Internet Marketing Speaker, Mike Newhouse, shares his thoughts on how to write website content. 

The challenge to write website content is daunting. Most people view it as a non-rewarding, time consuming and difficult chore to accomplish. Furthermore, website copy is a critical piece of the SEO process. Content and SEO go hand in hand.

Newsflash — Creating great website content is actually quite simple once you get the hang of it.

Generating SEO web content is incredibly rewarding. Not only does it show the searcher that you really are the expert in your field, but it benefits your business in several ways.  Writing content or more specifically, writing keyword rich content increases your business, grows your client base, maximizes your profits and educates your customers.

You’re probably asking, “What does ‘keyword rich content’ even mean?”

It means you write for a purpose and a goal in mind. Specifically, you write content that will show up for specific search engine terms. I’ll go into further detail on this a little later.

In the beginning, writing content for SEO can be tricky. Just like any new skill, it takes practice. However, achieving high search rankings due to keyword rich content isn’t as difficult as you would think.  Though you may end up making slight changes to your writing style, in the long run you’ll come out on the top of the search engines.

By following this guide, it is my hope that eventually your website copy and keyword rich content will be the gold standard in your industry.

My Website Content Creation Tutorial

In order to start writing content for SEO purposes, you must first put yourself in the shoes of someone looking for you. You’ll have to answer a few quick questions that will take you down the right path.

Throughout this “website content creation tutorial” I’ll be using an insurance agent as my example. All information associated with “Sam” the insurance agent is 100% fictitious and is used to illustrate how to write SEO web content.

Website Content Creation Question #1

-How do you choose the right search term?

The Problem: Sam sells different types of insurance. He sells life insurance, health insurance, auto insurance etc. He decides to write content to increase his rankings in search terms as his primary internet marketing strategy. He begins writing content without researching what terms people search. After a month, he feels his website copy is very well written, but it has yet to attract any extra traffic to his website.

The Solution: Using online tools can help you decide which keywords to write content for. After being underwhelmed with his content, Sam uses the Google Keyword Selector Tool (http://adwords.google.com/select/KeywordToolE

xternal ) and finds the term ‘insurance’ is searched over 55 million times a month! Using this tool can help you target keywords to put into your content. Typically, your keyword density, or the number of times a keyword appears in your content, should be about 2-3%. For Sam, since his content is 200 words, he decides to put the term ‘insurance’ in 4 times.

However, when it comes to writing content for SEO, it’s a bit more than picking a key term at random and writing for it.

Website Content Creation Question #2

- Are you targeting the right keywords in your content?

After using Google Keyword Selector Tool and seeing that every month there were 55 million searches for ‘insurance,’ Sam decides to alter his content for SEO so he ranks number one for this term.  After all, if even a small percentage click on his site, it could do wonders for his bottom line.

The Problem: Sam knows how to write good website content, but unfortunately, his site is not a big enough player to rank highly for ‘insurance’.  His website does not compete with well-known companies such as State Farm, Farmers, Geico, and others.

The Solution: Sam decides to change his strategy a bit! Instead of writing SEO web content for ‘insurance’ he targets a different search term. Using his Keyword Selector Tool, he discovers that 1,900 people search for ‘Dallas car insurance’ monthly. Since he primarily works in Dallas, he decides to write content for this term. He knows there is much less competition within a single city and surely with his website copy writing abilities, he can be number one for this search term.

Within weeks, Sam’s site appears first on Google for “Dallas car insurance”.  He is ecstatic! The phone starts ringing and Sam is as busy as he has ever been.

Specifying your keyword content is an important step in ranking on search engines. Targeting local searches within your area is often a good strategy to improve your ranking and be found by consumers looking for your product within your region.

But that’s not all; believe it or not, well written website copy can make a lot more money if you only change one word.

Knowing what search terms to write website copy for is critical. In this case, If Sam changes just one word, ‘Car’ to ‘Auto’ he would actually be better off. 2,900 people monthly search for ‘Dallas Auto Insurance’ compared to 1,900 for ‘Dallas Car Insurance’

However, just because your site ranks, doesn’t mean you necessarily get the results you are looking for…

Website Content Creation Question #3

- Is one part of your business more profitable than the other?

