Copywriting for the Web in 2016
We’ve been professional copywriters and online marketers on the Costa del Sol for over eight years (how time flies) and in this time the techniques for writing for the web have changed beyond all recognition. Thankfully now the focus is on creating interesting and engaging content which your clients want to read and hopefully share, rather than stuffing articles with keywords and trying to fool the search engines.
Back in 2011 I wrote this blog about Writing well online based on ten tips for producing powerful online articles. In fact a lot of it remains true, as it talks about the importance of having short powerful content with the most important points at the beginning and making use of numbered lists and bullet points, using links and thinking about the title – all still good advice for wannabe online marketers.
However the last point was don’t forget the SEO, a rather big point and something which has changed hugely with every Google update and can be a minefield. How many keywords to put into an article, and how to link them has been something which I have struggled with thanks to a traditional “offline” marketing background where press releases and articles were king. I always felt wrong loading up an article with keywords, as I didn’t like the way the article flowed with key phrases like “Costa del Sol copywriting” scattered through it.
It seems like Google agreed with me, and in their drive to give web users the best possible content, they have moved away from linked keyword phrases and high keyword density of specific words and phrases with each update they have made. They now use a clever thing called “latent semantic indexing” which allows the search engine to identify the most common words or phrases and even synonyms to see naturally occurring keywords. This allows us writers to write in a natural way about our chosen topic, making it a pleasant experience for the reader, rather than have to force in key phrases – a really great step forward. They now actually penalise pages which they feel have an unnaturally high keyword density, so beware.
However, keywords are still important, so choose your topic carefully so that the right keywords will naturally occur to attract the right kind of people for you. So a hotel in Marbella like our client The Urban Villa should be writing about “Great things to do in and around Marbella” which will appeal to travellers trying to find out destination information, plus specific activities that people are interested in and they would travel for, such as yoga or walking.
If you want to find out the latest facts about SEO and how you can incorporate this into your writing, we’d recommend the really useful guide 17 SEO Myths You Should Leave Behind in 2016 from Hubspot. It debunks many myths left over from the bad old days of keyword stuffing and black hat techniques like a huge list of keywords hidden in a footer or in white text on a white page, and shows you what you should be concentrating on in 2016. Happily for copywriters like me who are passionate about writing great content that people want to read, the key aim is producing a lot of well-written, interesting articles. Content most definitely is king in 2016!
If you’d like some help with creating fantastic online content, we provide blog writing and website writing services, as well as social media content creation. Please contact us to find out our rates and how we could help you promote yourself better online.