Structuring your content to reflect your business, include your keywords and help your SEO is tricky.

You have designed your site, you have carried out keyword research, now comes the time to sit down and write the content. If you are like me sitting here now, you are probably wondering where do I start…?

Well, I’m hoping you have your list of keywords, and you have identified a list of long tail keywords to support these. Your long-tail keywords won’t be massively competitive, and are most likely to reflect your best selling products or services, they tend to be very industry specific and will usually convert better.

I would also advise typing your keywords into Google and checking them against Google’s Wonder Wheel. This will give you a spider diagram indicating other words Google associates with your chosen keywords. It would put you in good stead to try and integrate these into your copy.

Step two is how you structure these into your content. Firstly remember your content must be written for your audience, and structured to rank higher in search engines with maximum emphasis on your chosen keywords. I will outline 5 ways you should structure your copy in an attempt to fulfill this criteria.

1.Heading tags should be structured chronologically, your h1 being the most important and should include the exact keyword you are targeting. Working down the page to include the long-tail keywords you have identified.

2.Aim to use an exact match of your keyword within the first paragraph below your heading.

3.Following on from the above, the first reference to your keyword should be in bold for maximum effect.

4.Use a variety of your keywords, long-tail keywords and other phrases you have identified from Wonder wheel naturally throughout your text.

5.Finally optimise your page title tag with your main keywords. Google has a limit to the number of characters it will display so bare this in mind.

Only you can decide what is appropriate for your site, your clients and your readers. Every site will be different (different is imperative, make use of Copyscape to ensure you have no duplicate content).

Keep it professional but don’t be afraid to use a little humor, keep your paragraphs short and concise, include images to back up your message (don’t forget to make use of alt tags). Finally ask someone to read your copy before publishing it, to check for spelling and grammar, you want your copy to flow naturally, the more you read it the more you will over look mistakes.

I spend some of my time at work reviewing customers’ websites that have slipped back in the SERPs. The reasons behind the slipping could be anything: Perhaps the competition has been upping their game to increase their backlinks, or, their copy is more keyword rich than ours, or, maybe Google has just had a blip? It’s my job to find out why the site has slipped and to do the work (or recommend to someone else what needs to be done) to push the site back to its rightful position as number 1, page 1 (we accept nothing less!)

Initially I will do a range of checks to assess what needs to be done to improve the site. The first thing I’ll do is check out the competition, asking myself these kinds of questions:

• How many backlinks do they have?
• Can I get backlinks from the same place as them?
• Does their site look better than ours? (Usually, the answer to this question is a very definite “NO!”)
• What’s their content like, is it ‘salesy’ or is it bland and boring? Is it better than ours?

Once I’ve answered these questions, got a load of backlinks and checked the functionality of our site I will do a test for Duplicate Content.

The negative effect of Duplicate Content on SEO

I use Copyscape to find out if someone has copied our customers’ content. I am sorry to say I have lost count of the number of times that I’ve found duplicate content present on struggling sites. Plagiarism has a very real and negative effect on websites.

Sometimes Google thinks the site being copied is the one that has done the copying, and so penalises the wrong site. The Moral is: If you have difficulty writing your copy, whatever you do, don’t copy someone else’s! It may seem like a good idea at the time, but it’s really not.

If your site has been plagiarised then you can follow the steps recommended by Copyscape. However, by that stage, you’re probably best re-writing your copy anyway to ensure that it has original content. Quite often this is enough to bring the site back to where it should be. But, you do have to wait for indexing, which can be agonising!

To prevent plagiarism from happening again, Copyscape has a list of steps to follow. We always place a © declaration in the footer of all our sites, but this deterrent isn’t as effective online as it should be. The only way to ensure your content doesn’t get copied is to regularly update it. This is generally good for SEO anyway; so there really is no harm in it, just more work for the honest Webmaster.

The other day I overheard a conversation / ongoing argument between two colleagues. One said that the reason our websites climbed up a few notches in Google for the competitive keywords Web Design and Search Engine Optimisation was entirely down to our new venture in Video Blogs the other said it was due to the internal architecture of the sites being improved.