The Problem: Sam is quite disappointed when he receives his first commission check and realizes that although he wrote amazing, compelling, keyword rich content, he only made a little bit more than last month.  He thinks to himself, “What’s wrong?”

Sam fails to realize car insurance is not the most profitable portion of his insurance agency. He actually makes FOUR TIMES AS MUCH when he sells life insurance as opposed to car insurance.

The Solution: Sam goes to town writing out keyword rich website content on ‘Dallas life insurance’.

Just like last time, Sam is number one on Google for his search term, and is even busier than before! This time though, he makes more money than the previous month. By changing the search term target to the most profitable part of his business, Sam’s profit margins increased.

Ask yourself, “What’s the most profitable service that I offer?” Write content for the services that you’re looking to sell. Be aware of the competition in search terms however. In the previous example, Sam wrote content for ‘Dallas Life Insurance’ and not just ‘Life Insurance.’ Depending on the competition, Sam might also consider a similar term such as ‘Dallas Life Insurance Policy.’ If competition is too abundant, go down the list and try again.

Website Content Creation Question #4

-          What are you trying to achieve in writing this content?

The Problem: Content and SEO can go hand in hand. But the purpose of your content is just as important as the keywords you put into it.

If you remove “have our content rank high on the search engines,” as an objective, your goals are actually quite varied when it comes to content creation.

For example, some pages on your website may be selling a product or service, while another may be educating customers on this product or service, while other pages, may just be a lead generation tool. Every webpage on your site has a specific objective.

The Solution: How you write content will also vary depending on what your overall objective actually is, but there are a few key points you should keep in mind regardless of the content you’re writing.

1. Keyword stuffing is a terrible idea – Keyword stuffing is when you put in a keyword over and over again in your content. It can make your content difficult to read and the search engines hate it. My belief is your key terms should be scattered throughout your content, and be roughly 2-3% of the verbiage on the web page.
2. Write website content, not search engine content – Writing content is critical to be found by the search engines, but don’t write FOR them. Write for the reader, give them good information, and keep the search engines in the back of your thoughts while writing your content.
3. Website Copy Formatting – People are lazy and when they come to your site, they will lose attention if they instantly see gigantic blocks of text that take up half their screen. Format your content in smaller paragraphs like these, use bullet points, and number things so that people can quickly scan your page to see what’s useful.
4. Content is wonderful but… – Yeah you wrote great content, but where are the pictures? Remember to add in some pictures, charts, videos, or even little random notes throughout your content to break up the blandness and monotony of your site. Keep people engaged.

So, with the exception of having your content rank highly, what are you trying to achieve? Make sure you write in a way that engages the viewer and makes you appear credible.

Website Copy Creation Summary

Whether you realize it or not, Search engine optimization plays a huge role in your business. In fact, as we speak it’s either helping you or hurting you.

The process of writing SEO web content can be fun, challenging, but most importantly rewarding. In my experience, I find that many people keyword stuff their content, and then quickly believe that “SEO doesn’t work.”

Well, it does. Before we’re done, I want to show you something.

In writing this, not only did I want to educate you, but I wanted to increase my search engine presence. I thought about my keywords, I used the keyword tool, and wrote great content. I followed all of my steps.

Here’s a breakdown of the keywords I used throughout this page, how many times a month that term is searched for, and how many times I used it on this one page.

• Keyword rich content – Monthly searches, 170 – Times used, 6
• Write SEO content – Monthly searches, 210 – Times used, 3
• Write website content – Monthly searches, 720 – Times used, 4
• Content and SEO – Monthly searches, 1,000 – Times used, 4
• SEO web content – Monthly searches, 1,300 – Times used, 5
• Content for SEO – Monthly searches, 1,300 – Times used, 5
• Website copy – Monthly searches, 22,200 – Times used, 9
• Website content – Monthly searches 60,500 – Times used, 14

So did I keyword stuff my content? Not at all. What I did do was use my key terms several times in strategic places throughout the 1842 words on this page.

One last topic is latent semantic content. Essentially, this is related, but different words that pertain to one another. For example, this document uses several key terms multiple times, but they are in service of one topic (how to write SEO content). Latent semantic content is Google’s way of making sure your content is coherent and not written over and over again with little purpose or direction.

