Wednesday, June 13, 2007
SEO Basics for Writers and Editors
First, some guidelines on what this is and is not.
This is intended to help a non-technical content producer - like a writer or an editor - to visualize how a page can be written with search engine spiders in mind.
This is NOT:
• A magic formula for search engine domination
• A blueprint for commercial success
• A set of hard-and-fast rules
• A technical spec for your developer (that's a different discussion)
This is mostly based on the assumption that you have content that needs to be published and you want it to be reasonably well-prepared for search engines. You aren't necessarily writing strategically with SEO as a primary goal, and you may have considerations beyond search engine optimization, such as brand image and editorial standards that make more aggressive SEO tactics impractical. In short, you just want to be in the ballpark.
I've attempted to illustrate these guidelines in a downloadable SEO page mockup.
I'm going to throw in just enough basic HTML to provide a minimum context for an editor or writer.
Simple HTML Page Structure
A web page is divided into two main sections as follows:
<html>
<head>
Meta tags: title, description, keywords (not displayed on page)
</head>
<body>
Visible page content
</body>
</html>
The Head Section - Meta Tags
The head section contains information about the page that is not seen in the page display. The body section contains the visible page content.
The head section contains the title tag, the meta description tag, and the meta keyword tag. These meta tags are simply additional information about your page. The title, and often the description, are also what is displayed on a search engine's results page:
Meta tags alone are NOT a magic pill (in case you're still living in the 90's). By themselves they're mostly worthless, but they can play an important support role. The only way that's true is if the meta tags are unique to that page (not identical throughout the site as you so often see).
Once you understand this last point, then the meta tags become useful, and the title tag in particular becomes very important and potentially powerful. In a brief overview we can't go into this depth, but in short, the title tag is given a lot weight by search engines, and the meta description may be displayed in search results. Displayed together on a search results page, these become the copy that will motivate a searcher to click on your listing.
Note: if you're fortunate, you have a content management system (CMS) that allows you to add these tags to your page, and to edit them as often as you like. If not, you'll need to pass them off to your developer for insertion. The latter is not ideal, because a simple 60-second task could take days or weeks to be completed if you're competing with other development tasks. Once completed it can be more days/weeks before you see the results of your tweaks in search engine results. Sound frustrating? Believe me it IS!
The Body Section - Visible Page Content
Most writers or editors I've worked with really, really don't want to know all the granular details of page optimization. They just want to write good content. However, I've also found that most appreciate knowing a few basics that can help leverage their writing toward improved search engine visibility.
The following mostly addresses page factors that most writers/editors have direct control over, plus a couple where that might not be the case, but for which editors and writers might be in a position to suggest or recommend.
For those of you who might be a little more knowledgeable, I won't be going into detail about certain page elements, such as "alt" tags, navigational elements, etc., because in my experience most writers and editors do not have direct access to those page elements.
Heading Tags
Most writers will bold their title and subheads. For search engines you should consider using heading tags instead (which bolds them by default). Heading tags are part of the HTML standard, intended to support logical document structure. Most decent HTML editors allow non-technical users to apply these tags.
An HTML heading tag looks like this: <h1>your heading</h1>
In most cases this would be the tag for your visible page title. Your subheads would look like this:
<h2>your subhead</h2>
If the document structure requires additional levels of subheads, they progress logically: <h3>, <h4>, etc.
If your editing tool is up to date, you shouldn't have to worry about formatting your subheads. You should be able to simply highlight the text and select the right subhead tag from a pulldown menu.
One important note. The HTML standard assigns default font sizes to heading tags. If your heading tags look really big and really ugly, you can choose a more appropriate size and style with your editing tool, or better yet, have your developer create a default style for each level of heading tag (h1 and h2 are sufficient for most folks), and then you'll never have to think about formatting your subheads.
Now, before we get into other page elements, let's back to why we're even talking about this stuff.
First, while search engines might give you some general guidelines, they don't give you all the proprietary details of how to rank well in their search results. Most of what are considered best practices are the result of observation and information-sharing amongst thousands of practitioners.
If you're simply a writer trying to get a little more mileage out of your content, the following is a summary of those best practices for your needs. The most responsible way I can say this is that these practices are "widely reported" to have a positive impact on your search engine visibility. If you're looking for "deep dark secrets" for " gaming" the search engines, you're on the wrong page. 
OK, ready? If you want to improve your search engine placement for a particular page, use your keywords early (prominence) and often (frequency) and make every effort to include them in the page elements that we've been talking about.
"Frequency" simply means: use your primary and secondary keywords in reasonable doses throughout the page, including:
Head section:
- Title
- Meta description tag
- Meta keyword tag (not too important, 2-3 phrases at most)
Body section:
- Page title <h1>
- Subheads <h2>
- Paragraphs (write as you normally would but make more of an attempt to work your keywords into the flow of copy than you might have done in the past, from top to bottom of the page.
"Prominence" mostly means to find ways to use your keywords early on the page, and early in various page elements. Believe it or not even this can become a topic all it's own, but to keep things simple here are some examples of what prominence can mean:
- Early in the title tag: try to place your primary keyword first, and work secondary keywords in as possible, If your company name has to be in the title tag, consider putting at the end. Also remember that the title tag is what's displayed in search results, and it needs to make sense, so do your best to find the right balance.
- Early on the page: title, first paragraph
- If you have subheads, try for prominence there as appropriate. These might be a good place for your secondary keywords.
Again, if you have corporate branding and editorial good taste to consider, you don't have to go overboard. You'd be surprised how even a little attention to this stuff can go a long way.
Finally, a few brief notes on some other page elements that are noted on the page mockup. Some of these take us into areas which can consume volumes on their own, but worth mentioning in passing.
Anchor text simply means the text that appears in the links on your page. Good writers and editors tend to link to related content anyway, on their own site or externally . However, many of them will say something like "for more information, click here" or "for more information go to some-big-long-url.com". Both of these are examples of wasted opportunities.
Find ways to make use of anchor text on your primary and secondary keywords. It's very likely to help keyword relevance on the current page, and it strengthens the page that it's linking to, especially if there's a good match between the anchor text and the topic of the destination page (the heart of the Google PageRank algorithm is based on linking relationships and anchor text, so this far from trivial).
In small doses, bolding a keyword can help too, but don't get stupid about it. Make sure it makes editorial sense as well.
Filed under Search Marketing by hyperlinkguerrilla
