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SEO - The Pitfalls and Perils of Keyword Content.

 There are many sites and blogs dedicated to the right ways to write copy for search engines. I know, I write for a website which specialises in the field, and many of them are filled with tips and tricks to increase the effectiveness of the SEO policy of your site. There are, however, many things that they do not tell you, and one of the most important is that SEO copy has to be as good as copy not written to satisfy SEO best practice, because, whilst the articles may generate better results on say, Google, if the copy is not readable and of high quality, viewers will simply ‘bounce back’ from your site and have a negative impact on page rank.

I have found, as I am a writer by trade and not a webmaster, that well written copy fulfils many of the requirements for SEO without too much adjustment. In a previous article on www.blueverse.com about copy writing, entitled ‘Is there a right way to write’, I expand the theme of filling copy with keywords in the hope of improving page rank and compare the ideal, an article which scores highly with key words, with one which is readable and contains pertinent information, with one which screams keywords and little else. I did this in a relatively light hearted manner (as is my wont on BlueVerse), but the article does point out some important deconstruction of what SEO really should be. Here are the conclusions in an edited form.

Good Copy is Good Copy.
I write, as a professional copy writer for a number of specialist Financial Publications, some of that work can be seen on www.investingfeeds.com (but this is new gig so there is not much material there yet.) and as such, when I became involved in writing for the web, I was amazed at the flustered way in which editors banged on about Keywords and media content. In my experience, a good article will contain all of the keywords anyway, and seeing as Google developed page ranking technology to discriminate against obvious ‘leapfrogging’ techniques, and continue to do so, SEO was more a matter of writing relevant and tight copy, something which I had been doing for years. I realised in a short amount of time that I was correct as none of my online editors has ever had a problem with any of my submitted work, and I have never consciously written for a search engine.

Academic Style
There is some speculation, amongst SEO experts, that the page rank software picks up on good academic style. But what does this mean to the layman. In effect you can fulfil SEO best practice by writing in a carefully structured manner, utilising a wide variety of relevant sources and keeping articles bereft of junk words and using a short introduction and conclusion to articles. If you bear in mind theses tips, you will find that you are including all of the keywords both early on and at the end of your article, whilst maintaining a good dialogue throughout.

Integrity
The integrity of your copy is paramount. Even though there may well be financial incentives for writing about certain things in certain ways, you will not rate highly with your readers, or with anyone else, if you are perceived to be compromised by those incentives. I always try to remember the maxim ‘to thyself be true’ when I write copy.

In summation I have found that my copy is popular with both editors and readers and despite the parameters of the job in hand, I always write with the above things in mind. As to whether or not following these tips will provide SEO, I can only argue that in my experience they do so in a way which not only structures the work so that it is readable and relevant, but also that it seems to appeal to the search engines. Thanks for taking the time to read this article and please leave your comments and suggestions on SEO optimisation, I am always interest to hear and to follow up readers views. Happy Trails.
this article has been brought to you by blueverse.com
By: TimK
Published: 01/24/08


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