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Topic: "best SEO practices?"
| Author | Message |
| snappiness | Posted – 4/21/2008 7:49:03 PM | show profile So, I've done some SEO writing before, to subsidize the journalism. But I'm not sure that qualifies me to apply for SEO writing jobs. When an ad says applicant must be familiar with "best SEO practices," what does that mean, exactly? That I'm the one who's supposed to be up to date on the latest Google algorhythm? I don't even know where to find that. I didn't think anybody knew that, really. Anybody here doing SEO writing who can comment? |
| noname1234 | Posted – 4/21/2008 8:10:41 PM | show profile I'm not sure what you mean by SEO writing -- do you mean writing web content for the primary purpose of generating high search ratings for certain keywords? As for what SEO best practices means, that refers to the way you construct a piece of web content to give it the best chance of coming up high in searches on Google, etc. for appropriate keywords. Some best practices include using good keyword-rich metadata (such as metatitles and metadescriptions), incorporating your specific keywords as often and as high up in the text as possible/natural, and linking keywords in the copy to other pages on the site; there are other things too. Other SEO best practices involve how the pages are coded and wouldn't be the responsibility of a writer. If you search on "seo best practices" you'll find a lot of helpful info. |
| InsomniacNOT | Posted – 4/21/2008 9:24:30 PM | show profile A lot of SEO stuff is BS. Basically, it boils down to: 1. Use and repeat the most important keywords. 2. Get the most important keywords in the title and high up. A lot of the stuff mentioned by the previous poster is now obsolete. Try and find a good NYT article called "This Boring Headline Written For Google" for further insights. Many SEO people suffer badly from not seeing the forest for the trees. The forest = good content that generates links Trees= spending all your time messing with code trying to boost boring content. Of course, don't ever tell this to someone advertising for best SEO practices. |
| westsidestory | Posted – 4/22/2008 12:25:15 AM | show profile True, these days the only "practice" is throwing money at keyword buys. So you really only need to know how Google Adwords work. Writing for searcheability is often just knowing how to construct both unique and common keyword strings; discovering which wordstrings work the best by searching or competitor's paid keywords or testing your own; building outbound links into the content where appropriate...and knowing how Google Adwords works. Consistently, I would say the best practice is something almost nobody does consistently...and that is test before going live. |
| InsomniacNOT | Posted – 4/22/2008 8:32:15 AM | show profile I'm interested in how effective Google AdWords is for bringing in readers who will return as opposed to one-shot article readers. Do you know of any interesting studies7insights in this area, westside? |
| snappiness | Posted – 4/22/2008 10:07:14 AM | show profile Thanks so much! This is very reassuring, I already know this stuff. So, I knew "best SEO practices" and didn't even realize it. Yay! Off to look for high-paying corporate work.... |
| westsidestory | Posted – 4/22/2008 10:53:53 AM | show profile Good luck Snappy! Insomniac - like I said, few people test, and those who do don't often share. I don't know of any reports that measured repeated visits through a words link, but we do know anecdotally that consumers are lazy, and will often re-type a search query to find a site they saw before, rather than bookmark it. So search remains a discovery strategy rather than a way to build direct traffic into a site, because lazy users typically need to "re-discover" many times. If you're talking about a fixed display text ad on a page, such as Adwords, the persistence of the ad often serves the consumer as a convenient pointer to the link. This gets into the area of text vs. display and display + search, and both Yahoo and MediaSmith in SF (Dave Smith) have published some interesting research in that area. MSN has also got some white papers, I believe, on the issue of click attribution, which is a growing issue. |
| Village Gal | Posted – 4/22/2008 11:21:07 AM | show profile what's SEO writing? |
| snappiness | Posted – 4/22/2008 11:49:22 AM | show profile SEO writing is what noname described above. |
| Village Gal | Posted – 4/22/2008 4:01:30 PM | show profile I don't get it, does not really sound like writing. Seems like you are stringing keywords together to get some info to come up a google search. Is that right? |
| westsidestory | Posted – 4/22/2008 6:53:58 PM | show profile Vilgal: the craft - some say the art - of writing for SEO is to create compelling information and simply make it more findable on the internet by its natural audience. Every writer who writes for web (or writes for publications with online editions) should pay some attention to optimizing the content to make it just that little bit more web-searcheable. This skill is useful to all forms of journalism, including essays, and certainly to blog writing and public relations/marketing. As someone pointed out, there are books and online resources that give suggestions on how to improve the chances your article (or other content) gets seen by your target audience. |
| noname1234 | Posted – 4/22/2008 7:02:40 PM | show profile It's possible we might be conflating two things here, but I'm not sure. All writers on the web should be aware of SEO best practice to help their content reach its audience via search, as westsidestory said. I don't normally hear that called "SEO writing"; it's just part of writing for the web. I'm not sure if the OP was talking about something different: The (shady) practice of creating "fake" articles or sites whose sole purpose is attracting an audience via search whose members then click on adwords. That has nothing to do with journalism or writing quality content. |
| snappiness | Posted – 4/23/2008 7:53:32 AM | show profile The writing I've done for the Web -- the magazines don't care about SEO practices. The corporations do. So, for me, SEO writing is corporate work. The copy emphasizes content (definitely has to be researched and crafted) but you're applying SEO practices to it as well (inserting the keywords, getting them in the heads/sub-heads, etc). So, it's kind of a weird little branch of copywriting. Any time I write something in which the content isn't the sole priority, I consider that corporate work, not true journalism. |
| InsomniacNOT | Posted – 4/23/2008 8:56:55 AM | show profile Lots of newspapers -- including NYT and London Times -- have used SEO people to make sure their copy doesn't get buried. It's as important to use your keywords correctly on the web as it is not to bury the lede. Doing what you can to ensure your copy doesn't get buried isn't corporate, it's smart. OTH, a lot of business people seem to think SEO will make bad copy acheive high rankings, which is delusional. |
| noname1234 | Posted – 4/23/2008 10:39:53 AM | show profile I think how much attention is paid to SEO is more a function of how sophisticated the company is about the web; I haven't really found it to be an publishing company/corporate split. I work on the web in a primarily print company, and we are SEO-crazy here. The print editors don't know or care about it; it's the folks who oversee all digital operations -- especially our fulltime SEO specialist -- who make sure this is front and center. |
| sunnyskies | Posted – 4/23/2008 11:06:21 AM | show profile | email poster SEO is critical, and you don't need ad buys including Google I've optimized several of my own sites. They always rank for the keywords on Google's first page. I will say this only: it's about your HTML home page METAs, using your keywords in your copy but sparingly, and using a certain technique of submitting your site to search engines. It will not impact on one-timers vs. recurring visitors -- that's a function of your building a community of unique visitors. |
| InsomniacNOT | Posted – 4/23/2008 5:28:29 PM | show profile Ok sunnyskies, I'll bite. Good SEO does not guarantee good Google placement. Google's algorithm is based mainly on links to a site. The more links and the better the quality of those links the higher you rank. You can have the best SEO in the world but if you're writing about a popular subject and don't have links, you're in trouble. All I can say is you must be writing about something that is not that common and has unusual keywords or you also have lots of links. I mean it's pretty easy to be number one for your own name if it's not that common. It's another thing entirely to be number one for Barack Obama or chocolate cake or mutual funds or scuba diving if you get my drift. |
