Tuesday, 10:45 am - Writing for Search Engines

They had this session in the enormous Marriott conference room, and it was too much space. I had a hard time choosing between this and the “Duplicate Content” session, but went with this because I do quite a bit of work with clients working on their writing.

Heather Lloyd-Martin started with a presentation that was largely similar to the one I saw her give in Seattle in May (see The Importance of Copywriting). Her main points:

• Know the appropriate “voice” for each page. Are you writing to inform? to persuade?
• 250 words per page is a happy medium
• 2/3 keywords per page, each mentioned 3/4 times per page = good idea
• focus on benefits, not features

Jill Whalen followed, and offered some good, specific examples of how copy can be made more descriptive with keywords; i.e., on an ABOUT US page, the phrase “our team” becomes “our search engine marketing firm.” She says to write for users, not for search engines (this session might need to be retitled). And she suggests trying to use as many variations of your keywords as possible — singulars, plurals, etc.; but don’t use misspellings or multiple spellings on the same page because it makes you look dumb!

tags: sessj06, sessanjose06, copywriting, heather lloyd-martin, jill whalen