Forums: Discussions for entrepreneurs and small business.

Hi all,

I`m a copywriter, editor and author. I have my website, http://www.kristenfischer.com. I use SEO terms but am wondering what I can do aside from that (behind the scenes) to up my Web presence. Are meta tags my only hope? I get a fair amount of business and leads, but I want to make sure I`m doing everything possible to get out there. Writing is my forte--technology is not!

Interested to hear what you`ve got to say!

Kristen:)

Kristen,

• How many search results are there?
• What sites are on the first page? 
• Then looking at the code for each of those sites to see what SEO they use.

• It is way too long. I suggest a title no longer than say eight words.
• "Kristen Fisher" is the first key phrase. Using your name is unnecessary because it is also your domain name and people searching for a copywriter are not likely to enter your name but rather "copywriter" or "New Jersey copywriter".

• Your URL / domain name.
• Web page title
• Web page description
• Internal links - names of your web pages
• H1, H2, H3 tags
• Bold text
• In-bound links - text based links from other relevant/related websites, forums (like SUN), and directories
• Web page content
• Keywords meta tag

-------------------------

Web Design | Best Beef Jerky | ecommerce articles | Follow vwebworld on Twitter

Roland lays out the specifics of a lot of the in-page techniques, but keep in mind the overall concept: search-engine optimization.

A search engine isn`t human, and it has no ability to see pictures. It`s a machine. It reads words. That`s all it does. It reads a frickin` boatload of words, what with every Web site on the World Wide Web (or whatever`s been indexed at any given moment), but it`s still only reading.

Another major aspect of SEO is "connections" in and around all that reading of words. Although it isn`t a common usage of the term SEO, there still is a strong relationship between optimizing a Web site itself, and referring to that Web site in other locations---places not directly on the same domain.

That`s where you start seeing the benefits of writing articles or having a blog, where the reference to a particular site is located on a URL (web address) entirely different from the main site`s domain name. So for example, if you`re trying to optimize http://www.mysite.com, that`s the "main" site.

You can build a blog, say at WordPress, where the address is http://www.wordpress.com/person, and include references to the main site. The machines don`t really care much or think about it, they only see that more than 1 site is talking about this "cool, new site." Remember that "relevance" is the name of the game.

Relevance means that the results a search engine produce are more, not less, relevant and important to the person who`s doing the search. Part of that structure seems to be that the "more people talking about something on the Web," the more relevant it "must" be.

We can take an intelligent guess at how this comes together by seeing that a single site with few keyword phrases often does better in terms of visibility that a site that has a lot of phrases only on that particular site. The reason for the first site`s strength tends to be that there are a lot of other sites referring back to it. Does that make sense to you?

With all sorts of places like Squidoo, WordPress (or other free blog sites), forums, article locations, and so forth, you have plenty of options to get your name out there. Of course it still comes back to how interesting is your product, your site, and whatever articles or posts you make on these external locations.

Using a keyword density tool (http://www.ranks.nl/tools/spider.html) it turns out that on your main page you have  19 instances of "copywriter," but the next most repeated words are: jersey, kristin, and editor.

Going down to phrases, you have a strength in "new jersey copywriter," and that`s pretty much all there is. So someone searching for New Jersey would likely stand a good chance of encountering your site, somewhere in the millions of results, if they were looking for a New Jersey Tourist Agency. I`m not saying that`s the highest ranking results, but trying to make a point about relevance.

What terms could you use that might be useful for a copywriter? You might get some help reading this article on how to choose keyword phrases.

You might consider both "copywriter" and "copy writer." The space helps. But you also might diversify and make imaginative connections to whatever else someone might be searching for that would end up calling to mind your business.

So you could think about such phrases as "content writing," "articles," "newsletters," and other terms that people would search for when they`re looking for a copywriter.

Always remember: When you`re going out to buy a shovel, what you`re *really* looking for is a hole.....not a shovel. Right? :-)

Thanks guys. I do a lot of SEO writing and have incorporated that stuff, but I guess the behind the scenes info helps even more.

Yes, I have other terms such as NJ copywriter, which really help me get a lot of local work.

Oh and Bly is genious like that:)

-------------------------

If you`re tired of all the money-making
hype, lies and scams...read this!
Click here for more details!

Getting traffic isn`t necessarily synonymous with high search engine placement. You need to market your site. You have to do the things that get your site "out there" and people clicking the link to go there.  You seem like you already have something on the site to offer, now go out and find the places that will help you share what you have, whereby getting you visitors.
If you are targeting Google, make sure you have tags.

I almost blew by this, but got to thinking: that`s actually a really important point.