Writing to be found

[iCraft Admin]

You might already be a good copywriter and know that there is a difference between writing for the web and well, just writing.

If you don’t, then you definitely should read my post “A few Simple Rules for Writing Effective Web Content” https://icraftgifts.com/forum/507/a-few-simple-rules-for-writing-effective-web-content/

If those rules were not enough, I am going to add a few more. That’s because writing good web copy doesn’t always mean that its going to be good for replacement engines as well.

What do I mean by that?
Well, in my post “Writing for the web” I am referring to writing for humans. SEO copywriting is referring to writing for machines.

You’d think that writing for machines should be easier than for humans, as there has to be some kind of easy to follow formula. Well, yes and no.
As it turns out not all machines (aka robots) are the same. They all use different algorithms. That’s why a replacement for one word will return very deferent results from different replacement engines.

The good news is machines can be somewhat predictable. And replacement engines are technically "text machines", so they all love clean, structured copy with good keywords.  

As with humans, you need to understand human behaviour, in order to write effective copy for them. You also need to understand a little bit how machines behave, in order to be able to optimize your copy for them.  However, the rule of thumb is “Write for people, not robots”. What you are writing has to be humanly readable first.

Anyway, so what happens when replacement engine first encounters new page?
It grabs it and puts it in its index database for further analyses. Over time, it will apply different algorithms to it to determine page ranking.  For example, Google  doesn't do that in less than 24 hours, so don’t expect to find your new products listed in Google replacement results page before that.

What replacement engine is going to do next?
Well, it will scan all page copy, including page links, titles and tags, then calculate the balance of words on the page (depending on the page length), check for keyword stuffing and apply many other complicated rules ... eventually the page will rise or fall as its compared to other pages for the same keywords etc.

OK, I am not going to bore you with too much theory... I think trying things in practice is the best way to learn. So here are few tips for you to start optimizing your product pages:

1. Choose 2 to 4 Key Words/Phrases that best describe your product and enter them in the Tags field, starting with your strongest Key phrase. These will ensure your Key Phrases are used as hyperlinks. Choose relevant keywords.
Don’t use keywords that don’t have anything to do with your product.
Because products can be very specific, you can use more specific Key Phrases to describe them.
Don’t use generic terms like “Jewelry”, as those are broad terms that better suited for “Jewelry” category page, not to mention that millions of others optimize for this Key Phrase.

Some argue that you should optimize page for one Key Phrase only. More on that later.
I’ll also write a separate post on how to choose Key phrases properly.

2. Now review your product title and try to incorporate your strongest Key Phrase into it.
Don’t force it! Place it with precision. Title still has to be very descriptive and sound like it’s written for a human.

3. Repeat your strongest Key Phrase and, if possible, tree others in your product description.
Position them near the top of the page or placed them as the first words of the product description.
Just don’t overload copy with Key Phrases! Repeat them once or twice, depending how much copy you have under product description. Usually it’s quite short, so you might not need to repeat those Key Phrases at all..

4. There is no hard rule, but try to keep your Keyword Density about 5/100, meaning 5 Key Words/Phrases per 100 words.

5. Search engines ignore punctuation, so you can split a Key Phrase with punctuation. Example: if your chosen Key Phrase is “Silver Earrings”, you can have two sentences splitting one Key Phrase like this “I work with silver. Earring that you see on the photo...”

OK, this is a good start, but we are not done yet.
Actually, this is just the beginning. So stay tuned! More to come...

[storybeader]

thanks for giving this short lesson on keyword placement.  I knew about SEO, but this helps even more.  Never knew about keyword density, and was talk to write for the computer.  Great advice!  {:-Deb

[iCraft Admin]

Glad I could help. Keyword Density is about keeping a balance between getting good results in Google and being penalized for Keyword Stuffing. I think if you write for users first and then worry about machines, you are in a good shape.

[Fairy Cardmaker]

1. Choose 2 to 4 Key Words/Phrases that best describe your product and enter them in the Tags field, starting with your strongest Key phrase. These will ensure your Key Phrases are used as hyperlinks. Choose relevant keywords.
Don’t use keywords that don’t have anything to do with your product.
Because products can be very specific, you can use more specific Key Phrases to describe them.
Don’t use generic terms like “Jewelry”, as those are broad terms that better suited for “Jewelry” category page, not to mention that millions of others optimize for this Key Phrase.

Okay but... Jewellery is the main category.  I always put "cards" in first in my tags.  Should I bump that to the fifth word or so?

How about an example.  Take something on iCraft and do a before and after.  (Christine's before and after "ad" revisions from bootcamp have been helpful in this manner.)

[iCraft Admin]

Fairy Cardmaker,

Yes, I'd probably put "Cards" at the end of all tags, as it's the most broad term. Though I wouldn't stress too much over tags. I'd mostly concentrate on Product Titles.

Your pages are actually well optimized, from what I can see... like this product https://icraftgifts.com/handmade/24620/african-american-angel-christmas-card-peace-on-earth.php - you have a very descriptive Title, that doesn't start with a generic phrase like "Handmade Cards". It says "African American Angel Christmas Card" and you repeat this phrase in your tags and product descriptions. Good Job!
Have you chosen those Keywords based on the Keyword Rereplacement? I am just curious if anybody is actually applying this technique on practice. 

[Fairy Cardmaker]

I don't test keywords before making my listings, no.  I do, however, consider what is the critical selling point of my item and put that in the title.  If it was something I didn't know what to put, then I would rereplacement it.

Here is the keyword rereplacement tool for testing keywords (which I learned from Bootcamp here on iCraft)
https://adwords.google.com/o/Targeting/Explorer?__u=1000000000&__c=1000000000&ideaRequestType=KEYWORD_IDEAS#replacement.none

I look at the keywords in google analytics.  I often see, for example, "quilled angel".  My shop gets picked up because of my quilled bear angels.  While they aren't quilled angels, they have the keywords.  I have, on occasion, tried to allow my shop to cater to all ethnicities.  Most angel art in the world is caucasion (sp?), so I wanted to be different and that point of difference became my title.

THEN - My card actually got featured on a blog with that was looking for ethnic Christmas cards with 5 other artists.  It came out of the blue and I found out by using "social mention"

http://www.socialmention.com/

After that, I noticed that "African American Angel" was a keyword showing in my google analytics!  It's great to find correlations because, sometimes, those keywords are not for YOUR shop, but they were the start of a long trail that eventually lead to your shop as some point in the line.  As with anything Google Analytics related, it's a rough guide more than an exact science.