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Web: Search Engine Optimised Copywriting

The position of your website on a search engine can be key to driving readers to it. But once they have arrived, you also need to do everything in your power to keep them. That’s why Writing Machine optimises web copy for both the online reader and the search engines.

 

Few website marketing plans fail to consider Search Engine Optimisation (SEO) today. Search engines are crucial to drawing non-captive readers to your website.

Search engine positioning methods are changing, however. Traditionally, it has been the job of the technical professional to ensure a high ranking. Just a few years ago all you needed to do was to amend your HTML meta tags and submit your site to the directories.

It’s not that simple anymore.

In an effort to deliver more accurate and valuable results, the crawlers – search engines such as Google – now examine the body copy on a web page to determine the subject matter of that page. That means it’s now increasingly up to web copywriters, rather than designers, to ensure high search engine positioning.

A relatively new concept in the UK, SEO copywriting is a mainstay of the web copywriting services offered by Writing Machine.

Quite simply, we don’t want to write websites that no one visits.

The role of the 21st century web copywriter
Today web copywriters face an unenviable challenge.

We have to respond to the demands of website marketing strategies by ensuring a high ranking on a search engine. In practice, that means incorporating as many keywords or phrases as possible into the pages that we are writing.

At the same time, however, it remains essential to keep the copy readable and engaging. After all, if a reader has reached your website from a search engine, they are just two clicks away from the next site on the search engine list.

And online readers don’t just expect interesting copy. They demand scannable, concise text.

The art of web copywriting is therefore a bit like juggling a variety of different objects simultaneously. Tricky.

SEO copywriting in practice
You’re reading it! Try moving your mouse onto the toolbar at the top of your web browser. Click on View and then Source to have a look at the HTML text for this web page.

It’s my job as the copywriter to work the first five keywords and phrases listed after ‘meta name="keywords" content="’ into the body copy of this page at least three times each.

Without annoying you.

So, hopefully, you haven’t noticed me bang on about ‘website marketing plans’, ‘website marketing strategies’, ‘website content uk, ‘search engine positioning’ or ‘search engine positioning methods’. Oh, there I go, mentioning them again.

Of course, problems arise when key phrases are grammatically incorrect or misspelt. I’m talking about phrases like ‘searchengine positioning’ or ‘web site content uk’. Let’s face it, it would look pretty unprofessional for a writing agency to slip these inaccuracies into the copy.

‘Searchengine positioning’ – there’s not much I can do about that one. (I’ve had to be a bit cheeky, as you can see.) But one viable option for some phrases is to add extra punctuation. For example, I could have written:

‘Website managers should look for copywriters that incorporate SEO into their web site content. UK writing agencies rarely take this into account.’

Okay I had to keep the misspelling of ‘website’ to get away with that one, but you get the picture.

Web copywriting services from Writing Machine
Writing Machine offers a unique web copywriting service. Responding to the demands of 21st century website marketing strategies, we consider both search engine positioning methods and the reader experience to produce web copy that is:

  • Focussed on its purpose, audience and message
  • Interesting and highly readable
  • Scannable and concise
  • Keyword or phrase rich

What’s more, if you need help in working out what your keywords or phrases should be, we can help you with this too.

 

Find out about Writing Machine’s ‘Writing for the Web’ training day.

Read about Writing Machine’s web copy subediting services.

Find out about Writing Machine’s other copywriting services.

Fact: over 50% of most company websites are invisible to search engines.

The theory behind selecting the appropriate keywords.

The unseen HTML text – our brief guide.

 
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