All right, you’re done reading! It’s time for you to start writing content of your own!

Getting listed within the Google, at least within the local search sounds easy, and it is. Performing Google local search optimization is where people run into trouble. Like most things in the life, it’s easy to “scrape the surface” of a project. It’s a completely different game to go all in, knowing without a doubt that you’ll do whatever it takes to come out on top.
Google local search optimization will take some work, but I promise you it will be worth it. Think about it, by optimizing your name for local search on Google, you’re ensuring that people that are looking for your products or services, and more specifically looking for them where you’re located, are finding you.

I was working with a salon in the Dallas, Tx area. There website is incredibly nice, but it’s all Flash based. For you SEO’s out there, you already know what that means, and for the rest of you, it means that this site is going to be incredibly hard to show up in Google due in part to the lack of text on the site. When Google bot visit’s the page, it has nothing to view, nothing to see, and thus doesn’t know what the site is about.

I decided to heavily pursue local search where by accident, they were showing up about 9 times a day, but only when people were searching for their business name. It was bad. I took action on all the steps I’ll cover in a minute, and within a month, they were appearing over 200 times a day for terms like “salon”, “massage”, “spa”, and more. Their website traffic went up by over 400%, all from people looking for the services they already offer, in the area they already service. They were ecstatic.

Here’s what, with my experience I believe you need to complete in order to say that you are “Google Local Search Optimized”. (Not necessarily listed in order of importance.)

Google Local Search Optimization Tips

1. Use the Google Local Business Center – Here’s a case where Google gives you a platform to perfectly describe your business. It will tell you how complete it feels your listing is, allow you to describe what your business is about, add photos, videos, and even coupons. Use it!

2. Work on your site – Making your business more local is a big step in local search optimization. Google needs to see that your site is both relevant to the search term, but also relevant to the location. You’re site may have great information on your area of expertise, but remember, it is called “local search optimization” which means your site needs to be also be targeted towards people locally.

3. Get on “Yellow Pages” like websites – Most people know by now that the yellow pages are also an online search tool. By getting listed in the following sites, it shows the same name, address, description, and categories repeatedly. The more sites like these that you’re mentioned in, the better off you are for local search optimization. Here’s a quick list of sites that can help you in your local listing optimization (some free, some not):

YellowPages.com
SuperPages.com
Localeze.com
Yelp.com
InfoUSA.com
CitySearch.com
Brownbook.net
InsiderPages.com
BOTW.com
OpenList.com
iBegin.com
Kudzu.com
MagicYellow.com
TrueLocal.com
Local.com
CitySquares.com
Zipingo.com

4. Get listed on local sites that count – Try getting yourself listed on sites like the local chamber of commerce, your rotary club, lions club, local newspaper, visitors bureau, local directories. Do a search for “(cityname) business directory”, and contact whoever owns the list.

There you have it, four quick tips on local search optimization. I’ll go over the use of sites like Bing.com, Yahoo, and a few others over the next several days. Also, I’ve run into some issues before like your listing being flagged as spam. How do you get around this? I’ll write on that as well.

If you enjoyed this, share it with some friends. I’d appreciate it.

There’s always lists about the do’s and the don’ts, the have and have not’s. There will always be the 101 best lists and 101 worst. I on the other hand, just want to share the one. If there’s one thing you need to understand about social network marketing, what is it? Why?

I do a lot of internet marketing speaking events. We play lots of games, have lots of fun, but more important, stay engaged and learn. In a lot of these events, my goal or objective (“take away” for you fellow speakers out there) will vary. With some groups, my time is limited and my take away is simply, “you need to be doing this, with me, by yourself, or with someone like me… just do it”. My objective with this group is simply to reach a common understanding with the audience that social network marketing is a must for business today. As an internet marketing speaker, these events are challenging, yet mutually rewarding.

At other events, my take away changes; I have the time to explain why they need to be involved in social network marketing, what they need to be doing, and more importantly, what’s in it for them should they become involved. From an internet marketing consultant’s perspective, these events are much more informative, but like the shorter events, still mutually rewarding to the audience.

Regardless of the type event, I play one game at all of them that gives the audience a crystal clear understanding as to how they need to go about social network marketing. I could break it down into several small steps, and give you a “best of” or “most important” list. It’s so important, that I don’t want it to get lost in the shuffle.

