SEO Copywriting is a Waste of Time for Blogs

By Brian Clark

Good copywriting skills can help you sell with your blog. But if you think by "copywriting" I mean "SEO copywriting," you'd be wrong.

In fact, you're probably wasting your time even worrying about traditional SEO techniques when it comes to blogs. Here's why.

Writing for Search Engines

Search engine optimization ("SEO") copywriting means writing web page copy that is optimized to rank well in the search engines. This includes inserting targeted key words in certain places (like titles), and in frequencies and densities designed to satisfy a particular search engine algorithm.

Why isn't this as important anymore? Essentially, SEO experts think traditional SEO for blogs is a big waste of time.

Humans Matter More

The gist of the argument is that when it comes to search rankings, what's written on a web page is less important than what other people say about that web page, and how many times.

It all comes down to links.

First of all, referral traffic (links from other bloggers) is of higher quality for the things that matter most - subscriptions and sales.

It's like the difference between a prospect who is sent your way from a happy former client, measured against someone who finds you in the Yellow Pages.

But this also impacts your search engine rankings. The algorithms favor sites and pages with incoming, non-reciprocal links from body text - in other words, express recommendations from other people. And much more weight is placed on the words used in those links (anchor text) than the words on the page linked to.

Just ask George W. Bush.

You won't find the words "miserable failure" anywhere on the biography page of the current U.S. President, and yet that page ranks number one for the search term in Google. That's because a whole bunch of other people (mostly bloggers) decided to link to W’s bio with the anchor text "miserable failure," and obtained top ranking.

The trend of search engine's favoring what others say is intensifying. Just like offline, word of mouth matters most.

As mentioned above, search engines like Google already incorporate user feedback (links + anchor text) in their algorithms. When people link to and tag the posts of other bloggers on social book marking sites, and tagging is more fully integrated into the current version of search, rankings will rely on recommendations even more.

The end result will be better search, and the end of traditional SEO techniques.

Content Matters Most

This is why traditonal (not SEO) copywriting skills that catch and hold reader attention are important for bloggers. I would argue that great copywriting is the new SEO for bloggers, if it gets you positive links from others. And since blogging is a new form of public relations, and PR depends on great copywriting...

Well, you get my point.

So, maybe you should quit worrying about SEO and start producing incredible content and networking in your niche. Copywriting techniques will help you excel in both.

Don't be Search Engine Ugly

Now, for that grain of salt. There's no reason to completely ignore things like keywords in your writing. For one thing, it can influence the anchor text that is used to link to you, which is a good thing.

For example, take this article. It's got the keyword phrase "seo copywriting" right up front in the post title, and yet the headline still manages to be provocative. There's no reason why you shouldn't strive for human titillation and keyword relevancy.

But... if you have to choose between the two, go for the human factor first and foremost.

So, optimize your post URLs and include your keywords, but beyond that, let it go.

Search engine algorithms come and go, but human nature remains the same.

Learn how to sell with blog copywriting and RSS marketing at Copyblogger. You can subscribe for free via RSS or email.

Article Source: http://EzineArticles.com/?expert=Brian_Clark

The Benefits of SEO Training

By Victoria Slotover

With high search engine rankings becoming increasingly important for business success online, search engine optimisation (SEO) is an important part of the marketing mix. However, hiring a professional SEO to run a campaign for you can be expensive. That's where SEO training comes in.

The Importance of SEO

With 90% of internet users using search engines to find websites and the majority of those people only looking at the top two results pages, having a high search engine ranking really can make the difference between business success and failure.

By optimising your website for a particular search term you are able to attract traffic to it from people who are actively looking for your products and services.

This helps your business to generate what are effectively, qualified leads which are likely to produce sales.

The Benefits of SEO Training

The primary advantage of SEO Training is that it gives you access the SEO techniques you can apply yourself to achieve for a fraction of the cost of using an SEO consultant. As such, SEO Training is an effective and affordable way to achieve high search engine rankings.

