Today begins a new life for the Work Media (“ICanBeFound”) blog. We will now be updating the blog almost every day with short articles related to Internet marketing, along with longer, more in-depth articles that will be available through the Work Media newsletter (you can sign up at www.workmedia.net).
Today we’re talking about designing your web site for two entities: people and search engines. Both of these groups have to be made happy, but they look for completely different things. People need to be led – guided to the desired action. This often involves the use of presentational graphics or multimedia, combined with well-written copy. Search engines just need to be able to get to the main copy on your web pages as quickly as possible. Search engines don’t care what your site looks like – they can’t “see” it like humans do – they only care about what your site says. So what you want to do is write benefit-filled, keyword-rich web copy. If your site makes heavy use of multimedia at the expense of text, you really lose out on both fronts. The search engines will not rank the page because they won’t be able to tell what the page is about, and you lose the opportunity to use words to convince your prospect to take action.
Don’t be afraid to write lots of copy. A human prospect who is really interested in your service will take the time to read about what you have. And search engines love content-rich sites. So if you take the time to first write strong sales copy, and then tweak it to achieve more desirable ratios of keyword density, keyword prominence, etc., then you will be well on your way to satisfying both groups.
We will pick up this topic again and discuss specifically how to write for search engines and how to write for people.
Call or email us if you have any questions about writing for search engines and humans.