This article is going to give you tips on SEO copywriting. That is, copywriting which has the goal of ranking your page highly in the search engines. To do this there are a number of techniques you can follow.

If your content contains your targeted key phrases then it is possible to rank well in the search engines then people can find your site. And that after all is your goal isn’t it?

Title tags

The content of your title tag determines what shows up in the search engine. You need a great title for each and every page that you copywrite to grab the searcher’s attention.

Meta tags

You should fill out the meta description tag with a good description about your article, not just a description about your site. Every page should have its own meta description.

Header tags

Header tags are your H1, H2 etc tags and these have a great weight in the search engines as far as them knowing what the important topics of your article are. You can use H2, H3 and more as sub headings in your articles.

Hyperlinks

You can put links within your articles to other parts of your sites or other sites. These links tell Google and other search engines that these other pages and sites are relevant to your content and can make it seem like you are an authority on the topic.

Content

Your content of course is the center of your copywriting. You need to make it quality and of course containing your keywords in a natural way. It is important not to over use your keywords but rather make them flow as much as possible.

Navigation

Your navigation links need to make sense and also should contain standard links like privacy, contact and about us pages. This tells the search engines that you are a proper site and not a spam site.

The above will make your copywriting page truly search engine optimized and ready for the search engine spiders to come around and rank your site.

Blackhat SEO refers to using unethical techniques to gain high search engine rankings. These techniques are generally considered “illegal” as far as the search engine rules go.

Such black hat seo techniques may include the following.

Hidden text

This involves hiding text in the same color as the website background so that the text can not be seen. In the old days search engines were not so aware of this strategy however these days it is something that will quickly get your site banned.

Keyword stuffing

This can include having articles which continually repeat the targeted keyword over and over again. Not only does it make for a poor experience for your readers, but the search engines are now able to quickly spot these types of sites and deindex them.

Doorway pages

These are fake pages that users don’t see. They trick search engine spiders into ranking the page higher than it should be. In other words, the search engine sees a different page to what the user sees.

There are many other blackhat SEO techniques, many of which require some scripting or advanced server knowledge. All in all however you are much better off spending your time making quality websites rather than learning these unethical tricks which will have your site banned eventually anyway.

Blackhat SEO webmasters generally only create websites for search engines and not for the visitors. This results in a poor user experience and often a website which will not have a long life. It is much more beneficial to not only your visitors but also to yourself to have a quality “white hat” website!

An in depth search engine optimization tutorial could go on for thousands of pages. This article will focus on some of the basics you need to know about SEO when you are starting a new website. We have other articles on this site that dive into specific strategies and more advanced SEO methods, but these tips are a great place to start!

SEO is very important when it comes to driving traffic to your website. You should have basic knowledge of SEO if you want your site to be a success. The higher your site ranks for keywords, the more visitors you will get; it’s that simple!

Should you submit your site to search engines? Many people say no but Google and others still provide this feature so why not use it? It certainly can not help.

You should also generate a sitemap for your site and submit it to Google in Webmaster Tools. We will have an article on Webmaster Tools soon to show you exactly how to do that.

Next you should do some keyword research. I recommend using a tool such as Wordtracker or Keyword Discovery. You don’t have to buy every tool in the book, just get one and do some thorough keyword research. You should try and find variations and synonyms of every keyword that relates to your site topic.

After you know what keywords you want to target, plan some articles around them. You can aim to target 4 or 5 keywords per article rather than just one per article. Long tail variations of certain keywords can all be used in the one article rather than a new article for very similar keywords.

Other SEO techniques to consider are meta tags, particularly the description tag, title tags, header tags, alt tags and of course external link building which covers your off site optimization.

SEO is a long and ongoing process, just make sure you get started!