SEO Training helps small businesses learn basic SEO skills to enhance the visibility of their websites in the search engines. There are a number of benefits offered by SEO Training. For example:

• SEO trainingprovides your company and its staff with an understanding of the issues involved with, and the techniques required for, successful SEO. This means that SEO training will allow you and your company to optimise your website internally rather than paying a consultant to do it for you.
  
  
• SEO training also allows you to modify your website in accordance with company developments, whilst still maintaining its search engine ranking.
  
  
• SEO training gives you the necessary information to brief your web designers effectively to ensure that their design proposals do not harm your ranking potential.
  
  

SEMS Consultancy offers SEO training courses throughout the UK.

Article Source: http://EzineArticles.com/?expert=Victoria_Slotover

RSS Can Feed Your SEO Efforts

By Todd Mintz

Buried within U.S. Patent Application # 20050071741 (aka The Google Patent) is the following paragraph:

"Documents for which there is an increase in the rate of change might be scored higher than those documents for which there is a steady rate of change, even if that rate of change is relatively high. The amount of change may also be a factor in this scoring. For example, documents for which there is an increase in the rate of change when that amount of change is greater than some threshold might be scored higher than those documents for which there is a steady rate of change or an amount of change is less than the threshold."

When search engine optimization experts read this, it merely confirmed something they already knew... that even well-optimized content needs to be periodically refreshed in order to maintain top search engine rankings. However, if you are an SEO working on a contract, you might not have perpetual access to a client's website. Optimum rankings will likely not hold up if the site stays static. RSS (an acronym for "Really Simple Syndication") feeds are an excellent way to continually freshen website content without having to make periodic content updates.

"RSS is used to provide items containing short descriptions of web content together with a link to the full version of the content." (from Wikipedia)

Most people reading this article understand the concept behind RSS and have seen examples of feeds on different websites and blogs. Easy-to-implement RSS feeds are available for any imaginable topic and having one or more feeds on your website will certainly enhance your visitor experience. However, RSS can also enhance your search engine rankings as well.

Savvy SEO's know that they can boost site optimization efforts by creating RSS feeds containing top search engine results for the keyword / keywords they are targeting and adding them to the client website MSN, Yahoo News, and Gigablast all offer easy to use RSS feeds of their search results. Many of the blog search engines also offer RSS feeds of their results. Before placing a search engine feed on a website, be sure to check whether use of the feed on a website is restricted in any way...some of the feeds can only be placed on "non-commercial" websites.

My experience is that placing a "keyword-targeted" feed on your webpage will greatly enhance your ability to achieve optimum keyword density for your targeted term(s). What's more, assuming relevant content is available, a news feed is preferable to a search engine feed for SEO because news feeds are updated more frequently. Another valuable tool that I recently discovered is a service called RSSMix (http://www.rssmix.com) that can seamlessly blend together multiple feeds into one. That means if you are targeting several terms in your optimization effort, you can create one seamless feed featuring each term instead of using different feeds.

In some situations, it might be undesirable to show feeds over which you can not control the content. Fortunately, the remedy is simple. You can restrict the domain of the feed so that you are only showing results from an authoritative site (e.g. a government site). Or, you can only show results from your own site if appropriate. Restricting the domain thusly should not affect the SEO value of displaying the feed since the keyword densities should remain constant.

If you are adding RSS to your website for SEO, there is one important rule that must be followed: DON'T USE JAVASCRIPT! Javascript solutions are common and easy to implement. However, the javascript content won't be indexed by the search engines and your page will not get SEO benefits from the feeds. ASP, PHP, and HTML alternatives for RSS are readily available.

RSS is one of the hottest phenomenons in the webmaster community today. RSS that benefits SEO is a topic that's been very much overlooked. Implementing RSS into websites has become much easier so that even non-programmer hacks can do it with ease. RSS should be viewed as an SEO Best Practice for any website that will remain very static and should be strongly considered as a part of all SEO projects.

Cube Management provides sales acceleration services to emerging growth and mid-market companies in the technology, manufacturing, healthcare and business service sectors. The experts at Cube Management work across the entire spectrum of marketing, sales and business development to provide customized solutions that drive revenue and profit growth. Cube Management combines Strategy, Process & People to produce winning results.

Article Source: http://EzineArticles.com/?expert=Todd_Mintz