I can’t help believing that the reason our sites have climbed the rankings is for both these reasons, and a few more besides.

I started to think that Search Engine Optimisation is a little like making an elaborate cake where the ingredients keep changing and improving to make the recipe richer and the cake better.

There is no one answer to achieving good results in SEO. There are many different ‘ingredients’ to consider.

Good Keyword Research

Keyword research can be a tricky one. Often the keywords that you may consider to be the best are not the ones your customers’ would use to search for your site. There are many tools that help you choose keywords; Wordtracker and Google Adwords Keyword Tool are some of the better ones available.

Once you have a list of keywords you should do a KOI (Keyword Opportunity Index) report. This should give you a list of keywords that have low competition but high search volume.

Internal Architecture

I like to think of the internal architecture of a site as being like the foundations
of a house. You can build a house with shaky foundations but sooner or later
it’s going to start falling down. The same applies to websites.

If you build your site with the search engines in mind by making it easier for them to do their job: crawling, and then indexing the content. You’re closer to achieving a lasting presence in the search engines results.

Regular Interactive Content such as Videos and Audio

Regular interactive content helps with SEO because it can increase the ‘time on site’. This indicates to Google (and other Search Engines) that your site is a useful resource, and that people stay there once they visit it. Also Google indexes audio content now.

By placing videos on YouTube you can get more traffic to your site and increase the exposure of your videos.

We have also started to supply a transcribed version of our videos. This is for two reasons; one for accessibility so that deaf and hard of hearing people can still enjoy the content, and for Google to index the relevant content.

Have a Blog with Regular New Content

Blogs are an excellent tool for SEO. They provide regular new content (if updated! Note: Update your blog!) for Google to index. The real benefit of having a blog is to tell your customers and potential customers about your company and your products. You can quickly become an ‘expert’ in your field by regularly providing new content that is both informative and written with your keywords in mind.

Social Media

Ah, Social Media! This could be a blog post in itself; it’s such a massive subject! Social Media is a useful marketing tool to promote your business. With so many people now relying on Social Media to connect with others you’d be a fool to ignore it.

Social Bookmarking

Social Bookmarking sites such as StumbleUpon can create a vast number of links and visitors to your site.

Link Building Through Directories

Though directories are less important than they once were, industry specific directories can be really useful for getting relevant links. Be careful about the ‘neighbourhood’ of your chosen directory and you should be fine.

Link Building Through Asking Begging for Links from other Webmasters

This is my least favourite aspect of SEO. I must have written hundreds of emails to webmasters with the hope that they will add my link to their site, only for the request to be turned down, or, more usually, ignored. But, for the few that say ‘yes’ this can be a really valuable exercise for link building. Sometimes you get lucky.

I often bypass UK companies on this and concentrate on overseas sites where you are unlikely to be in direct competition with the site you are targeting. This will still give you a relevant link.

Blog Commenting

This is a bit of a grey area. Some SEOs consider blog commenting to be a form of spam. And it certainly has been abused so much so that the majority of ‘blog comment’ links are ‘nofollow’ links and almost entirely useless. However, I do believe that by reading and engaging with others within your field you can quickly become an ‘expert’. By writing well-informed and interesting comments about the post your link may be clicked on by a fellow reader. Reading blogs and keeping abreast of your industry is an excellent way of learning more about your industry.

Article Marketing

Article Marketing is a great way of getting keyword rich links within relevant content. Articles are distributed across the Internet via article sites. The content is also indexed quickly, giving faster results.

Press Releases

Press releases are an excellent way of gaining interest in your product or service. By writing them with your keywords in mind and placing keyword rich links within the copy you can get results quickly.

There is also the possibility that they may be picked up by the Press thus gaining you even more exposure.

Content Writing with SEO in Mind

Content that is both well written and full of keywords can be a difficult thing to achieve, but it is extremely important for SEO as well as conversion. Take time over your content it could be one of the most valuable things on your site.

So, there you go, one of these ‘ingredients’ alone won’t make your site go page one, number one, but a combination of some, or ideally, all of these will help your site achieve high listings.

There are many places online people can go to find information about a whole range of subjects they are interested in. With this in mind, there are intense levels of competition and pressure to ensure that your content is original.

