Today I'm going to cover some topics that could help you to develop good web copy writing. If you apply these procedures logically, they will make your website more relevant to search engines and also more accessible. I'll try and illustrate what I mean by highlighting some examples from www.bluewatermusic.co.uk
Page copy
Know what message or end result you have in mind for the user, whether it's a sale or a sign up to a service. This is crucial.
Keep your use of language simple in a way you can still get the message across. Keep the writing style informal and try and include a call to action for the user. After all, they are probably on the website looking for some need to be fulfilled.
Keywords
Keywords are also another way to make your website more visible in a Google search. make sure you write your copy inserting some of these in every chunk or paragraph of copy. Don't squeeze or overload the copy with these. It will make for a clunky read and search engine bots are also now programmed to look for keyword stuffing. This is frowned upon and could negatively affect your ranking. Use Google keyword planner to discover the right words to insert into your copy. Look at the image above for www.bluewatermusic.co.uk recording studio and music label.
There are obvious words and phrases in there that could possibly be part of a user's Google search.
Accessibility
You can make sure you apply these techniques to your site to improve its accessibility. Make sure all content is logically structured. I will cover this in a bit more detail later on.
Firstly, its essential to have consistent, clear navigation. Use descriptive 'alt-text' on all image on your website. Add a content structured, text-based site map to your website. Like this one below...
Make sure you consider the page title tags in your HTML and word your URLs in a clear way. Make sure they are not a huge chain of random-looking numbers and letters. You should use descriptive link text link the example below. Don't just display 'Click here' for any links.
Headings
Make sure you only use one H1 tag per page. This should be your most important message or article. try and get an SEO phrase in it if possible. Try and apply this SEO to any H2 tags on a page also. You can use a few more H2 tags on a given page but stick to only on H1. Do not use the tags as a means to style your headings, as they will lose their SEO clout. Keep the message clear in Especially H1 and H2 as Google places a lot of importance on them. Look at the image below. Anyone looking for a recording studio with analogue gear may wind up at this site...
Content Order
The order in which you present your information is key to improving the overall user experience. Logically, well thought out ordering, will only improve the usability of your website. On a basic level it should make sense in a top to bottom way. Most important ifo at the top, decreasing in importance as you navigate downward.
Accessibility will also improve if you apply a logical structure to your content. For example, make sure your H1 comes before and H2 tags. Any lists should be compartmentalised and clearly headed so screen readers read it in the correct order. Look at the image below taken from www.bluewatermusic.co.uk
The CSS has been disabled and you can clearly see the hierarchy of info starting with the categories at the top. Then comes H1 with its accompanying P tag. The images in between have descriptive alt-text too.
If you can consider everything in this article before you commit to any code, then apply all these techniques to your website you will enhance the experience. The second benefit is that visibility of your website should also improve too.
This blog will be exploring a bit about how search engines work but mainly about SEO. I will be pouring over a couple of websites to offer my thoughts on their off-page SEO.
I'll also look at information architecture and consider the Web copy-writing on both, individually.
How search engines work
Let's look at Google, as it's the most commonly used portal.
Google's robots 'crawl' over webpages, scouring the content, indexing what they find to see if it's relevant to the end user's search.
The 'crawlers' take into consideration how popular a site is. They perceive this to mean that the website is trusted for that particular information and assume that it is more pertinent to the end user's search. All this info is run through complex algorithms to organise importance and relevance. This in turn is presented to the user in the form of search results.
Off-page SEO
Put simply, this is a range of techniques that can be employed to increase the ranking of a webpage.
Let me give you a few of the more common methods...
'Tweet', 'like' and 'share' your way to a better Google ranking. This is an easy method, accessible to all.
Writing an engaging blog is a way to make visitors return to your site again and again. It also keeps the Google bots happy as fresh content will make crawlers return to your site, pushing you up the rankings.
This function can generate a lot of traffic. Back links can also be generated in this way by people posting links on the comments section.
Site Architecture:
Good site architecture can make your site more crawl-able or visible to the Google bots. Consideration to forward planning is crucial to the success of a website.
You are trying to achieve is improving how Google bots and visitors can find their way around your site.
Use a 'flatter' architecture to keep your most important information further up the website so the user has fewer clicks to reach what they are looking for.
Avoid having too much Flash and always make your links text so the bots can find and index them.
So, on to the Websites....
This website shows good use of suitable keywords in the title of the page.
<title>David Keating Photography | Denver Family Photographer</title>
Fortunately, the meta tags have been used well in this website...
