The Importance of SEO-Friendly Copy

The importance of SEO-friendly copy eludes many website designers and developers. Those who understand the basic concepts, however, find that traffic to their sites increases dramatically. Of course, this creates an opportunity to share the site's message with more and more people. Whether that translates into more sales for a retail site, more volunteers for a nonprofit project, or simply more well-informed people, the importance of SEO-friendly copy should not be overlooked.

What Is SEO?

The term "SEO" stands for "search engine optimization," and it refers to various technique that website developers can use to help their sites rank when someone does a Google, Yahoo, or other kind of search. Think about when you have done a search for a particular term. The search engine provides you with a list of results, and you generally visit one or more of those that appear on the first page. Sometimes you may visit sites from more than one page of results, but the majority of the time, those ranking higher are going to get more traffic. So, it stands to reason that you want your page to rank as high as possible when someone is doing a search for topics related to your site.

How Do You Get Higher Rankings?

The exact formula or algorithm used by any search engine is considered to be a trade secret. After all, if they explained exactly how to get the highest ranking, everyone would use those methods, and the entire process would be worthless. Instead, web developers have been able to determine some of the aspects of the various algorithms and try to optimize their sites by using those methods.

SEO-friendly copy is one of the methods used. It revolves around using "keyword phrases" within the copy to help cue the search engines as to what that particular web page is about. For example, this article is about "the importance of SEO-friendly copy," and you will therefore find that phrase used throughout. Because it occurs repeatedly, that gives the search engines a clue that this article is probably focused on that topic.

Unfortunately, some web developers overuse this method, and the result is what we call "keyword stuffing." If you simply repeat a single word or phrase over and over again, the search engines' algorithms are likely to take note and will consider your site to be "spam". In many cases, they will stop indexing your site altogether; so it will never rank on the results pages, even if someone does a search for exactly what you have to offer.

The best way to work with this is to write an article that people would actually want to read. In most cases, a human has entered keywords into the search box and is therefore looking for something that is informative and useful. Following a link to a page that is stuffed with keywords in an attempt to get someone to make a purchase is annoying and does not result in sales. However, if the person does a search and ends up landing on a page with thoughtful, helpful information about a product, in addition to the chance to make a purchase, there is a much better likelihood of them converting into a sale. Of course, there are plenty of factors to consider (the placement, frequency, and choice of keywords, for example); but in a nutshell, this conversion to sales exemplifies the importance of SEO-friendly copy.