Search Engine Optimisation

If you’ve been following the news recently major websites such as Wikipedia and WordPress.org are running a 24 hour blackout today in response to the two bills SOPA and PIPA that are making their way through congress. I won’t go over the full details here. A search for “SOPA Blackout”, “WordPress Blackout” etc should suffice for you.

What I thought I would do is take the time to comment on how their blackouts are not really blackouts. And all because of Search Engine Optimisation.

I’m going to take WordPress.org and Wikipedia as an example for my post (as they are, to me, the main websites staging this blackout). If you load any page on their sites today you will be confronted by the following pages:

However, on further inspection, these blackout ‘faces’ to these websites are simply masking the content sitting behind them. These websites will load all of the normal content that they should show and then force a full screen display over the top.

With a few bits of in-browser Javascript* you are able to view the full content behind the page as it should be.

So why haven’t they replaced their entire websites to actually ‘black out’?

Being some of the biggest websites on the internet they achieve results through strong search engine rankings. Their sites are rich in content and Google (and others) will check them regularly for any updates in content and update their records of that website accordingly. When a Search Engine wants to look at a website it requests a copy of the ‘source’ of a page just like your browser does. Your browser would then convert this ‘source’ or ‘code’ into a nicely styled version for you to view with pleasure. Search Engines don’t have this same wish for aesthetics and will happily read through the code they’re given to understand what that website is about.

What this is in effect doing is keeping all of the content there to keep their search engines happy but then masking each page using those styles I was talking about to hide the useful content from the user audience. This is instead of supplying user and search engine with just the content and styles for these black out messages.

Now if these websites just supplied the content for the  black out messages then when Google does its check today it will decide that every page on their site now reads on the lines of “WordPress.org protests the protect IP act”. Suddenly you will see every page drop out of its place in the rankings. I guess this is a risk that both websites could not take.

Admittedly for these large websites it wouldn’t take them long to be re-ranked once their normal website content comes back online. And with the number of users that will surf directly to wikipedia.org or wordpress.org without going through a search engine they should still see their traffic rise once again. However this is all theoretical and should happen but will not necessarily happen.

Does this make their stand of less value?

Some could say it does and some could say it doesn’t. Unless you work with websites for a living none of this may be at all obvious to you at all and it will be as though the websites are inaccessible to their normal content. However for me it does show that they’re not willing to take the search engine ranking hit to have a real black out. And taking that hit would potentially be great headlines in the fight against the SOPA and PIPA legislation. But their websites will be left at a huge disadvantage online.

So what do you think?

*Javascript is functionality code that runs within the user’s browser once it has loaded the content of a website. It is most commonly used for powering website slide shows and other pretty things.

**If you would like me to clarify anything in this post please leave a comment and I will do my best to help.

Tagged as in Online Marketing, Search Engine Optimisation, web development, Websites

I guess the short answer to that question is yes and no.

Yes in that writing for the web forces you to take account of the search engines and making sure that what you’re writing reflects what people want to know. But a big, fat, enormous no in that to write truly powerful copy you simply *have* to write for your customers and not for yourself. Great copy attracts, engages and galvanises people into action.

Great copy answers questions that your readers have; shows them that you can solve their problem/ inspires them and entices them to put their trust and hard earned cash your way. It’s very simple really. And to be honest, writing for the web should be no different to writing for your readers.

Sure, you need to make sure that your website gets found. But if you understand *at the outset* what people are looking for in your niche; what people want to know about your product or service then it really isn’t rocket science. Now I’m telling you all this as a copywriter, not as an SEO expert (which I don’t profess to be). But just think about it for a moment. Truly bad copy (and we all see plenty of that about ) often starts out with a headline that bears no resemblence to what follows in the paragraph below. Writing for the web forces you to stay focused. If you want to get found for bespoke kitchens in Surrey; well then you need to make sure you use those words in what you’re writing. And so that it makes sense to the humans that are invariably going to read your website if your SEO ninja tricks pay off; then you need to make sure that the whole paragraph, or better still the whole page is around that theme too – just so that it makes sense…

I’m currently writing two pieces of copy for Stanbrook and Nicholson, a local joinery company based in the Surrey Hills. One is for their brochure, one is for their website. I’m pretty well placed to write this at the moment because we’re currently in the process of starting an extension, so I know exactly what their clients want to know.

