FreeCopywriting.com - 10 Things Customers Expect from an SEO Copywriter

By Glenn Murray, Director of Divine Write Copywriting

From the perspective of a business owner, webmaster, or marketing manager, the change exhibited by the Internet is profoundly exciting, yet profoundly disturbing. The information (and misinformation and disinformation) it offers, the business benefits it promises, and the rules it is governed by change at such a rapid rate that it’s almost impossible to keep up.

These changes have led to a growing appreciation of the value of quality web copy. This appreciation has, in turn, led to an influx of opportunistic ‘copywriters’ promoting themselves as website copywriters or SEO copywriters. Don’t get me wrong, many / most are excellent, but most clients are wary and will definitely shop around.

The purpose of this article isn’t to scare you; it’s to help you convince the client of your honest service and excellent results.

So with that in mind, take a look at the following ten tips. These are the things clients (rightfully) feel they have a right to expect from anyone wearing a name badge that reads “website copywriter”, “SEO copywriter”, “internet copywriter”, or “web copywriter”…

1) An understanding of SEO

Obviously, you have to show you have a solid understanding of the essentials of Search Engine Optimization. You must know that ranking is essentially the result of a website’s relevance (i.e. keywords) and importance (i.e. inbound links). There are a whole lot of other factors involved, but if you can't show the client you understand these two basics, they'll look elsewhere. If you’d like to refresh your SEO knowledge, take a look at SEO for CEOs, Writing SEO Copy, SEO Trade Secrets and Web Copy - How Much is Enough?. These articles should help you field just about any question a client might ask.

2) Proven experience

The proof is, as they say, in the pudding. It’s not enough that you can talk the talk; you must also be able to walk the walk. Clients will ask to see some examples of websites for which you've obtained some good rankings. Note that there are very few SEO copywriters out there who've worked on both keywords and link generation, so when a client finds one, they tend to snap ‘em up!

3) An understanding of how many keywords to use

Clients don’t want to fill up every page with every keyword they're targeting. They know that this simply dilutes their site’s relevance and reduces readability. So they'll ask their SEO copywriter how many keywords they would recommend targeting on each page. Although it's possible to target quite a few, you can only hope to target around 2 with any real agression. Any more and you'll impact readability.

4) Clear agreement on who will provide keywords

Someone needs to perform a keyword analysis in order to figure out what words you should be targeting. Some clients will expect you to do this. Although it's a reasonable expectation that an SEO copywriter should be able to do keyword analysis, it's not always the best approach. You might consider telling the client that it's quite often more cost-effective if someone a little closer to the business does it. Either way, make sure your agreement with the client makes it very clear who is performing this task. Don’t assume the client is going to do it, because they may assume you’re going to do it, and then you’ll be in trouble.

5) Keywords or keyword phrases

Clients expect their SEO copywriter to offer some advice regarding how specific you'll be with keywords. In most industries, the competition for keywords is so fierce that you’ll be forced to target very specific keywords in order to rank – at least at the outset. For instance, if the client is in IT, you probably wouldn’t start out by targeting the keyword “IT”. The competition is immense (at the time of writing, there were approx 3,240,000,000 results for this search in Google.com) and the IT giants already dominate the search engines for this keyword. Instead, try using a more specific keyword phrase like “IT infrastructure consulting new york” (at the time of writing, there were only around 4,000,000 results for this search in Google.com). The other benefit to targeting more specific keyword phrases is that you’ll generate more relevant leads for the client.

6) Agree on word count per page

Always make sure you provide an indication of the number of words you expect to write per web page. While it’s necessary to have a decent body of words on most of your web pages, you certainly shouldn’t have too many. What “too many” is all depends on the client's industry, the objective of the page, and the needs of your audience. It’s always a delicate balance, but it’s certainly possible to rank highly with only 100-200 words per page. Clients are beginning to understand that they don't need to pay for copy they don’t need!

7) Density targets & measure

SEO of a web page is NOT guess-work. Clients expect a good SEO copywriter to talk about density measures. This is a measure of the number of time the keyword phrase appears on the page. It’s expressed as a percentage of the total word count of the page. So if your page has 200 words, and your keyword phrase appears 10 times, its density is 5%. As a rule of thumb, you should be aiming for a density of approximately 5% for your primary keyword phrase and 3-5% for your secondary keyword phrase. If your density measures are much higher than this, readability will be reduced, and you’ll risk being perceived as spam by the search engines. Your client will be at great pains to ensure you understand keyword density, are prepared to state the target density for each keyword phrase, and are also happy to be measured by that standard.

8) Where to place keywords

The question of keyword placement has been the subject of much debate amongst SEO copywriters. While it is still unclear how much impact placement has, there is a general consensus that it has SOME impact. Popular opinion has it that keywords are more effective if they appear in headings, bolded text, links, and generally toward the beginning of the page.

9) Some comment on structure & links

Websites are generally better indexed by search engines if their spiders can traverse the entire site using text links. This means you should be linking each page to every other page using text links. If your site is complex, this may be impractical, so your you'll need to create a hierarchical structure for your site. First, break your subject material down into categories. Then for each category, write a summary page. These summary pages should be accessible from higher level pages via text links. They should also be accessible from each other. Each summary page should link – using text links – to a number of pages discussing the finer details of the category. And each detail page in a particular category should link to every other detail page in that category (once again, using text links). This way the spiders are able to travel from the top of the hierarchy to the bottom, and from left to right across any level.

10) Don’t make grand promises

As an SEO copywriter, you can play a significant role in increasing your client's search engine ranking. But you can’t do it overnight. By optimizing the site for your client's target keyword phrases, you're simply telling the search engines what the site is about. The real work behind a high ranking is in the generation of links to the site. Customers are beginning to understand this, so if you tell the client you can dramatically increase their ranking in a matter of hours or days, they'll be justifiably wary.

Conclusion

As an SEO copywriter, you're a valuable addition to any client's marketing function. But you need to make sure you think about the sorts of things they'll want to know when they call, and know those things.