<meta name="description" content="Capture the fun, unique, and expressive moments of who your family really is with Denver lifestyle photographer, David Keating." />
<meta name="keywords" content="photography,photographer,denver,colorado,family,pet,commercial,outdoor" />
<meta property="og:type" content="blog" />
<meta property="og:title" content="David Keating Photography" />
<meta property="og:description" content="Capture the fun, unique, and expressive moments of who your family really is with Denver lifestyle photographer, David Keating." />
<meta property="og:url" content="http://keatingphotography.com" />
<meta property="og:site_name" content="David Keating Photography" />
<meta name="twitter:card" content="summary" />
It also has relevant keywords in the copy that appears throughout. The site also has descriptive URLs which reflect the information on a given page. This is useful for improving search engine rankings. Take this URL from the Commercial photography category on the site...
http://keatingphotography.com/denver-photo-galleries/denver-commercial-photography/
Content wise, the site has valuable, well-written copy offering relevant information pertaining to it's categories. Someone looking for a family photographer in the Denver area could come across this site ranking well in a Google search. Useful words incorporated in the copy without overloading it.
Here's a snippet from the Family Photography section...
'Family lifestyle photography is about capturing the true personality of a family or individual while they are relaxed and having fun just being themselves. Family shoots are always great time.'
The alt-text for images on the site also appears to be relevant, concise and clear.
Site architecture-wise the site doesn't have an abundance of flash or animation. The navigation is text-based, which appears to be enhanced with some Java Script. It's clear and easy to follow and the Java Script applied doesn't seem to hinder usability.
It's got an external CSS style sheet which prevents the code from becoming bloated, however, the Java Script seems to be inside the HTML. This could also be put in an external style sheet to further streamline the code.
The site is in XHTML. Possibly updating to HTML5 could make it more SEO-friendly.
Samsung.com shows good use of suitable descriptive keywords in the title of the page.
<title>SAMSUNG UK - Home Electronics | Home Appliances | Mobile | Computing</title>
Again, the meta tags have been used well in this website...
<meta name="title" content="SAMSUNG United Kingdom" />
<meta name="Description" content="Welcome to Samsung UK. Discover a wide range of home electronics with cutting-edge technology including TVs, smartphones, tablets, home appliances & more!" />
<meta name="Keywords" content="samsung, samsung.com, samsung electronics, samsung website." />
The URLs on samsung.com are also very precise. Further investigation showed that this was throughout the whole site but I've included an example below to illustrate this. Words and phrases like 'mobile devices' and 'smartphones' are a surefire way to get hits from a Google search...
http://www.samsung.com/uk/consumer/mobile-devices/smartphones/
A lot of the content in the consumer section is image based. It does give technical info on each product but doesn't seem too concerned with keyword-laden copy for crawlers. For example, here is a snippet of copy for one of their phones currently available. Phrases like 'smartphone' and 'mobile phone' are notable by their absence...
'Sharing is a beautiful thing. Make the most of your lust for life and love of making connections through convenient communication, social networking and content sharing features. Huge 4” screen is designed for brilliant viewing and staging your content for sharing. Enjoy the best multimedia and enjoy interacting with friends and families through your favourite apps, games and video calls while keeping pace with your go-go-go lifestyle.'
There's a distinct lack of alt-text on many of the images throughout the website so users utilising screen readers may face some problems.
Again, site
architecture-wise, navigation is text-based, which also appears to be beefed up
with some Java Script. On the face of it, it's clear and easy to follow and the Java Script enhances the look without becoming messy . It's a massive site and the navigation runs pretty deep but there is a site map at the bottom of every page so if you get lost it's not too trick to find your way home. There's also breadcrumbs for this purpose too.
Much like the first website reviewed, it's got an external CSS
style sheet which prevents the code from becoming bloated, however, the
Java Script again seems to be inside the HTML. like the website above, this could also be put in an
external style sheet to avoid bloating the code.
The site coded in HTML5. This can help reduce use of flash animations, making the website sleeker.
Just a short post to say that my project website for Blue Water Music recording studio and independent record label is up online at...
Feel free to have a look.
Thank you.
Having a clear game plan about structure and importance in your website is crucial to it's success and level of visibility to the user.
There are a range of strategies you can implement to help push your website up the rankings. Here, I will discuss a few of the techniques you can employ.
Site Hierarchy
Hierarchy is a way to let search engines know what is important in your site. Think of the site as a pyramid with the most important information at the very top represented by the Home page. The next layer of most important information should be below this in the categories sub-level and so on. The further down the pyramid you go, this should be of less importance.
Categories & sections
Categories should show users at a glance the topics available to them on the website.
These should be accurate and concise descriptions of each particular topic. If the Home page is the major 'theme' of the website then categories are the secondary themes. They must help the user to easily navigate the site.
Google bots will think that these top level categories are linked to every other page on the website so these pages will rank better.
Identify why users are coming to the site and try and name your navigation categories appropriate keywords.
For BWM the categories could read as follows...
About Blue Water Music | Our bands | Music Links | Blue water Music Sitemap | Contact Blue Water Music
Pages
Pages should contain specific content or services pertaining their name. Write keyword-rich copy for these pages for optimization. Keep your more important content for pages further up the hierarchy. Mapping out page types in the architecture can also help further down the road with any SEO issues that arise as you can decipher if a problem is on a single page or a page-wide issue.
Internal linking
Good Internal links can make it easier for users to navigate around a a website. Keep it logical and think what the navigation the user will find useful relevant to where they are on the website.