I started by writing their brochure. Izzy and I planned out the structure a couple of weeks back, I interviewed the team and we’re now in the process of writing up. I still find it easier to write for people first – call me old fashioned but I have more love for them than robots. We’ve decided that the brochure is going to let the pictures do the talking so it was all about writing short, sharp, evocative paragraphs that told a story.

I then translated this to their web copy. Web doesn’t bring the space constraints with it that printed literature too – so we can allow ourselves the luxury of a few extra pages – more detail on the team and their environmental policy perhaps. It’s at this point that things start to get a bit more focused. With the help of my (now friend) Google and a few other tools I’m looking at various keywords – what people are searching for, what the competition is like, and how we can be different.

At the bottom of each page I’m specifying the keywords I think should be relevant to this page. That’s partly for my own sanity – to make sure each important one is covered off, and mostly to keep me focused. If I want to get found for bespoke kitchens surrey then I need to use those words – and there were places on relevant pages that I hadn’t.

So yes, writing for the web is slightly different to writing for print. But surely it’s just about a bit of discipline in giving the readers what they want? And let’s be honest, we could all use a bit of that!

Tagged as in Copywriting, Online Marketing, Search Engine Optimisation, Websites

Blogging has many benefits. It’ll help you build relationships with your clients and prospective clients. It enables you to demonstrate your expertise.  It helps you gain immediate feedback on an idea. And done correctly you’ll also gain targeted leads for your company which should turn into profitable business. Oh, and the traffic you receive from your fabulous content will also help you in the search rankings.

There’s a reason that I added SEO as an afterthought. It’s because it should be when it comes to blogging. SEO is a nice outcome from a good blog – it’s not the reason for its being.

At the recent Blogging workshop I ran a couple of weeks back with Tom Evans a large chunk of our audience were motivated to blog because of the perceived SEO benefits a blog brings. They felt that if they could just manipulate their blog to bring them in thousands of visitors, then that would have a positive impact on their website. I’m delighted to report that by the end of the day they all felt somewhat different!

Your blog will receive thousands of visitors if the content is great, if it looks good, and if you post regularly. You’ll build up a following of loyal readers who will recommend your blog to their friends and where it features in the search engines will be but a distant memory. You’ll be generating enough business from the blog it won’t matter.

Recently I stumbled upon a blog that had clearly been contrived to provide search traffic for the company. It was an imagery-based website and the images were gorgeous. Sadly I felt a little “used” because the writer clearly wasn’t writing for my benefit. She was writing for the search engines. She’d clearly handpicked a couple of search terms (and no, I won’t tell you what they are) – let’s just say they were lifestyle artist hampshire for arguments sake. Every single blog title was pumped full of these keywords. And scrolling down the list I could see this wasn’t a one off, this was a Search Engine Optimisation onslaught.

Imagine this blog, full of lovely images but pumped full of keywords that mean very little in relation to the post they’re describing. How would you feel as you were reading it? Like a valued reader who just had to return to see what said company had been up to? Or a little used and worthless that the point of the blog was simply to scramble the website up the search rankings.

There’s an art to using your blog to gain traffic and pumping your titles and posts full of “clever” keywords isn’t it. I’m not suggesting that it won’t work from an SEO point of view – I’m sure it does. But my point is that this isn’t a blog.

A blog is your chance to journal what’s going on in your world. It enables you to showcase your expertise, build relationships and generate profitable business. Make the most of the opportunity: if you don’t, your competitors certainly will.

Tagged as in Blogging, Marketing, Online Marketing, Search Engine Optimisation

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Tagged as in Blogging, Marketing, Online Marketing, Search Engine Optimisation, Web Design, Websites

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Tagged as in Blogging, Online Marketing, Search Engine Optimisation

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Tagged as in Case Studies, Copywriting, Marketing, Online Marketing, Search Engine Optimisation, Web Design, Websites

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Tagged as in Search Engine Optimisation

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Tagged as in Online Marketing, Search Engine Optimisation, Web Design, Websites