SEO, web copywriting & internet marketing

In a recent speech at the World Newspaper Congress, the then Associate Editor of the Mirror Matt Kelly again criticised the use of search engine optimisation (SEO) to drive users to news websites.

The gist of Kelly’s argument is that news website should concentrate on building a loyal audience rather than ‘casual’ users who visit only through a search engine.

But in his speech, he did make one very good point:

It [re-establishing the Mirror's online businesses] means building sites that perform well for humans, not search engines.

Build sites for ‘humans’

But the irony is that good SEO is just that – building websites for humans, not search engines.

This is because, for a particular search query, a search engine’s aim is to deliver the most relevant results to human searchers. So they like sites that are built with people in mind.

Most search engines also use inbound links to a page as a ‘vote’ when deciding where to rank a page in their results. Yes, there are ways to manipulate this with link building. But the general idea is that a site or page with good content aimed at people will get more inbound links, meaning more ‘votes’ and better rankings.

Using the right words

Another key part of SEO is doing keyword research. And then using the keywords and key phrases you want to target prominently on your site with the aim of increasing your rankings for these keywords.

But this doesn’t just affect your rankings – using the words that your users (or as Kelly says, ‘readers’) on your web site and web pages makes perfect sense and is good for usability.

For example, if you’re on a page about Premiership news you’d expect it to be mentioned in places like the title tag, headings and main content as well as on links to that page. And if your readers use ‘Premier League news’ rather than ‘Premiership news’ it would make sense to call it that – not only to attract more users from search engines but to relate to ‘loyal’ users (or should we say readers?).

Usability lessons

Actually, it could be argued that the Mirror’s 3am site could use some lessons in usability.

Navigational links like ‘Ooh’, ‘Gasp’ and ‘Grr’ might work well in print but would they encourage even loyal ‘readers’ to click through on the website? Or would links that actually describe the page’s content work better?

For me, descriptive links work best every time – for users and SEO.

Following on from my recent post about the BBC misleading users with its headlines, I spotted another goof from a news website today.

Southampton’s Daily Echo website has the headline ‘M27 reopens after 20-car pile up‘ on it’s news page. This then links to a page with the title tag and headline ‘Trains suspended after becoming ’stuck’ to rails’.

Ok, so it looks like the story links to the wrong page. But then the story begins: ‘Around 20 cars were involved in an accident on the westbound M27 this morning.’

So, am I on the right page or not?

Fair enough if this was a simple error. But the story is time-stamped 8:53am and at 12:08pm it hadn’t been updated.

Confusion

There are 2 reasons why this will confuse users:

1. Users who visit the page from the news page will probably think they are on the wrong story, so may just click back or leave the site.

2. Users who reach the page from elsewhere (like I did) will read the first few paragraphs of the story, then click to another story or again just leave the site.

SEO considerations

This is also not good for search engine optimisation (SEO).

Ideally, you want the main themes of your page or your story to be included on any link text to that page as well as the title tag, heading / headline and in the first few lines of text.

Some journalists have questioned the effects of SEO on readership but following these conventions is good for human users first and SEO second. After all, all search engines are striving to deliver good relevant results for human searchers.

And following these conventions is also good common sense, which in turns results in better accessibility and usability for website users.

Last week, the BBC was criticised for the title of one of it’s Have Your Say website’s discussion topics.

The title, ‘Should Homosexuals face Execution?’, was for a discussion about an anti-homosexuality bill that the Ugandan parliament was to discuss. But many felt the title of the discussion was misleading and ’sensationalist’.

Misleading headlines

It’s not the first time the BBC has used  headlines to mislead website users and generate traffic to a story.

In October, I argued that the BBC News website was misleading users with their headlines and links. This might work for the BBC, where funding is provided by the licence fee and they don’t have to rely on customers or advertising revenue to keep the business up and running.

Describe your content accurately

If you measure your website’s success by page visits alone, then the tactics above might work for you.

But the reality for most of us is that once visitors reach your site, you want them to leave satisfied – whether that’s by finding some information, making a purchase, asking for more information or simply bearing your site and brand in mind for the future (and then hopefully coming back).

We all know that this ’satisfaction’ is hard to come by – many different things (content, design, brand) will influence how people use your website. But make sure that they are not mislead and don’t promise anything you can’t deliver.

That mean’s getting the following right:

• Title tags & meta-descriptions
• Hyperlink anchor text
• Headings and subtitles
• Adverts (PPC or otherwise)

This weekend, between eating two curries, doing the weekly food shop and some Christmas shopping, I’ve had a chance to play around with Wordpress and so far I’m impressed.

And yes, I know I should have realised this before but I’ve just never got around to setting up a Wordpress blog.

Over the coming weeks I hope to have a few more useful posts up here. I won’t say keep an eye out. But follow me on Twitter and I’ll send a Tweet when something useful is up.

Welcome to my blog. This is really just a holding page while I work out how Wordpress works.