Guidelines to Give to My Copywriter

[StrayCat]

Hi,

I have employed a copywriter to write copy for client's new site and I need to make sure that I'm going to get SEO friendly copy. The client is a high end builder. I have a couple of questions...

1. At the moment, she is intending to keep the copy really brief for humans as the intention is just to get people to call up and book an introductory appointment and she believes that potential clients won't want to read a lot of text - just enough to get them to call. She is currently suggesting only 100 words per page (including the home page) but this seems really low to me - is this going to harm search rankings? What's the minimum number of words per page that I should ask for?

2. Doing keyword research using the Google keyword tool shows that the most popular keywords are for things like 'builders manchester' (i.e. service in plural followed by location). However, these phrases are quite difficult to write for. She wants to leave these phrases to be photo captions and then use much easier phrases such as 'builders in manchester' in the rest of the copy. She says that Google ingnores small words like 'in' so 'builders in manchester' will actually count as 'builders manchester'. Is this true? For the location I am targeting, the equivalent of 'builders in manchester' gets many less searches than 'builders manchester' according to Google's keyword tool set to exact match.

Are the recent Panda/Penguin updates likely to have changed the answers to the above questions (especially question 1)?

Thanks in advance for your help

[somes]

Hello!

1. I'll quote Matt Cutts on this "...just make sure that you have the words that you want to have on the page, make sure that they read naturally and you should be in pretty good shape." So, this tells us that there are no precise rules to stick to, only rough guidelines.

However, it's still better to have more than 100 words per page, especially on content pages (e.g. about page, features, blog posts, etc.), where it is wise to have a minimum of 300 words, but remember, only if it makes sense.

Here's a video by Matt Cutts on this topic...

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Rk4qgQdp2UA

2. Yes, search engines do ignore certain words, these are so-called "stop-words."

You can read about them here...

http://www.link-assistant.com/seo-stop-words.html

[StrayCat]

Thanks Marko.

If 'in' is a stop word and ignored by Google, then why does Google's keyword tool give such different exact results for [builders manchester] and [builders in manchester]?

[somes]

You're welcome!

If you're looking for exact searches, it will only show exactly how many people are looking for that exact search (with the "in" in it or without the "in" in it). If you turn it to broad, it will show the same. It can be a bit confusing, but it's actually really simple.

[StrayCat]

So with sometimes 10 times more searches happening for the search phrase without the 'in' - then surely I should be using that version in the page?

[somes]

No, because Google isn't that stupid about stop-words, they're special for a reason. Google knows that when you search for "builders manchester" you actually are looking for builders IN manchester and not the dude that snagged the exact-match domain (e.g. "www.manchesterbuilders.co.uk" -- in most meaningful cases).

However, it's possible to have something like "manchester builders" on your page and rank high for "builders manchester" -- understanding how people search can be very profitable.

I hope this clarifies everything... if not, SEOmoz has some great blog posts about keyword research.

[DavidKonigsberg]

You should focus on creating great link worthy content for your site that really educates and helps your visitors

[StrayCat]

Thanks David - but wouldn't a home page or landing page with only 100 words on it fall foul of Google's Panda/Penguin changes - and look like thin content - and thus rank lower than it could do if it had more content?

The copywriter is saying that people don't want lots of text on these pages (as opposed to longer blog posts & informational pages) and that too much text could actually frighten people off reading and thus harm conversion.

[DavidKonigsberg]

I dont think you need more then 100 words on your home page- look at http://www.seomoz.org/ they dont have so many words - the key is to make your words count not just filler for seo

[CMC-SD]

Your copywriter's first priority should be writing content that converts. That means it needs to be informative, appealing, full of benefits, all that good stuff. That's the hard part. Including a few keyword variations is the easy part.