Search Engine Optimization (SEO) and Website Content

This morning I was looking for some information on "phases of team building." Immediately Google responded with 10 search results. There must be hundreds, if not thousands, of websites giving this information, but what Google showed me on the first page of search results served my purpose. After visiting some of the top websites, I got what I wanted and ignored the other websites.

Which websites you would visit and which ones you would ignore depend on what shows up in Google search results. That brings me to the ever hot topic of Search Engine Optimization or SEO as it is commonly known as. Since I often get requests for writing website content, I recently decided to do some grounding of myself in the fundamentals of this subject.

The question that I asked myself was this: As a writer, what key SEO guidelines should I follow when writing website content? And then I went on to study two key resources on this subject:

a. Google's Search Engine Optimization Starter Guide by Google
(Available at  http://www.google.com/support/webmasters/bin/answer.py?answer=35769)

b. Brian Clark's How to Create Compelling Content That Ranks Well in Search Engines
(Available at http://www.copyblogger.com/seo-copywriting/)

So what have I learnt? In nutshell, here it is:

1. Know the audience: Have some idea of who is likely to be visiting your website. Ask yourself: Who should be visiting this website? What could be their needs? What would they be looking for? What is this website offering and to whom?
2. Focus on visitors: Write useful and compelling content for your visitors -- and not for the search engines. Now this sounds paradoxical because the whole purpose of SEO copywriting seems to be writing the content in a way that website climbs up in search ratings. But this is where most writers and website developers have to stop, and really understand and digest this particular sentence straight from Google's guide:
"Creating compelling and useful content will likely influence your website more than any of the other factors discussed here."
3. Write easy-to-read content. That means divide the content into logical paragraphs with proper headings, sub-headings and bullets. And yes, avoid sloppy text, large chunks of content and grammatical errors.
4. Use relevant language: Think about what words or phrases visitors might use to search your website and include those so-called "keywords" into the content. Again, Google warns that one should not over-stuff  "keywords" or else your website will be punished. According to Brian Clark, keyword density of more than 5.5% could be considered by Google as "tricking" it.
5. Write fresh and unique content. No spinning of existing content; that won't work.

In the end, the main point that I should remember is this: SEO copywriting is not about manipulating your content to attract search engines, rather it is writing useful, clear and compelling content for your targeted visitors. If a website can keep its users happy, search engines will be happy, too.