Writing for Search Engines

By Chris Sherman, Search Engine Watch, Mar 23, 2005

Success with search engine ranking almost always means striking a delicate balance between applying search optimization techniques to web pages and creating high-quality, meaningful content. Effective writing for search engines is one of the crucial key elements to achieving this balance.

Writing for a computer that's looking for patterns that can be detected by an algorithm, while simultaneously crafting the same language for a human being who's looking for meaningful information is not an easy task. Putting aside the debate over whether writing can be taught (I believe it can), there are many techniques that can be applied to written text to please both search engines and people.

In Successful Search Engine Copywriting, Heather Lloyd-Martin offers a comprehensive guide to creating search-friendly web pages that also satisfy the information needs of human users.

The book focuses on the technical aspects of optimizing writing for search engines, but Heather's engaging writing style makes it an easy, fun and compelling read. Importantly, she also stresses the importance of the ultimate target of effective writing: the searcher/web user. "Never, ever sacrifice your tone, feel or usability for the search engines," she writes.

Beyond creating pleasing copy, the book stresses the importance of creating content that inspires readers to take action. Getting users to "convert," whether it's buying a product, signing up for a newsletter, or bookmarking a page is the ultimate goal of almost all web sites. And yet writing copy that converts is often neglected by search engine optimizers who often obsess over technical tactics such as tweaking tags or measuring keyword density ratios.

Throughout the book, Heather offers concrete, specific examples, both of effective writing and of mistakes to avoid. These examples not only demonstrate how to gain search engine (and user) success, they offer effective and valuable advice on staying out of trouble.

Several sections go beyond the mechanics of effective writing for search engines. What should you do, for example, when you are operating under a number of constraints imposed by your legal department that severely limit your choice of language? What can you do when you've got great content that simply can't be crawled because your web server is a search-hostile content management system? The book offers useful answers and strategies for coping with these and many other issues.

In the first appendix, Heather offers interviews with several industry experts, including Danny Sullivan, Greg Boser and Andy Mindel (creator of the valuable Wordtracker tool). The second appendix features case studies, detailing how several sites went from virtual invisibility in the search engines to being highly successful, well-trafficked destinations.

Heather is a popular speaker at our Search Engine Strategies conferences and is a regular on the Writing for Search Engines panel. I've moderated this panel many times, and I always learn something new. A good example is what Heather calls "the Google SEO copywriting snippet trick for compelling descriptions" (and no, I'm not going to give it away; you'll need to come to SES or buy the book for that).

Successful Search Engine Copywriting is an excellent book. It's packed with solid, reliable information and techniques that can help improve the visibility of any site in search results. Perhaps more importantly, applying its lessons can also improve the overall success and increase the conversion rate and return on investment of a web site. The book should be on the must-read list for anyone wanting to hone their search engine optimization skills. It's also an excellent insight into an important part of the mechanics of search engines that's valuable for anyone who wants to have a better understanding of how these mysterious information-finding tools really work.

Successful Search Engine Copywriting
by Heather Lloyd-Martin
eBook, $US 97

Search Headlines

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Yahoo Fires Back At Google... CBS News   Mar 23 2005 12:02PM GMT

36% of online ad spending goes to search engines... ZDNet   Mar 23 2005 6:12AM GMT

MSN vs. Google: Major effort not yet turning tide... Puget Sound Business Journal   Mar 22 2005 11:56PM GMT

Building a Better Mousetrap: The Search Engines and Your Desktop... dmnews.com   Mar 22 2005 11:47PM GMT

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Yahoo's game of photo tag... CNET News.com   Mar 22 2005 9:03PM GMT

Will another Ask Jeeves bidder show up?... Marketwatch.com   Mar 22 2005 5:41PM GMT

Google Talks to Google X Clones... Search Engine Round Table   Mar 22 2005 4:42PM GMT

Search players face survival test... The Deal   Mar 22 2005 3:31PM GMT

Ask Jeeves finds a way to rise above... San Francisco Chronicle   Mar 22 2005 3:27PM GMT

Google to Drop AFP from News Index... eWeek   Mar 22 2005 3:23PM GMT

Integrating Search With TV Ads: The Next Generation... ClickZ Today   Mar 22 2005 3:16PM GMT