SEO copywriting and a new website

From an SEO copywriting viewpoint, any major changes to a website are interesting to say the least.  Before your very eyes, you have a living laboratory of how new additions to the site – new pages, edited pages, meta tags and so on – are performing in the search engine rankings.

It’s common knowledge, of course, that it can take several weeks for a web page to be indexed by the search engines.  (I have to admit, I’d always thought Yahoo took longer to index than Google, but this no longer appears to be the case – any thoughts?)

The indexing process is highly frustrating.  Perhaps the worst part is having to wait so long to see how the search engines are going to rank your page initially – and even after that, wondering whether the ‘ageing’ process will see your page gradually creep up the rankings.

What is fairly common, as I understand it, is for a page to go straight to Page One on Google – only to drop down to what is best described as its ‘natural level’ over future weeks.

Another interesting aspect is the indexing of pages in a highly competitive keyword category.  I’ve noticed that ‘long-tail’ keywords are indexed fairly readily and appear in high SERPS positions quite quickly.  This is obviously because of lack of competition for that keyword.

What I’m driving at is whether the ranking of pages for highly competitive keywords is more depedent on link popularity than on-page SEO copywriting elements?  And is the contribution of inbound links equally successful with a generic link to the core URL as it is to page-specific links?

Unless someone out there has secret access to Google’s algorithms (or you’re Matt Cutts!), these are questions that are probably more rhetorical than measurable.  All comments are welcome as ever, but one thing’s for sure: having a new website certainly sets an SEO copywriter’s mind racing!

Former copywriting client Royal Doulton goes bust

Sad to see one of Buzzwords’ major copywriting clients from the 1990s – Royal Doulton – go into administration today.  Its mainstay was the USA market, and I guess the exchange rate difference with the Euro didn’t help. 

The fact is, events in the financial markets over the last three months have damaged many companies.  Companies which were already weak – and Royal Doulton was one of them – never stood a chance.

It’s all a huge pity because the company’s products were of the highest quality – and the promotional products were marketed with great aplomb.  The social ‘collateral’ (ie. the fallout) of all this is, of course, the highly-skilled workforce (1,900 lost jobs in the UK, plus another 5,8000 jobs overseas). 

There’s a faint hope that a buyer may be found.  In the current economic climate, however, who’d be bold enough to take on a company whose product portfolio belongs to another, more genteel, age?