SEO - a beginner’s guide - An introduction to Search Engine Optimisation

This month I’m delighted that Stephen Church from Copywriter Pro has agreed to share his top SEO tips with us. 

How do I write my website pages and my blogs to impress Google? The answer is simple. You don’t. The person you should be writing to impress is … your website visitor. No one else.

Let me explain. In the early days, Miss Google was something of a wide-eyed innocent. Easily flattered, all you had to do was carelessly shower your pages with keywords and throw countless inbound ‘farmed’ links at her feet, and she’d be yours. Blinded by your smooth SEO charms, Miss Google would fall into your arms, liberally dispensing her search engine favours.

Who does Google care about?
How times have changed. No longer a naïve ingenue, Miss Google is now a fully grown, self-aware, cyber-adult – wise beyond her years, some might say hard-nosed. Nothing gets past her beady eye. Today she has just one concern – the welfare of whom she serves – and it isn’t you. It’s the ‘searching public’.

To impress the new Miss Google, your website needs to be constructed so that your potential visitors

  • are attracted to your website
  • once landed, stay there – not just languishing on one page, but moving around your pages, picking up relevant information as they go
  • respond by placing an order or getting in touch.

And the way to achieve this? Your website needs to have an appealing design. But, just as important, you need to populate it with wonderfully engaging words. Let’s call it ‘great copy’.

Your website needs stickability
Google sets the clock each times a visitor comes to your website. She times how long they spend with you. She also tracks the route that your visitor takes as they move from page to page. And here’s the key –

The way to encourage your visitors to return to your site often and to explore your site is by writing great copy. Yes, I know – the design is vital, particular in creating a strong and enticing first impression. But, it’s the copy that does the heavy lifting.

Don’t write – speak
Do you enjoy having friends and relatives to stay? If you do, you’ll know that to make sure they keep coming back is to give them a good time – to make them feel at home. It’s the same with your website. You want repeat visitors? Then, you need to write copy in a way that engages them, gives them what they want in a nice, relaxed manner. In fact, you shouldn’t be writing at all. You should be using your words to ‘speak’ to them.

6 copywriting tips
Here are a handful of copywriting tips. You need to use –

  1. sentences that are generally, but not always, short and concise.
  2. short words – Not purchase, commence and But buy, start and help.
  3. the active, not the passive voice. Not You order will be sent out … but We’ll send out your order …
  4. You, your and yours 4 times more often than We, our and ours.
  5. welcoming formatting. Plenty of bullet lists. Lots of paragraphs and spacing. Heading and subheadings too.
  6. links that guide visitors intuitively from page to page.

For more tips like these, click here.

Follow your local fishmonger.  Keep things fresh

Google will always favour websites with fresh, original content. You can achieve this by adding new, informative pages. What better way than by writing regular blogs?

A blog that’s optimised with your keywords and phrases will give your website every chance of leaping up those search engines.

These blogs don’t have to beautifully written.  Just use a simple, engaging style.  Write about new breakthroughs or day-to-day issues in your industry – anything that might be of interest to your readers.  Blogging is a habit. Like every habit – good or bad – once ingrained, it’s difficult to stop. Get into the habit of regular blogging, and you’ll find yourself knocking them out in no time at all.

Don’t ignore the technical side to SEO
These are the parts that your web designer should be looking after. Show him this checklist of the basics and make sure he applies them to every page – your blog pages too.

The first and most important rule is this –

Focus on one primary key phrase per page. Use a keyword research tool or hire a specialist. Then, make sure this key phrase appears –

  1. at the start of the page title (hover over the browser tab at the very top of this page, and you’ll see the page ‘title’ appear beneath your cursor.
  2. in your text within the banner of the page
  3. in your page’s main heading (technically it’s called the H1 Heading)
  4. in the first 100 characters of your page’s opening paragraph
  5. in the Calls To Action on your page
  6. in the ‘description’ and the ‘Alt description’ of any images on the page

The primary lesson to take away from this article? Don’t write to impress Miss Google. Write for the only one who matters. Your website visitor. Do this … and, in time, you’ll soon be climbing those Search engine rankings.

My name is Stephen Church and I’m an SEO Copywriter (Copywriter Pro). I use my love for language and knowledge of marketing to help businesses get more clients. I write content for Websites, Newsletters, LinkedIn profiles, Case Studies, Media Releases, Blogs and Annual Reports. I love working with businesses of all sizes, especially those who understand the immense value of compelling commercial content. Give me a call – 07703 472207 – and let me know how I can connect you with new clients as well as others who can help you take your business forward.