Note: This post is a way to introduce traditional copywriters to writing with Search in mind. It follows my previous posts so you may want to check those out, or see http://passion2publish.com for all the entries.

What's the difference between a fortune teller and a search marketer? No really, what's the difference? The funny hat? Both rely on a keen understanding of the customer and the environment -- and for search marketing, it all starts with the keyword.

Selecting Keyword Phrases

Before you can engage in any SEO strategy, you must have a complete understanding of your reader or customer so that you can optimize with a specific intent. For example, if you’re writing an article about recent entries to the MP3-player market, you probably wouldn’t optimize for ”portable digital music playing devices,” because it isn’t what your readers would search for - in comparison to ”MP3 players,” it just sounds robotic.

Not all topics and groups of readers are that easy to predict, however. Narrowing down the specific 2-3 keyword phrases for some content may be more difficult. Luckily, there are tools online which can help you predict and measure the most crucial search terms for your content. (There are alot of these tools out there, these are just my fav)

• Wordtracker: This tool is made for copywriting with keywords. As you research potential phrases, Wordtracker will tell you the daily search volume for that phrase, related searches and even the exact words and frequency of use that will help you rank among the top page of search results. The main service is not free, but this tool is.

• Overture Keyword Tool: This is a tool meant for use with Yahoo!’s pay-per-click advertising system—but it will return the monthly search volume for specific keyword phrases and their synonyms. A good rule of thumb is to select a keyword phrase with more than 300 monthly searches.  FREE

• Google Sandbox Tool: Much like Overture’s tool, this will offer synonyms and search volumes (graphically) for keyword phrases. The added bonus here is you can see the strength of advertising competition for the term—the more competition, the harder it will be to rank higher on a new page. You will want to select keyword phrases that fall somewhere between having a large search volume and lower competition. FREE

The list of tools continues to grow -- here are some good resources to check out once you start your research:

• Speaking of Competition, the Keyword Difficulty Tool will help estimate just how hard it will be to compete for your selected keyword phrase.
• SEOBook has some great tools that combine the links above for comparison.*Blog thought: There was recently a great blog post from one of my many daily read SEO Blogs with a huge list of keyword tools, but when I tried to find it in my Google Reader I had a troubling discovery -- Google Reader has NO SEARCH FUNCTION........

Strategically Deploying your Keyword Phrases

Now that you have selected 2-3 rich keyword phrases, it’s time to put them to use in increasing your search ranking:

• Folder Names: If this is your first article regarding ‘MP3 players’ for your site, consider asking for a new folder to be created on the site with the exact title of your top keyword phrase. Separate words with hyphens, for example “MP3-players,” could be the directory name.
• The Page Title: Here, you will want to use your top keyword phrase in the title and then for branding, you can include the site’s name at the end. However, you want to add a word or two to the beginning of the title that is not relevant to your keywords—why? Search engines are getting better and better at spotting spam, or SEO’s trying to fool them. For example, your title should look like, “In-Depth MP3 Player Reviews | Electronic Buyer’s Guide Home”  And remember to avoid:
  • Avoid repeating keywords in the title; many search engines will regard this as spam.
  • Use distinct titles for every page on your site, repeating won’t help you.
  • Keep the title tag below 60 characters.
  • Avoid using special characters in the titles such as & and trademarks—this could confuse a search engine.

• The Headlines: Developers call the main headline of a page the ”H1” tag, and subsequent headlines are referred to as H2, H3 and so on. Search engines pay attention to these tags when determining what a specific page is really talking about. Keep your headlines down below 60 characters as well.And remember:
  • Your H1 tag, or main headline, is the place to use your top keyword phrase. Use only one H1 tag per page.
  • Use H2’s and H3’s for your secondary keyword phrases or semantically related terms to your top keyword phrase, such as ending the terms in –ing, -ed, etc.
  • An example of an H1 tag could be: “The Best MP3 Players on the Market” and your H2 tag could be: “Video MP3 Players Offer Sight and Sound”
  • Avoid using special characters in the titles such as & and trademarks—this could confuse a search engine.

• The page copy: sprinkle your different keyword phrases throughout the page copy, keeping in mind these pointers:
  • Use a keyword phrase somewhere around once every 250 words.
  • Stemming—Use plural, singular and ing versions of your keywords often.
  • Use related terms that seem natural fits to your keyword phrases.
  • Don’t go overboard—as writers, don’t let SEO bloat or destroy good copy. Users want to be able to read your article and gain insight as well—and if they like your article enough to link to it, search engines will reward you.

• Meta-content: Meta-tags are tags in the physical code of the site that a few years ago played a pivotal role in SEO. Nowadays, they are mostly used to gauge if a site is overloading a search engine with keywords. The two tags you should define in your copy-deck are:
  • Keywords meta-tag: It’s best to keep this list short, only use your top 2-3 keyword phrases, delete any redundant words and do not use commas. You may use synonyms and stem words if you feel they are important search terms. For example, your list could look like: “MP3 player review reviews video portable digital nano zune ipod”
    • Never use words in the list that you do not use in the actual copy of the page—this is spamming.
    • Never use more than 30 words in your keyword list.
  • Description meta-tag: The description tag is a short blurb on what exactly a user might find on the page. Don’t go too heavy on your keywords here—think of it more as a short advertisement for the page. Keep the length below 150 characters.

• When you’re finished, check your keyword density. Keyword density measures the rate of occurrence for your keyword terms in your page content.
  • This is a great tool to check your density.
  • The magic range for search engines seems to be 1.5% to 3%. Any use of keywords above this range can be seen as an attempt to spam search engines.

Whew, did you make it all the way through this post? Quite lengthy, but for our writers and editors here at Imagination it's a good introduction to writing with keywords. I want to stress Introduction here -- not every page on every site falls into these rigid guidelines, but the document starts to convey the importance of search when writing a page of copy. Soon look out for a structured copy deck you can use when writing for the web!

NOTE FROM RAND: We're not big fans of keyword density - see Dr. Garcia's KW Density of Non-Sense for more on why. I'd be very wary of taking the advice of 1.5-3% density, but much of the other advice given in this submission, while basic, is valuable.