation to implementation,
is geared toward your satisfaction. Producing
widgets is not just what we do- itÕs how we
live. ItÕs the air we breathe.
First, letÕs consider the headline text (and ignore
the fact that we may have an unhealthy widget obsession).
Search engines consider prominent words on pages
to have more weight than regular words, so it is
beneficial to use keyphrases in headline text (so
called because it resembles the headline of a newspaper
story). Unfortunately, our existing headline doesnÕt
take advantage of our keyphrase- it merely says
"Acme, Inc." From a pure search engine perspective,
we may be tempted to create a headline that simply
reads "Widget Manufacturing"
(our keyphrase). This would work fine for search
engines, but what about our company and our brand?
Seeking a balance, we come up with "Acme- Quality
Widget Manufacturing".
Now we have something- a workable headline that
includes our keyphrase, describes our business,
and should please both search engines and visitors.
Our updated sample now reads:
Acme- Quality Widget
Manufacturing*
Acme has been making custom widgets for over
a decade. Widgets have changed throughout the
years, but our commitment to quality and unprecedented
customer service has not. Every step of our
time-tested process, from instigation to implementation,
is geared toward your satisfaction. Producing
widgets is not just what we do- itÕs how we
live. ItÕs the air we breathe.
* keyphrases shaded red are for visual illustration
purposes only.
This is better from a search engine perspective,
but the headline is merely the beginning. Now we
have to reinforce in our copy, to our visitors AND
to search engines, that we are experts in "widget
manufacturing". The problem, however, is that our
visitors are smarter than search engines. With them,
we could use any number of synonymous terms in the
copy and still get our message across ("widget creation",
"widget production", etc). Search engines are not
yet clever enough to understand that these terms
can essentially mean the same thing, so we have
to reinforce the relevance of our page in exact
terms.
Trying to achieve a balance between visitor
and search engine considerations, we modify our
above copy to include our keyphrase in opportune
places, so that the page now reads:
Acme- Quality Widget
Manufacturing
Acme has been engaged in custom widget
manufacturing for over a decade.
Widgets have changed throughout the years, but
our commitment to quality and unprecedented
customer service has not. Every step of our
time-tested process, from instigation to implementation,
is geared toward your satisfaction. Widget
manufacturing is not just what we
do- itÕs how we live. ItÕs the air we breathe.
We would continue this process for the rest of the
copy on the page. Again, ideally there would be
200 words or more in total.
Conclusion
The differences between the original and new
versions of this page may be subtle, but the differences
in the search engine positions between a site
that uses these techniques and one that does not
is often substantial. It should be noted that
while it may be tempting to try to shoehorn keyphrases
into the site wherever possible, this defeats
our purpose. We may get more search engine traffic,
but our visitors will not be able to look past
the disjointed, unprofessional copy. Too many
instances of the keyphrase can also put us at
risk of penalization. The most important thing
to remember when styling body copy and headlines
for search engines is not to compromise the visitor
experience.
Scott Buresh is co-founder of Medium
Blue Internet Marketing and author of the
monthly Medium
Blue Internet Marketing Newsletter. His articles
have appeared in numerous publications, including
ZDNet, WebProNews, MarketingProfs, DarwinMag,
SiteProNews, PromotionData, and Search Engine
Guide. Medium Blue specializes in search engine
optimization and submission, with clients ranging
from large multinational firms to small localized
businesses.
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