The 2 Most Common Mistakes When Writing With Keywords

It really gets my blood pressure up.  SEO copywriting has begun to get a poor reputation all due to carelessness.  How so?  Because too many people claim to know what they are doing.  In reality, they simply shove keywords into copy without any concern for how the copy flows.  Copy that sounds mechanical or stiff is a sure sign that an amateur writer has had his/her hands in things.  

When you write SEO copy, you should take the time to find out what works and what doesn't.  There are two mistakes almost every amateur search engine copywriter makes.  Let's take a look at each one.

#1 - The List

Let's say you visit the home page of a website that sells beauty supplies.  As you read the copy, you keep coming across a string of items: hair salon supplies, hair salon equipment and professional manicure tables.  The copy reads something like this:

The Best Selection of Hair Salon Supplies, Hair Salon Equipment and Professional Manicure Tables On the Internet

When you're shopping for hair salon supplies, hair salon equipment and professional manicure tables, you need a vendor who offers great selection as well as great service.  Because buying hair salon supplies, hair salon equipment and professional manicure tables can be an expensive venture, you also want a company that delivers the lowest price.

Trust ABC Beauty Supply to bring you the widest selection of hair salon supplies, hair salon equipment and professional manicure tables in stock every day.  Orders are shipped within 24 hours and - for all hair salon supplies, hair salon equipment and professional manicure tables orders over $100 - shipping is absolutely free!

Do you see how that flows (or doesn't flow) when you use all your keyphrases in a row every single time?  One time, sure.  That's fine.  Even twice, depending on the length of your copy.  But to put all your keyphrases in a list and use them every time you have the smallest opportunity is just far too repetitive.  What do you do instead?

Discuss each one in its own section.  Talk about the various types of hair salon supplies.  Review the reasons your hair salon equipment is better than that sold by others.  Or even list the features and benefits of the line of manicure tables you offer.

#2 - Substituting Keywords for Generic Terms

This technique (just like the one above) is perfectly fine IF you use it in moderation.  However, to replace every instance of a generic term with a keyphrase will cause your copy to sound downright silly.  Let's have a look at an example from a Web design site.

New Orleans Web Design

Our New Orleans Web design firm offers a high level of creativity to businesses located in the general area. Our New Orleans Web design styles are never made from templates.  Each New Orleans Web design is a custom creation just for your site.

If you walked into a Web design company's office and the employees began to talk like that copy is written, you'd most likely think they were on drugs!  So why in the world would you write your site copy that way?  The reason is because most amateurs mistakenly think they can't write for both the search engines and the site visitors.  I'm delighted to say they are wrong!  You can most certainly write for both with great success.

Try this:

Progressive, creative, upbeat.  Those are phrases that best describe many online businesses based in New Orleans. Web design for your organization should match your style. Never created from templates, the site designs you’ll receive will be truly reflective of your corporate personality.  Because we work exclusively with companies located in or near New Orleans, Web designs retain that Big Easy feel.

Did you see it?  The phrase was broken up using punctuation.  That won't hurt your rankings one bit, but it will make your copy sound a LOT better.

These are not all the mistakes.  I wish they were!  But most of the mistakes made by amateur writers can be fixed using one simple test.  Read it out loud.  If the copy sounds ridiculous to you when you read it out loud, it is going to sound equally ridiculous to a site visitor.

Take your time.  Learn the ins and outs of SEO copywriting before you begin to create the text for your (or your clients’) pages.  Then you can rest assured that your copy will convert better while it contributes to your high rankings. 

Top 10 SEO Copywriting

 What would happen if…?  I'm a person to always ask that question.  I love testing and tracking to see what factors can improve or worsen a situation.  So, it was only natural for me to track the moves of a little experiment I did involving SEO copywriting recently.  I'll gladly share my findings with you.

Before I do, however, I want to make a couple of things very clear.  The outcome of this experiment will not be the same for every keyphrase on every page of every site.  There are too many unknown factors at play in the overall SEO equation.  Not to mention, all keyphrases are not the same, and all sites are not the same.  In addition, this experiment takes no account of link popularity, which is a huge factor in achieving high rankings.  With that said, let me show you how I took the home page of one of my sites - that didn't even rank in the top 50 - and caused it to rank in the top 10.

First of all, I'm not a big fan of checking rankings on a regular basis.  I don't run ranking reports for all my sites to be sure they are all in the positions I want them in for every given keyphrase.  I'll do it from time to time just to satisfy my own occasional curiosity.  This experiment began when I noticed the home page of one of my sites was ranking highly for a keyphrase that didn't seem to appear anywhere in the text.  Upon further investigation, I saw that the keyphrase was included in the ALT tags (a.k.a. image attribute tags) and that it was also included in the title tag. 

I knew ALT tags previously carried a lot of weight with the engines, but had been downgraded in importance because site owners had badly abused the tag.  Had ALT tags been reinstated in their level of importance?  I decided to find out.

Keyword #1 was currently in the ALT tags and the title tag, so I decided to eliminate the keyword in the title tag.  This would let me see if the ALT tags alone could hold the position in the search engine results pages (SERPs).  To make things more interesting, I also decided to research and find a keyword that was a little more competitive and insert it into the title tag.  On the same day I removed Keyword #1 from the title tag, I inserted Keyword #2.  My home page was not ranked in the top 50 at that time for Keyword #2.

A few days later, the Googlebot came by and boosted my home page to position #18 for Keyword #2.  Not bad!  The page fell one spot (from #17 to #18) for Keyword #1 since the removal of the phrase from the title tag.

Keep in mind, these are not the most competitive keywords ever known.  They each got between 100 to 200 searches a day.  Also, the home page of this particular site had been (and still is) well ranked for years for other keyphrases and had a positive legacy with Google.

Five days later, Keyword #2 was moved up three notches to a ranking of #14 while Keyword #1 stayed the same.  Things remained in their status quo for roughly 10 days and then began to shift again.  Keyword #1, the original that was previously in both the ALT tags and the title tag, vanished completely.  It was not found in the top 50.  Keyword #2, that was only found in the title tag and nowhere else, dropped to position #25.  

Four days later, Keyword #2 was back up in the rankings and was now at #16. To see if I could improve rankings further, I began to make small tweaks to the page attributes.  I added Keyword #2 to the ALT tags (taking the places where Keyword #1 had once been), and I also added Keyword #2 to the body copy.   The keyphrase was added to one, bold sub-headline and at three places within the body copy: none of which were above the fold.  It was not added to any primary headlines that used <H> tags, and no keyword density formula was followed for the body copy.  No other pages on my site used this term as anchor text in links pointing to the home page.  That gave the page keyword placement in the:

• Title tag
• ALT tags
• Body copy

Seven days later, the home page hit the top 10 for Keyword #2!

So, what does all this mean?  Simple.  There is no single primary factor in search engine rankings.  It takes balance, testing and tracking to find out what works for your particular pages.  Your best bet is to do exactly what I did… begin one step at a time and track your progress.  Did something cause a positive movement?  Keep it.  If something causes a negative shift, take it out.

I'm not finished with this page yet.  I'll keep trying different things from time to time just to see what happens.  Maybe I'll add anchor text links from the internal pages to the home page.  I might try writing articles with keyword-rich anchor text links to help boost the rankings more.  There are many acceptable practices I can implement for this page (or any page) that will allow me to observe the shifts in ranking.  As the old saying goes, "Don't put all your eggs in one basket."  A diversified approach to SEO copywriting that includes tags, copy and links is always a wise start down the road to top 10 rankings.