Is your website search optimised?

One of the jobs that I do regularly is write copy for search engine optimised pages.  This entails using a handful of key words intelligently in the copy so that search engines find the page when people put those words into their search.

Having spent hours and hours wrestling with online systems such as Word Tracker to work out what people might actually be searching for – I gave a huge sigh of relief when a SEO specialist friend of mine said “The best way to find out what people search for is to ask a few people you know what they would type into a search engine when they’re looking for the sort of services you offer.”

Wow – that means working with human beings rather than automated systems!  Much better – and, given that it’s a human being that types the search terms in, probably at least as reliable (and much less confusing).

Don’t go mad – you need just 2 or 3 terms and should use each one between 2-4 times in the copy – making sure that the copy flows naturally, otherwise people just won’t read it.

There are other terms that are lower down the list that could be introduced here and there, to reinforce the message.  For instance, if you are a coach specialising in career development, the search terms might be:

How to get promoted

Fast track promotion

Career development

So you’d need to use these terms 2-4 times in the main part of the text.

You might also try to knit in:

Getting promoted

Improve your career path

Become more successful

Promotion to manager

Promoted to manager

Career path improvement

… and, although you might not get all of these in, if you can add three or four of them at least once, it will help to add to the key word ‘cloud’ – all the words that are related to the subject.

Just remember that the copy must make sense and feel natural to read – or people simply stop reading and don’t get the message.

How does your website use ‘prime real estate’?

Take a look at your website pages – what is in ‘prime real estate’?

If you don’t know what prime real estate is – it’s the point at which the visitor’s eyes hit the screen and it’s usually somewhere around a third of the way down the screen.  That’s where you engage the reader and get them to start the journey through your website – or not!

So put yourself in the visitor’s shoes – or go and visit a few websites that the search engine says deliver a product or service that you are interested in.  What’s in their prime real estate?

What should NOT be in that extremely valuable spot:

• Welcome to our website
• A pretty graphic
• Part of your masthead
• A huge clunky menu bar
• Lots of little boxes encouraging you to ‘click here’ – no ‘click HERE’ – no ‘CLICK HERE’
• The name of the page – i.e. Home page

What you need is a message – in big letters (in other words, a headline) – that targets what you reader was looking for.  It’s usually related to either pain or gain; what they are suffering with or what they are looking for that will solve their problem.

This means you need to know your typical customers – and what they look for.  The very best way to find out what your typical customer is looking for is to ask a few people, “If you were trying to find what my company delivers, what words would you search on?” and “What is the biggest problem that you have that my product/service solves for you?”

That second question can also get you a few testimonials if you ask it right, too!

Once you have that information creating the words to put into your prime real estate is going to be easy!

If you’re still struggling get an expert to help – take a look at our services or just give us a call on +44 (0)1245 473296 or email us at info@insidenews.co.uk.

The site map

When you are creating a web site, the first thing you need is a site map.  This is the plan for the pages, how they connect with each other and how you arrange your information to lead your visitor through the site.

With a basic web site it’s pretty straight forward – home page with main pages on the menu for About us, Contact us, Services/products and maybe Case studies or testimonials.  Sub pages from the Services/products page with more in depth details on specific services or product ranges.

Bigger websites are more of a challenge – they are more complex, more pages with many routes through the site so that the visitor can always find what they want easily from several different entry points.  However, without the site map the developer can grow something that looks like the worst kind of bindweed leading the visitor up dead ends and wandering aimlessly until they leave the site in frustration.

So who creates the site map?  The web designer?  The web developer?  The search engine specialist?  The copy writer?  No – you should, it’s your web site!

By all means get some advice from the specialists, but try and see it from the user’s point of view.  Where would YOU want to go next if it was someone else’s website?  What would you want to know (and what would you not need to know)?

Keep it simple and straightforward and think about the user – then ask a few business friends or networking contacts to get some feedback on the journey they will take if they visit.  It’s an invaluable piece of research and it wlll help your site to be ’sticky’ when it’s up and running.