Buzzwords Copywriting Manchester

Ah, the mysteries of search engine optimization (SEO)!  I thought I knew a bit about it, but the recent rankings of the website copywriting page of my main website (www.buzzwords.ltd.uk/website_copywriting.htm) have puzzled and pleased me in equal measure.

After languishing in the bottom half of the first page on Google since the page was re-written last year - a ranking many people would die for, but not really good enough to attract the premium enquiries in what is, let’s face it, a pretty niche neck of the woods! - the website copywriting page of Buzzwords’ website now ranks at #2 for the keywords ‘website copywriter/copywriters’ and #5 for ‘website copywriting’.

Nothing’s been added or taken away (as they say).  So what’s happened to make this important change?  The page had been optimized in the usual way for meta tags and so on, and the copy had the ‘right’ keyword density.

There are only two factors I can think of which may have made the difference.  First, the content has ‘matured’.  To explain: if older links are looked upon more favourably by search engines, will body copy be seen in the same way?  Second, Google’s latest algorithms may very likely include a weighting based on Latent Semantic Indexing (LSI).

In other words, linguistic analysis gives a site brownie points for using clear,  approachable syntax.  If that’s what’s happening with my website - or if anyone out there can give me some other good reasons for the sudden improvement in the ranking for the mainstream keywords I’ve mentioned - please let me know.

Listen to some SEO commentators and you’d be forgiven for assuming that meta tags are no longer a factor in the way search engines rank websites.  Following a recent Google declaration, greater  emphasis is now placed on the number of quality, inbound links which point to a site.

It’s obvious that this will be a good indicator of the ‘importance’ of a site but, it should be said, meta tags will always remain as the signposts which indicate relevance of content.  That in turn must surely mean that  meta tags will always be an important part of on-page SEO.

Fortunately, the search engine robots can now identify ‘natural’ language patterns in online copy.  The death of ‘keyword stuffing’ is not only good news for the readers of websites who now no longer have to endure unreadable and repetitive text.  It also frees up copywriters to write in the way they prefer - in real sentences that concentrate on the flow of ideas and information, rather than including as many keywords as possible.  

Keywords are still important, of course.  The difference now is that they should be used carefully - in <h1> tags certainly, and also in introductory sentences. They also have a place in <title> tags - the nearer the beginning of the line the better.  (And if you can also include main keywords in a page URL, this too will help with ranking.)

The conclusion to all this is that mega tags are alive and well but - in an increasingly c0mpetitive web environment - the search engines have been forced to look at inbound links to sort the wheat from the chaff. 

And yet, this is far from being a perfect science - even with all the powerful semantic analysis tools at the search engines’ disposal.  Generating links from online articles and PR, for example, is a process that is still open to abuse by automated submission software but, here again, search engines are ‘on the case’ with their increased awareness (and intolerance) of duplicate content.

It’s important for online copywriters (and those who brief them) to remember that search engines exist solely to provide the most relevant search results for their punters.  Quality content will bring its own rewards in increased uptake among the online community.  Meta tags, similarly, will always be needed to invite the search engines to ‘come see about me’.