Since the early days of search engine optimization, keywords and content have always been vital to achieving your goals. Starting back in the days when we used to include every slightly relevant keyword in our meta tags, it’s been obvious that search engines love text. The more advanced engines have become over the years, the more complex and sophisticated many writers have become with their search engine copywriting.

Supposed formulas, saturation levels, and other mysterious concoctions have been developed to help us outsmart the engines. However, what we should have been doing all this time was writing for the visitor first and engines second. Why? Because creating a site that is loved by visitors is a primary factor in linking, ranking, and overall marketing. As engines make leaps and bounds with more personalized and efficient searches (such as semantic search), natural search engine optimization writing is even more important.

Instead of just indexing the copy on your site, the engines are learning to “understand” what a page is about. The irony is that as search engines get more complex, the “formula” for SEO writing gets simpler.

write naturally

In the future, search engines will look for web pages that reflect a natural tone with the copy. Is it obvious that key phrases are introduced whenever possible? Does each headline/subheadline, image tag, and comment tag have a keyphrase included? Does the copy sound fake, unnatural, and stiff? If so, spiders and bots will recognize it and possibly flag it as something to beware of.

Take a look at this beautiful copy I found while browsing the other day. (I have replaced the key phrases used in the original copy with the word “wherever” so as not to embarrass the site owner.)

Wherever vacation rentals

Vacation rentals in Anywhere for vacations in Anywhere

Everywhere vacation rentals direct from owners. Rent a vacation villa in Wherever or perhaps a 2-6 bedroom apartment in Wherever. Wherever vacation rentals for Wherever vacations are easily found by searching the Wherever Holiday website. Wherever Holiday Rentals offers Wherever holiday apartments and holiday villas.

Find accommodation in Wherever by clicking on the Wherever map or on the active links. Below you’ll see apartments, villas and townhomes for vacation rentals in awesome Wherever accommodations.

Suppose someone walked into your travel agency and asked for help. You will most likely ask what they were looking for. They’d reply, “Vacation rentals anywhere. What can you show me?” Would you really take off the rant above? Can you imagine talking to a real customer face to face and saying, “We offer vacation rentals in Wherever on Wherever and we can find many apartments, villas and houses in Wherever”? I do not think.

Tips for writing in natural language

1) Vary your keywords/phrases. For example, if a particular keyword phrase you want to target is “14 karat gold jewelry,” consider also using keyword phrases like “14 karat gold watches” or “gold wedding bands” or similar. This will give you a variety of phrases within your copy.

2) Read it out loud. When you read your copy out loud, you’ll get a better idea of ​​whether it sounds unnatural. If you wouldn’t say out loud, “We make 14k gold jewelry and have been making 14k gold jewelry for 10 years. If you need 14k gold jewelry, just view our catalog,” then don’t include that in your copy either.

3) Split key phrases. As searchers become more knowledgeable about how to find what they are looking for in the engines, they use increasingly longer search queries, some of which simply don’t make any sense. For example, I recently had to use the phrase “Downtown Pittsburgh real estate” when writing on-page SEO copy. Since this search string was not easily worked out as that exact phrase, I split it up. One sentence I used it in said, “When looking for commercial real estate in Pittsburgh, first check out downtown listings for exceptional locations and prices.” The words are still in the same order with little pauses in between. When you can’t use an “as is” phrase, this is a very viable alternative.

Be aware of the direction search engine optimization is taking. The closer you get to writing in natural language, the better off you’ll be. It only makes sense to build a site now that will last for the long haul. Especially when that site will have a better chance of attracting the engines and their visitors favorably.

by Karon Thackston © 2004

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