We all know that you’re going to have a real hard time ranking for a keyword if it’s not in the body copy of a page. But you also won’t get very far with a page full of one keyword phrase repeated 500 times. So what are the subtle tricks to writing copy that will emphasize the right keywords to the search engines? Here are a few that come to mind:
- Make it original! No matter how well-written a piece of content is, if you copied it from somewhere else on the internet you’ll fight an uphill battle to get it in the search results.
- Start with some light keyword research. There might be a slight variation of the keyword you were initially going after that gets more search volume. After all there’s no sense ranking for something that nobody is searching.
- Make sure that your target keyword phrase appears within the first 100 words of copy… the closer to the beginning of the page the better.
- Depending on the length of the page, add a few other mentions of the keyword in the copy. Preferably the mentions of the keyword would be as evenly spread over the copy as possible.
- Don’t overdo it! Search engines are savvy and can sniff out an artificially heavy piece of content with relative ease, so don’t think that adding a few more “SEO copywriting” keywords to a post about SEO copywriting will improve your chances of ranking well for SEO copywriting… quite the contrary. If you read it back and it sounds awkward, you’ve overdone it.
- Make your keyword the thematic subject of the page. Search engines are also pretty good at making associations with semantically related words, so ideally you should make whatever keyword you’re targeting the subject of the page.
That ought to get you started. Some experts are still pushing some golden ratio of keywords to total words, but I think that ultimately sacrifices quality and readability for what may or may not help your chances in the search results. My rule of thumb is to share the piece with a few friends or colleagues and ask them what they thought it was about. If their answer is the keyword I’m going after – mission accomplished.
