~~~Writing for the Search Engines and Your Prospects~~~
Hello, everyone!
Welcome to my virtual office. Grab a seat anywhere you like (don't
worry, I cleaned the dog hair off the furniture before you came).
Now that you're relaxed and happy, let's look at the Nobscot.com's site together. Last week, Jill recommended specific SEO tweaks - and now I'll discuss the writing.
To make things easy, I'll be splitting this up over two weeks. This
week, I'll evaluate Nobscot.com's SEO writing, and discuss what they
can do to make the search engines smile. Next week, we'll review
their copywriting angle, and discuss ways they can improve their pitch
and conversion rates.
Ready, let's go....
Where are the keyphrases?
As Jill mentioned last week, the keyphrases for this site are "exit
interview," "exit interviews" and "employee retention." As a side
note, I would always run a Word Tracker report on both plural and
singular variations. It's entirely possible that one usage pulls
better than the other, and you should consider putting the "high
pulling" variation on the home page. In this case, both the singular
and plural have very similar results, so they included them both.
Now, let's look at the copy. Jill mentioned, "Exit interview(s)"
appears a total of seven times. Now, don't think that she meant
that your keyphrases can appear like this(s). When she discussed
this, please note that she meant that "exit interview" appeared four
times, and "exit interviews" appeared three times. She wasn't saying
to put (s) in
the phrase! Those are two different body copy keyphrases, and should
be treated as such. And, please, oh please,
never type something like "widget(s)" and think that's all you need to
do to capitalize on the two keyphrases "widget" and "widgets." The
search engines won't know what the (s) means, so you won't benefit.
Not to mention, having an (s) in your copy will compromise your
marketing flow. In fact, I'd say, "just say no to (s)."
Now, on to the other keyphrase. "Employee retention" doesn't appear
at all. Oops - big mistake. If you want to rank well on a
keyphrase, it has to appear in the body copy. Period.
Links, links. Who's got the links?
In this case, Nobscot has 'em! We've discussed how hyperlinking your
keyphrases (as in, Online Exit Interviews) is a smart maneuver.
Internal links are important, and search engines consider linked
keyphrases as "more relevant." More relevant means higher rankings to
you, so use this technique whenever you can.
Headline heaven.
Every marketing piece needs headlines. Why? Because people
quick-scan headlines to understand if a page (whether direct mail or
Web page) is relevant to their needs. Search engines also love
headlines (again, it's that relevancy thing); so including a keyphrase
within a headline will make them smile.
The Nobscot site doesn't use headlines or subheadlines. In fact, the
main "headline," "Thank you for visiting us at the HR Technology
Conference in Baltimore, Maryland," includes NO keyphrases at all. In
fact, it actually alienates people who did not attend the conference
(which is probably the majority of their surfers). We'll talk about
how to get around that in next week's marketing evaluation.
There are no subheadlines within the page. Although it could be
argued that the bullet-pointed keyphrase links are headlines, they
really aren't. Strong headlines shout your benefits - and currently,
what they have merely indicates a feature. We'll discuss more about
the power of headlines next issue.
Length does matter.
There's one place where this site shines - the copy length. With 273
words, they're giving themselves enough space to create a persuasive
marketing message and make the search engines happy. Nobscot gets an
A-plus for this.
Stay tuned for next week! I'll be providing specific writing
suggestions about how to make the power of consumer psychology work
for Nobscot's site. If you're new to consumer psychology and
copywriting - or need a refresher course - next week's issue is for
you!
Heather
~~~Send Us Your Questions~~~
If you have questions about online copywriting or search engine optimization (or both!), just zip us an email to questions@rankwrite.com. We've had some folks ask if their question
was "too basic" to be printed - and you don't have to worry about
that! There are no "stupid" search engine optimization or copywriting
questions, so ask away!
