The bells and whistles of search engine optimisation are for the benefits of two groups: the search engine spiders (also known as ‘crawlers’) and the human visitors. Both are attracted to good copy for the same reasons.

Spiders don’t notice the efforts of fancy design – illustrations, photos, animation and music are wasted on them. What they are looking for is words; relevant and well-placed keywords. The benefits of using the best keyword phrases will bolster a website’s chances with search engines no end.

It’s not just what keywords are used but where they are used. Try the title tag, description, within copy, in hyperlinks and around the site.

But it’s easy to go over the top. While using keywords is vital to search engine optimisation, using too many can damage your website as it will look like spamming to search engines and the website will be penalised. Not only that, but the website will be penalised by users too – unable to read it properly, they won’t come back. Awareness of keyword density, spamming risks and frequency are an integral part of successful SEO copywriting.

Human users are much the same as the spiders in that while they may appreciate the creative efforts on a website, this will be fleeting, and quickly replaced by irritation, should the content be useless and irrelevant. This is where the standards of good copywriting – not just for search engine optimization but also for every medium – come in.

Content must be relevant, engaging and informative. It must keep users’ attention and bring them back. It must use the short time it has to build the brand and maximise the sales opportunity presented. While the spider is essentially a robot that cannot read, it will still be on the lookout for smooth and natural flowing copy when crawling. Human visitors will be even more ruthless.

There is not point in having content that is full of information, useful links and perfectly considered SEO keywords in all the right places if nobody can read it. Perhaps the copy is too dense on the screen. Perhaps there are no paragraphs or headings to break it up. Maybe it is so brilliantly technical that most of the population can’t understand it. Quality copywriting is easy to read and understand and will lead to successful search engine optimisation.

So good copy is vital for search engine optimization in the first instance because it brings a website to the attention of search engines and users. In the second, it keeps users where you want them – at your site – and finally, in the third, because it means they come back.

Here are a few tips to get you started:

• Use bold or italics. Both spiders and people will take notice.
• Word count. Ensure your copy is at least 400 words a page.
• Be specific. Make sure your copy reflects what the user is searching for.
• Break it up. Try using bullet points, numbered lists or paragraphs to add space and variety to text on screen. Reading on screen for long periods of time can be tiring, and the easier you make it for your visitors the happier they will be.

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