Sunday, April 22, 2007

Do you know what an SEO Copywriter is?

I am an SEO Copywriter and I am going to give you a brief explanation of what I do. When I have an SEO client the first thing I do is evaluate the client’s competition on the web. I look at the web placements and I evaluate the code of their website, their SEO strategy and I see if they have done certain things Google wants webmasters to do.

Then I evaluate which keyword phrases the web site needs to focus on to increase traffic- this is done several ways, but again it is crucial to evaluate the competition and see what works (or deoesn't work) for them. I then create a better SEO plan for my client’s site. Keyword research is crucial.

Some other crucial duties of an SEO Copywriter include checking for W3C compliance, changing or adapting the
title-tags, the meta description and the meta keywords. All of these things cen be checked by viewing the source page. The title-tags, meta description and meta keywords must include the keyword phrases the site is hoping to gain good placements for. I then need to create the content, or edit the content, to include the keyword phrases and support the optimization put into place in the title-tags, description and keyword list. The keywords have to used effectively and ethically. Keyword stuffing will cause the site to be penalized. Additionally, the content needs to be structured in a way that can include and support other pages within the site (for optimization purposes). This means that everything needs to be worded very carefully. The Anchor Text, the content, headlines, links, alt-tags, meta-tags, file names, keyword list, description and title-tag can all be optimized. You can read an article on my site for more information.

Other duties include submitting sites to the search engines, creating a webmaster account on Google for the client, help them verify the site (This means understand the HTML and inserting code appropriately or adding a meta tag) and submitting an XML sitemap.

Also, the ability to write well and sell the services or products while integrating an SEO strategy (that is not obvious to the web visitor, but noticed by the search engines) is extremely important.

Many people write web content and they are good at it. I have written a lot of it and typically web owners know their SEO strategy well enough to let you know what keywords need to be focused on. Unfortunately, not every writer understands the guidelines and standards that cannot be ignored and some do not know what will get a site penalized. They may not understand code or various other things I have mentioned, but they can create additional content for your site. If you are considering hiring an SEO Copywriter, make sure they know everything listed above well.

If you are planning on
designing a web site consider hiring an SEO Copywriter first. Then your SEO plan can be easily integrated into your site. If you already have a site SEO Copyediting is a great way to save money and improve your visibility on the web.

Panaca Writing & Design, Sarasota, Florida

1 comment:

Anonymous said...

Thanks for the list. I'm sure it took some time to build.