Monday, March 26, 2012

SEO and Content that Retains and Converts

 
Sometimes it seems as though SEO and website content that works to keep visitors on business websites and convert them into customers are at odds with each other. In the quest to make SEO effective in improving search engine rankings, the content on some websites can be almost unreadable. Overuse and poor use of SEO keywords and phrases in website content can definitely interfere with the visitor's experience on the site. What happens then is predictable. The visitor simply clicks the Back button, bounces off the site and returns to the search engine results to find a different site.

There's absolutely no reason for this to happen. A skilled content writer can incorporate an effective range of SEO keywords and phrases into any page's content without making that content boring or confusing. While creating compelling, motivating copy that works to retain and convert visitors, a professional content writer weaves the relevant keywords and phrases into that copy, placing them where they have the highest impact on search engine rankings. Site visitors see top-quality writing that addresses their reasons for coming to the site and helps them understand why that business is the place to go to get the products and services they need. The keywords and key phrases are truly organic to the content. Here are some of the ways this happens:
  • Keyword Selection -  Keywords selected for any given page must relate directly to the content on that page. Since visitors may land on any page on your website, targeting keywords that suit the subject of a specific page not only makes SEO sense, but also makes the writing of that content more relevant. Google recognizes that the keyword are relevant to that page's specific goals by relating the keywords to other keywords on the page.
  • Understanding Google's Algorithms - An experienced web content copywriter understands how Google's ranking algorithms work. Since Google ignores many common words, word order, and punctuation, a key phrase need not appear exactly, but can appear in a number of ways and still be seen as the same phrase. 
  • Keyword & Phrase Placement - A highly skilled web content writer understands the importance of keyword and key phrase placement, and writes accordingly. Using keywords and phrases targeted for the specific content of a page, it's relatively easy to locate those phrases strategically to influence rankings. 
  • Keyword Density - Too much repetition of keywords and phrases signals Google that something may be wrong with the content, in terms of usefulness to the site visitor. By incorporating a range of relevant keywords in the content, rather than trying to use a more limited set of keywords, the writer can create compelling marketing content without overuse of any specific keyword or phrase. When it comes to SEO keywords and phrases, more is not always better.
  • Keyword Relevance - Today, Google's algorithms are looking for relevance. The proper balance between keywords and phrases and the surrounding explanatory content has become increasingly important as Google fine-tunes its relevance-detecting algorithms. For an expert content writer, this is second nature. The result is content that is useful and informative to the visitor, while presenting a keyword-rich face to Google.
It's a fine balance. The written content on every page of your website must accomplish multiple goals, and must do it seamlessly. First, it has to provide keywords and phrases to be collected by Google. Those keywords and phrases must be positioned and enhanced with enough text to convince Google's algorithms that the content is relevant. Finally, and most importantly, that content must be interesting enough and relevant enough to site visitors to keep them on your page and convince them to take action and become a lead, customer, or client. Only very skilled web content writers can meet all of those goals. Amateurs need not apply.

Email Me for a free, no-obligation evaluation of your current website's content, or call George Campbell at 651-774-7999. To see examples of my web content, check out any of the Work Sample links in the left column of this blog.