SEO copywriting: mythbusting & takeaways

The session “SEO copywriting: mythbusting & takeaways” had high expectations, at least from my end. And the two speakers, David Brinks and Ramon Eijkemans lived up to those expectations. They tried to ‘bust’ some SEO-copywriting myths and showed the room what you can do to make better content and do SEO at the same time.

The Mythes they busted:

• keywordstuffing
• less=more
• this boring headline
• seo copywriting = boring texts
• content = king

Keywordstuffing

The myth is that people believe that there is a perfect keyword density in texts.

He lets a guy from the audience read a text which is supposed to be optimized. With the keyword returning more than several times in the first paragraph.

Ramon shows an image of the “Perectly optimized Page”. Its important to have the keyword on several specific spots:

• title
• Meta Description
• Headline
• Picture
• Several times in text

Point made: don’t focus on keyword density

He then gives out a couple of tips:

Tip 1: Polysemy
Tip 2: Interpunction: a question mark is ignored so you can put it in between two words which you target and make two sentences out of it
Tip 3: Variate, make text longer, persona’s
Tip 4: User generated content: more content, different words

Less is More

People don’t want to read so much online, so keep it short is the myth. To make your point, that is true, in some cases a longer text however can be better. Useful information can really help, just look at Wikipedia:

A longer text:
- can take more keywords.
- it attracts links

Personas: there are different personas
- competitive personas
- spontaneous personas
- methodic persona (comparative)
- humanistic persona: looks at what other people are saying

For the last two its better to have more content. They want to compare (methodic) and look at what others saying so they WANT more content. A good example is Amazon which focusses on all the different personas.

Text has to look good, it must not be a long big text area, but divided in different areas.

This boring headline

Many copywriters don’t feel like the headlines for SEO are ‘attractive’ enough. You are ‘writing a phonebook’.

Tip: you can use multiple titles. Change them on the different places you put the articles: in social media, but also within the site: different categories can have different headlines.

SEO Copywriting is ‘boring’

Keyword density is more or less irrelevant. With the four personas in mind you can variate your texts. And if your copywriter doesn’t want that: fire him!

Some texts don’t look like they are optimized, but they secretly are. Keywords are not used too much. How? Use words on different areas, and split them up. And off course get links.

Content = king

Its a myth that Content is King. If you have good content, rankings will follow. Not true! You first need a good product, then you need to let people know.

Google = democracy: its only good content when many people say its good content. If you have good content and others don’t think so you are alone in the dessert. A link is more worth than keywords in your text.

Tip: Content Strategy
What content do I have to create which brings links? First thing you have to do is think for whom you will write: linkerati: those who have the power to link to you.

Related posts:

1. State of Search radioshow – episode 5 – SEO Copywriting mythbusting
2. Copywriting for Conversion
3. On the web you are what you publish: opening keynote SES New York
4. Think Visibility 6: Lessons Learned and Top Takeaways (It’s not all about search…)
5. SES 2010 – Day 2- Brian Eisenberg – 21 secrets of top converting websites