Author: Bob McClain, Web Copywriting Expert

Optimizing website copy requires you to satisfy both man and machine. Man in reference to the man, woman or child that may visit your website and machine refers to the various search engine spiders and bots that will scan your page.

While this can generate conflicts between what satisfies human beings versus what satisfies search engines, if you can create a good compromise, you can get your page found and convert visitors into buyers.

Writing the headline may be the toughest part of optimizing your website copy. Why? Because if you really want to get the search engines to notice you and place you highly, you should have your primary keyword phrase be the first words in your headline. And that can sometimes make for an awkward headline.

My primary keyword phrase for this blog post is optimizing website copy. Notice it’s the first words in the headline and also the first words of my text. I do this because when the search engines look at the html title, description and keywords, the first words they should see are my primary keyword phrase.

Then they move to the actual page content and the first words they see in the headline are the exact same words. So then they start to read the page copy and what are the first words they see? Again, the same keyword phrase.

You should be seeing a pattern here. The same pattern the search engine spider sees. We are aligning the page with our SEO goal. So what will the search engines do when someone does a search for the term optimizing website copy?

If you look back to where you see the words “my primary keyword phrase”, “the exact same words” and “the same keyword phrase”, I originally had my primary keyword phrase there. However, I realized that this was overkill and quite likely would turn off the search engines so I replaced the keyword phrase with something that would get the idea across.

This is alchemy and art. You can’t be sure what’s the right number but better to err on the side of caution. The primary keyword phrase is also likely to wind up in my last paragraph or last sentence. And if on just one occasion, you can make that keyword phrase a link to more information on the same subject, you’re in “Google Gold” territory.

There are other things you can do to optimize your page copy. Use complimentary terms that aren’t identical to your keyword phrase but are similar. This is called Latent Semantic Indexing. There are arguments raging across the Internet whether Latent Semantic Indexing works or has any relevance for search engine optimization.

I believe it just makes good sense because having similar or related terms on the page simply reinforces for both the search engines and the reader what this page is about. And frankly, if you’re writing about a specific subject, you’re naturally going to be using similar and related terms.

What terms would you consider related or reinforcing? Let’s look at my copy and see what terms I used that might be considered relevant to Latent Semantic Indexing.

• Primary keyword phrase
• Same keyword phrase
• The exact same words
• Optimizing your website copy
• Optimize your page copy
• Latent Semantic Indexing

These are all terms that can be considered closely related to my keyword phrase or reinforcing the phrase.

The last point you should draw from this is that each page of your website needs to be targeted to one keyword phrase. If a page is about five different things, how is the search engine going to know what keyword phrase to relate the page to?

If the search engine can’t figure out what the page is about, it won’t know who to send to that page. And remember, if you choose a primary keyword phrase for the page and then write about mostly other subjects, the search engine will suspect you of cheating and not send anyone to that page. Optimizing website copy isn’t rocket science but it does require forethought and planning.