In this third article on SEO misconceptions we’re dealing with search copywriting, and particularly the way in which keywords are used.

If you’re aiming to be found by people searching online - which you are - then it’s your use of keywords that will make it happen. If you get your keyword frequency wrong however, you’ll risk poor performance on searches and even getting your site penalised - so it’s important to know what boundaries you’re working within.

Getting it wrong

The overuse of keywords in online copy - either deliberate or unintentionally - is generally known as ‘keyword stuffing’. Like a lot of SEO methods, keyword stuffing did used to work to some degree - once. However, search engines are now incredibly sophisticated compared to what they were, and such crude techniques are spotted a mile away. If your copy is loaded up with keywords to a degree that makes it basically unreadable to your audience, then you’re keyword stuffing.

It’s not just the body content that you should be considering here either, keep in mind your page titles, H1 tags, anchor tags and even navigational link titles - they’re all opportunities to over-do your keywords, potentially by accident.

Getting it right

Getting it right on keywords is easier than most people realise, as long as you keep the real purpose of what you’re doing in mind. “Create a positive user experience” should be the mantra of any SEO-savvy web developer, and the same definitely goes for search copywriters. As we’ve said on Green Notes before, copy really doesn’t need to be prize-winning novelist standard, it should simply be informative, interesting, on-topic and easy to read. If it’s staccato with keyword repetition then it’s unlikely to be any of these.

For more information on search copywriting, read our article on refreshed content or take a look at our search copywriting services page.

It’s commonly known that link building is a key element of search engine optimisation, but as with most SEO factors, taking short cuts can actually have a detrimental effect on your website search performance so it’s vital to do it in the right way. In this article we cover the misconceptions and mistakes that surround link building for search, and look at the most effective way to get results from the process.

The biggest mistake

It’s often thought that simply having a massive volume of backlinks is the way to go with link building, and there are countless companies offering link building as a quick-fire service. However, these services more often than not involve masses of links from irrelevant sites, link farms and generally disreputable sources. Take a quick look in your junk folder and you’re sure to find a promo email from a company selling this service - there’s a very good reason it’s been classed as junk… Using these services results in hundreds (or thousands) of new links being added at once - a great way to set alarm bells ringing when your site is indexed. Once the service is finished, which won’t take long, you’ll be saddled with a load of pointless - and at worst negative - links attached to your website.

Think quality over quantity

Quality, effective link building for SEO is a straight-forward enough process, but it takes a good deal of planning and time to implement correctly.

Building your links steadily and regularly shows search engines that you’re developing organically. Aim for between five and ten quality new links a week, with sites that have relevant themes. Working this way over six months or so will result in a good batch of backlinks that present your website as a reliable and authoritative resource.

Outbound linking

Don’t restrict yourself to inbound links either. Although inbound links are absolutely more important from the mechanics side of SEO, having a good range of useful outbound links can provide a helpful service to your visitors and give them another reason to come back to your site. Think of outbound links simply as good content that enrich the user experience - the ultimate goal of SEO.

Google’s Matt Cutts had some interesting comments this week on the question “is ranking dead?” in an excellent interview with Mike McDonald from WebProNews, which vindicated our entire approach to SEO here at Green Media.

“I’m not sure I would say ranking is dead but it’s not as important as it used to be,” said Cutts. “The fact is the smart SEOs (search engine optimisation companies) are not just necessarily looking at the rankings. They are looking at conversions, they are looking at their server log. It’s great if you’re ranking for a phrase but unless that leads to sales that doesn’t help you very much.”

“The challenge is not to pay so much attention to ranking, pay attention to traffic, pay attention to conversions and keep building good content and don’t worry about ‘can I show people that I rank number one for my trophy phrase,’” he added.

These sentiments echo precisely what we’ve been saying here at Green Media for a long time now. We mentioned the problems with purely ranking-orientated SEO in a blog entry back in July 2007, when discussing our own approach to search. As we pointed out way back then, it should always be about conversions and ROI - something that’s only now being acknowledged by the wider SEO industry and those at the very top of Google.

If you’re still using an SEO company that is preoccupied with getting “1st page rankings” over all other considerations, then you’re wasting your time and budget. SEO, like any other type of business marketing, simply needs to be accountable - and there’s no value whatsoever in boasting about a 1st page result on a term that absolutely no-one is searching for, no matter how it’s dressed up or shouted about. When your SEO is delivering massive ROI and genuine business benefits across targeted markets, then you’ve really got something to boast about.

We wrote last week about how it was absolutely critical for businesses to continue marketing during the economic downturn in order to keep their message out there in front of prospective customers. Well, exactly the same approach should be applied for website search engine optimisation (SEO).

SEO is about getting your weblink in front of people precisely when they’re looking for what you offer. Looking at it from such a brass tacks angle, it’s the ultimate form of web marketing and as such it really shouldn’t be optional for business anymore - it’s nothing less than essential.

Organic SEO is an incredibly rewarding process at the best of times, but the value of a regularly high-ranking position on a prominent keyword during a downturn cannot be underestimated. It’s as effective as any targeted marketing and it’s out there all of the time, 24/7, on the world’s most used medium.

To find out how you can take advantage of SEO during the downturn and beyond, get in touch.

