Thought I was done, did you? As the saying goes, “If you’re done learning, you’re dead.” So here’s to the continuance of my learning and my life (as an amazing SEO copywriter, anyway).

Last week, I enlightened you all on keyphrase research, and this week we finally get to do some writing. My favorite! SuccessWorks’ copywriting course contains some great tips on where your keyphrases should go, how many times they should appear and how to implement them into your copy, both old and new.

Where Do Keyphrases Belong?

• Headlines
• Sub-headlines
• Hyperlinks
• Sprinkled organically throughout your copy

See that word up there? Organically. Heather says there’s no magic number for how many times your phrases should appear in your copy. If you focus on the flow of your copy rather than technical aspects you and your customers will be much happier. There are two ways to treat your web site once you’ve compiled your keyphrase arsenal: keyphrase editing and original writing.

Keyphrase Editing

Ideal for:

• Articles
• White papers
• FAQ pages
• About Us pages
• Category and Subcategory pages
• Older blog posts

Not ideal for:

• Home pages
• Crucially important sales pages
• Product pages

Original Copywriting

Heather compares this method with building your own house, starting from the ground up. She suggests getting organized before putting your fingers to keys. That thought bubble above your head should say two things: Benefits and Action.

• Take five minutes to brainstorm and outline your ideas
• Jot down relevant links
• Write down essential components of your copy
• List benefits for your customers
• Narrow down the action your customers should take

I love this lesson, particularly because I love writing, but also because she does a great job of highlighting the important aspects of copywriting that sometimes get lost in the SEO craze. She stresses that it’s about the writing, the tone and the information. She brings dignity back to writing copy for (gasp!) marketing purposes. If you can communicate that you care about your product or service, your readers will pick up on that and become customers.

My favorite part of the lesson comes toward the end. I write fiction, and one of the hardest parts (and thus, the most important) of writing is editing. Heather encourages the use of shorter paragraphs with white space, efficient language (“Don’t say in five words what you can say in three.”), bulleted lists and engaging copy. After all, it doesn’t matter how easy your site is to read if it puts your readers to sleep.

Next week, we’ll be traveling back in time to that keyphrase editing I mentioned earlier. Come join me. Back in time.

This entry was posted on Thursday, March 25th, 2010 at 3:45 pm and is filed under Content Creation, SEO. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Both comments and pings are currently closed.