SEO is one of the most talked-about aspects of online marketing and is so complex that it will be dealt with separately in chapter 6. Don’t worry: you do not need to know or apply any SEO principles until then. For now, here is a brief explanation for the sake of completeness.
Search engines such as Google have special processes for deciding which web page shows up first in their lists of search results. SEO is the process of getting your page as high up on that list as possible. There are many technical ways of improving your position on this list, but two of them relate specifically to copywriting: keyword optimisation, and the hierarchy of content on a web page.
Here is a primer on these concepts so that you can keep them in mind for this chapter – you will learn how to use them properly.
• Keywords. When somebody searches online, one of the ways that a search engine knows that your page is relevant to the search request is that the same words appear on the web page as in the search term that was used. Therefore, the more frequently these “keywords” appear on a web page, the
more relevant that page will be to a search engine for the query that was made.
• Content hierarchy. Another way that a search engine identifies relevant content is by analysing content areas on a web page. Some areas are valued above others in terms of importance: for example, a search engine considers the main page header to be more important than sub-headers. Similarly, it will consider sub-headers to be more important than a paragraph of body copy. Therefore, if your chosen keywords appear in these important places, such as in your page’s main header, a search engine will see the page as more relevant for search queries relating to that keyword.
Once you have worked through chapter 6, return to this section to see how you can apply SEO principles to the points mentioned above.
* Tailoring your web copywriting
All web copywriting should follow the rules spelled out above. On top of that, every specific location has its own nuances. To refine your style, answer the following
questions:
1. What is the purpose of this platform?
2. Who is the audience?
3. What content do they want?
4. What action do you want them to take?
Have a look at the table in section 3.6 to see a summary of the following content.