SEO Copy: The Basics - Competitive research

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Competitive research is simple. You look up what the top people at the top of the SERPs are doing (assuming you are competing for similar key word phrases) and then you model your campaign after theirs. This does not always work because a lot of times you will discover that your "competition" in some niche fields are yellow pages and may be Wikipedia.org. Competitive research will not necessarily work, but it will give you an idea of what to do when writing your own copy. Note that you will need to check out how the competition arranges its content (architecture), the linking structure, and how sales copy and SEO copy are combined.

SEO copy

Once you have settled on your key word phrases, all that is left is actually writing the copy. One very important factor to consider is your key word density. This is the major difference between ordinary copy and SEO copy; it's simply about how many times key words show up while the copy remains readable to humans. Ideally the copy should be so readable to humans that it serves the dual purpose of SEO copy and link bait. It should be so good that people actually link to it because it's a good resource. When the copy accomplishes these two functions I call it "fish food," because It serves as link bait and is bot friendly.

If copy is written by a non SEO person, it will probably have a main theme that shows up five percent of the time, and with related themes (maybe three or four) that show up another four to five percent of the time. So a piece on Dell will have Dell in the body about five percent of the time, note books another five percent, Intel five percent and maybe servers five percent.

This kind of copy is OK and highly readable. It will be crawling with pronouns like "it" (referring to Dell, Intel, notebooks or servers), "they" (referring to Dell), "the computers" (referring to Dell or the computer), and "the processor" (referring to Intel). All of this is well and good, but you you won't get relevance marks for the key word phrases you have selected. To get relevance marks for a particular key word, the best density is 20 percent. That's very hard to pull off while keeping the text readable, so a good rule of thumb is 14-17 percent. It's quite easy to do this.

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Comments On: SEO Copy: The Basics

· What a wonderful article, I just hope I can apply it to my site now. Thanks!    · Glad the piece was helpful, Have a great day.Tomide    · You make some good suggestions on content writing, but 14%-17%, up to 20% density is...    · 4 percent is natural, and copy is not the only thing that gets you high rankings. 4...    · At first, I thought this article is not that worth reading because Its title is SEO...    · As a copywriter, I'm always looking for ways to improve my SEO skills for myself and...    · Good to know that the article was helpful   >>> Post your comment now!