As an internet marketing speaker, it’s not always easy to drive home take away points with an audience. Their knowledge of computers is sometimes non-existent or lacking, and sometimes, I’m told that “I’ve heard of Facebook, but I’ve never seen it. I just learned how to check my email!” This is why audience interaction and playing games can completely change what they take away from an event.

The MOST important tip about social network marketing is that it’s NOT business as normal.

In my internet marketing speaking and training events, I’ll ask the audience to stand up, and meet 4 or 5 people in the room, just like they would at a networking event, or before a meeting. Everyone stands up, shakes hands, puts on a fake smile, and says their name. Sometimes people even hand out business cards getting deep into what I told them, and actually networking.

I’ll make everyone sit down. They don’t know why I just did this, as I have yet to mention anything about social networking. I ask them what it was like to do this, and the response I get most of the time is, “Business as normal!” Perfect, they took my bait.

I make everyone stand up again, and I begin to paint a mental image. I tell them that they’re at a 10 year family reunion, and old Uncle Vinnie is coming across the room to see you. I tell them everyone has had a drink by now, so you can let down the guard, and just enjoy the moment. I ask them to meet 5 people in the room like they’re family, and tell them not to hold back.

What happens is amazing. Complete strangers in the audience go around hugging people they never knew. Everyone’s arms are wide open, smiles are wide and genuine. Laughter, screaming, and sometimes a fake tear are even shed. It’s amazing.

Everyone takes their seats, no longer caring what the point of the exercise was for, but now their primed, on the edge of their seats wanting to know more about whatever it is that I’m going to talk about.

I ask a few people what the difference in the two exercises were, and responses vary from “everyone in the room felt like family” to “I wish we could all do business like that”. Everyone feels the enthusiasm and a connection with one another. Everyone feels like … socializing.

The MOST important tip about social network marketing, is that it’s not business as normal. Everyone is quite possibly your best friend.

I tell them, this is the difference with social network marketing. Our first exercise was business as normal, everyone agreed. Our second exercise, something happened. We stopped trying to sell ourselves, and started acting ourselves. No one had to worry about what they were being sold, no one had to worry about being judged, you could be yourself AND do business.

That’s the difference with social network marketing.

My name is Mike Newhouse, and I am an internet marketing speaker, trainer, and consultant and I would be overjoyed to deliver a message just like this to your audience.

If we leave out your specifics, it’s a very common question.

I looked at the website, and the first thing I notice is that there is very little text on the website. Search engines read the text to know what your site is about, and right now there isn’t much to read. Writing good website copy for all of the pages on your site, is an absolute must.

Ideally, you should have 500-600 words on each web page, with 3-4% of them being your keyword. Pick one keyword per page, and target just that word. The only word I currently see more than once on your site is ‘workers compensation premium’. I checked with Google – there’s currently 2,400 people a month searching for ‘workers compensation premiums’ without too much competition.

I’ll assume this is what your ideal client will be searching for, so wrap all of your content around this one term. Since it’s a three work keyword phrase, if we put it in your content 3-4% of the time, you’d find it 5-7 times within your content.

Also, I viewed the code for the website, and the website title tags, meta description, and meta keywords aren’t in alignment with your goals. If you want to show up for ‘workers compensation premiums’ then these need to show it as well.

Here’s what I would do (knowing nothing about your industry):

Title Tag – Lower Your Workers Compensation Premiums : CompMonitor
Meta Description – Many companies overpay their workers compensation premiums. Allow CompMonitor to save you money, with the right WC insurance package.
Meta Keywords – workers compensation premiums, workers compensation, workers comp insurance, workers compensation insurance premiums, (etc. list maybe 10 terms)

Every page on your website needs to have similar goals and objectives. I see several terms that could be targeted, and help draw in some traffic.

Also, you need to put in a meta description that is a verification code for Google, Yahoo, and Bing. Last, by placing Google Analytics on your website, so you can see where people are coming from, what they’re doing, how they found you, etc. This is also critical.

I hope this helps.

My name is Mike Newhouse, and I am an internet marketing speaker, trainer, and consultant and I would be overjoyed to deliver a message just like this to your audience.