For people who stumble upon your writing; whether it is through a blog, article, a press release or integrated into your web design, your writing needs to be new to gain the interest of your target audience.

So where do people find inspiration for fresh content?

Well, the Internet changes every single day and as more ambitious subjects are being developed, the most useful way to gain new knowledge and fresh content is through planning and research.

Many people choose to add new information to their web site for Search Engine Optimisation purposes and often forget that it also has to be informative and relevant to their audience.

One modern example that has occurred in recent years are social media sites such as Twitter and Facebook. Since these sites have taken off, many people are looking for ways to use these sites to their advantage. Because of the demand of information wanted by social media users, many people have provided articles and press releases based around this phenomenon alone.

With the amount of expansion that occurs online there is a vast amount of knowledge that people express through online marketing. The secret to fresh content is to look at what has been written previously, and the format and style it has been attempted to be expressed.

One aspect that writers face is the worry of repetition in their writing. However, all content is a rewrite of previous work so it is important to find a different angle and express it in your own individual style.

Reading, research and re-write are the keys to original content and can make inspiration come together to create pieces of writing that stand out from the rest.

I often come across sites where it is obvious they are trying to optimise for certain keywords but end up reading really badly, which isn’t the way to get sales. So, if you don’t think your own writing skills are up to scratch then employ an experienced content writer. But, assuming you feel you are up to the job, then read on and learn some of the tools to ensure your site has the very best content you can get.

Content is, in my opinion, the most important part of Search Engine Optimisation. It is what your web visitors are looking for when they search for your site and it is what the search engines evaluate in order to rank your web site.  It is extremely important that you have excellent, compelling content on your web site. The quality of your content is directionally proportional to the likelihood of your site listing well, and more importantly, whether your potential customers are going to buy from you or employ your services.

•    Write for people NOT search engines

Search engines are machines, but they do know the difference between well written, naturally flowing text and awkward over-optimised drivel. More importantly, so do people, and people can choose to spend their money wherever they like, and if they don’t like the sound of your site they will certainly click elsewhere, and consequently end up buying from your competitors.

All the traffic in the world isn’t going to mean a thing if you’re site doesn’t make the conversion from traffic to sales, so if you have high traffic but low sales then the very best thing you can do is take a look at you’re text. Does it read well, do you make it clear what you want the consumer to do?

Make sure your content is structured with the reader in mind. Think of your site as a salesperson – albeit one that works incredibly hard - 24/7! But would you want your salesperson talking drivel to sell your products? Probably not, especially if it was all day every day. You need to answer any questions the potential customer may have regarding your product. List the benefits of your product, don’t get too slogany, give them facts and be reasonable. Ask yourself what concerns you may have if you were a consumer, and answer those questions. What is great about your product? How will it make a difference to people’s lives? By answering these types of questions you will be able to alleviate some of the concerns a potential customer may have regarding your product or service, this is guaranteed to increase your sales.

•    Keep the content current

Search engines like fresh content, so do returning visitors. Nobody likes visiting a ‘news’ page to find the last bit of ‘news’ was written in 2007. Current content is the key to maintaining listings and achieving high search engine rankings. There are many ways to achieve this, use RSS, write new content regularly, set up a forum on your site, and give your users a chance to interact with your site. It’ll pay off in the long run.

•    Avoid Duplicate content

Duplicate content is penalised by the search engines. More importantly, they don’t have the capabilities of determining who wrote the content first. To check if your site has duplicate content you can use this nifty tool copyscape to discover if your site has been copied. Copyscape give you advice on how to deal with duplicate content if you have become a victim of this.

Content written for the purposes of search engine optimisation, or SEO, is written to achieve organic rankings. Web sites with keyword-rich, naturally flowing, original content are judged by the search engines to be better web sites. By taking your content seriously (and I have had many a client who seem to think it just appears out of nowhere) you are taking your customers seriously. This could be the difference between getting sales and not getting sales, simple as that.

A final note: Check your spellings.

Online spell checker : http://www.netmechanic.com/cobrands/FutureQuest/spell_check.htm