“Click here” is one of the most enduring terms used online, and has been around from the start. In fact, searching for “click here” on Google brings in an incredible 1.3 billion results, demonstrating how ubiquitous the term has become. It’s the second-nature anchor text choice for a lot of web developers and search copywriters, although moving away from it is so easy - and beneficial.

While “click here” still has great relevance in email marketing for obvious reasons, you’re missing an ideal SEO opportunity if you continue to use it indiscriminately on websites. From both a user accessibility and search engine indexing perspective, the term isn’t exactly the most helpful. Thinking about the search engines, if an anchor text and tag uses some of the keywords relating to the page that it’s linking to, then it’s far easier to classify - boosting the relevancy to a given topic. What’s more, your real-world users will know instantly what they’re clicking on, so you’re enhancing their visit as well. “Click here” doesn’t offer any information whatsoever, other than the presence of a link.

It’s another example that usability and creating a positive web experience should always be at the forefront of your web development and copywriting.

So, try to come out of the “click here” safe zone and you’ll soon find that SEO benefits will follow.

Maile Ohye followed up her outbound links article on Google’s Webmaster Blog last week with a succinct explanation on the value of good quality incoming links, and the importance of a well thought-out strategy. It’s another good example of how Google is opening up about its processes, and it also backs up what we’ve said about inbound links for a while now.

Another thing we’ve said over and over on Green Notes is that there’s no secret with this anymore. The whole point of a search engine is to enhance the user’s experience, so if you’re doing something that goes against this then you’re likely to be damaging your SEO potential.

Google Webmaster Blog’s Maile Ohye posted a really useful article this week on the subject of outgoing links on your website. It answers some common questions and worries about adding links, and explains how they can provide a reputation-boosting effect to your site.

The importance of incoming links is well-documented, as are the various processes to follow when developing a link building strategy - but outbound links haven’t been so clear-cut, until now.

Ultimately, like everything else relating to SEO and websites, outbound link strategies revolve around providing the user with the best experience possible - and employing a healthy dose of plain old common sense.

Take a look - here.

We made our annual visit to the Online Marketing & Media Show this week at the Business Design Centre in London, to check out the latest developments in the world of SEO.

Dealing with our level of clientele it’s essential to stay ahead of the game in order to continually deliver the best results. At Greenmedia we invest a lot of development time into refining our SEO - it’s a constantly moving topic that’s always producing new opportunities - so the UK’s biggest industry gathering is naturally the best place to see the latest advancements on a national scale.

We spoke with some of the best people working in the industry today, and a fair few snake oil salesmen along the way. Seeing the latest and greatest SEO techniques in action and hearing explanations from global pioneers, we once again found that here at Greenmedia we’re at the forefront in terms of search potential. In fact, several of the ‘frontier’ search techniques that were discussed at the show were ideas that we’ve been using for some time to great effect. However, hearing fellow experts extolling the virtues of these methods justified where we’ve taken our SEO in the last year, and invigorated us for some exciting developments in the coming weeks and months.

Transparency is a crucial factor of SEO. If a company can’t - or won’t - tell you what they’re doing with your website then it’s entirely possible that they’re winging it or indulging in optimisation of the black hat variety, with neither being acceptable. With this in mind, it was great to hear SEO-guru GarytheScubaGuy openly delivering his top tips for 2008 at the show. Gary’s presentation has become one of the must-see talks at Online Marketing & Media, and it was once again a highlight.

All in all, this week’s show underlined that the world of search really is evolving faster than ever before, which means that if you (or your SEO provider) aren’t looking at the very latest techniques then you’re likely to be left behind.

In a post on his blog last week, Udi Manber, VP of engineering at Google in charge of Search Quality, revealed that the company was ready to start opening up on information that was previously kept highly secret, in an attempt to clarify certain elements of how it works. This came as welcome news to SEO companies everywhere, but perhaps some are expecting too much and in doing so are losing sight of the fundamentals that have been available from the outset.

Google is famous for being extremely guarded on how its algorithms and ranking systems work. As Manber explains in his article, the company has ploughed one thousand “programmer years” into developing the processes, and that’s not something that any corporation is overly willing to open up to competitors and the public. While the protective stance is understandable, it has directly led to frenzied speculation that makes up a good proportion of the SEO market today. The internet is full of companies that spend their time - and their client’s budgets - trying to fathom the inner workings of the Google system in order to manipulate search results in their favour. There’s an entire team of technicians at Google who are solely responsible for identifying and stamping out these activities, but it still goes on to an enormous extent.

While it will undoubtedly be interesting to see exactly what Google reveals in the coming months, it’s worth bearing in mind that the most relevant SEO fact has been freely available from day one - and that is that user experience is the single most important issue. It was at the start, and it still is today. It’s likely to be the case as long as search exists in its current form. If the user experience is lacking in quality then people will drift towards alternative search methods, and that’s something that Google simply can’t allow to happen.

What does this all mean for your website and its own SEO? Well, always put the user first. Create an easily understandable layout and design. Write content for humans, not search engine robots. Clearly define titles and tags in a descriptive and straight-forward way. Link in and out with other relevant websites. In short, always remember that your website is meant for your users, so everything on there should work for them. When your users are happy, the search engines are happy, and Google’s revelations - whatever they turn out to be - aren’t likely to change this.