Move the Logo and Grab Prospects with Strong Headlines
By Jill Whalen - July 26, 2001 (From the Rank Write Roundtable Newsletter)

~~~Writing for the Search Engines~~~

From: Kathy Gates

Hi...I thought it was a great suggestion to use articles to target a specific keyword and improve SE ranking (well...duh...guess that's why you make the big bucks, huh!) LOL Anyway, on all my articles I have my company logo at the top, and I was wondering if it would be wise for me to change that format to put either the article title with keywords in it or a paragraph from the article with keywords in it at the top of the page. Will that make any real difference as long as my title and descriptions and keywords are all in place? Thanks again for the great suggestion.

Kathy Gates, Personal Life Coach
www.reallifecoach.com


~~~Heather's Response~~~

Your question brought up a fantastic point. To illustrate it, I'm going to go off on a free-association bird walk. I'll get back to your question at the end. Promise!

Yup, Jill's comments in Rank Write 055 are spot on the money. Articles are fantastic spider food, because articles typically include keyphrases naturally (see, you've been writing for the search engines all this time; you just didn't know it!). That is, if I write an article about online writing, you can be darn sure that I'll naturally insert "online writing" and "writing online" into my copy. It fits naturally, and it's a keyphrase. Everybody wins.

But what about previously written articles where visions of keyphrases never entered your mind? Sometimes, as Jill mentioned, you can quickly edit your article for keyphrases. That is, you can have your keyphrase list in hand, and insert keyphrases where they naturally "fit" within the writing. I would never, ever do this for your home page or any crucial optimized page, but you can get away with it for press releases and articles. You're not necessarily "selling" prospects with article or media pages, so keeping a marketing flow isn't an issue - providing good content is.

A BIG, HUGE caveat with this technique - if you haven't done any keyphrase research and you want to edit some existing articles, get the facts first! As we've mentioned 2,476 times (at least ), you need to include keyphrases that people use to find sites like yours - and guesswork may cost you sales in the long term. Once you have your handy-dandy keyphrase list, run free and optimize your articles.

Now, you may find that some articles are a snap to edit for keyphrases. Others may need some considerable rewriting to make it work. Either way, if you edit and submit one page a month (one a week if you can), you'll be increasing your chances of search engine success every 30 days!

BTW - once you have that keyphrase list, keep it with you whenever you're writing new articles. You'll find it's sometimes easier to include keyphrases in your writing when you start from scratch.

Now, back to Kathy's question (finally!). I would, in fact, move your logo somewhere else on the page. Not so much because it's interfering with the search engines, but because it's not offering your customers any value. That is, although it does offer contact information, it doesn't grab your prospects and make them want to learn. Why not replace the logo with a strong keyphrase and benefit-rich headline? That would draw people into the articles faster, plus give the search engines something to chew on. (And you did research those keyphrases first, right? )

Yes, I'd make sure that some keyphrases showed up in my first paragraph and any subheadlines, but I wouldn't stop there. Your keyphrases should appear throughout the *entire* article, top to bottom. Search engines WILL spider the entire article, so you may as well use that to your advantage.

Thanks for your question (and for staying patient during my bird walking.) Keep those online writing questions a-comin'!

Heather


~~~Jill's unsolicited 2 cents~~~

Heather makes some good points about moving the logo so you can grab your prospects with attention-getting headlines, and I totally agree. However, I just wanted to be clear that from a search engine standpoint, having one graphical logo image at the top of the page (or top of your code) is not going to hurt your rankings, in my opinion.

Jill

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