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Top 10 SEO Copywriting
By Karon Thackston (c) 2006, All Rights Reserved

What would happen if.?  I'm a person to always ask that
question.  I love testing and tracking to see what factors can
improve or worsen a situation.  So, it was only natural for me
to track the moves of a little experiment I did involving SEO
copywriting recently.  I'll gladly share my findings with you.

Before I do, however, I want to make a couple of things very
clear.  The outcome of this experiment will not be the same for
every keyphrase on every page of every site.  There are too many
unknown factors at play in the overall SEO equation.  Not to
mention, all keyphrases are not the same, and all sites are not
the same.  In addition, this experiment takes no account of link
popularity, which is a huge factor in achieving high rankings.
With that said, let me show you how I took the home page of one
of my sites - that didn't even rank in the top 50 - and caused
it to rank in the top 10.

First of all, I'm not a big fan of checking rankings on a
regular basis.  I don't run ranking reports for all my sites to
be sure they are all in the positions I want them in for every
given keyphrase.  I'll do it from time to time just to satisfy
my own occasional curiosity.  This experiment began when I
noticed the home page of one of my sites was ranking highly for
a keyphrase that didn't seem to appear anywhere in the text.
Upon further investigation, I saw that the keyphrase was
included in the ALT tags (a.k.a. image attribute tags) and that
it was also included in the title tag.

I knew ALT tags previously carried a lot of weight with the
engines, but had been downgraded in importance because site
owners had badly abused the tag.  Had ALT tags been reinstated
in their level of importance?  I decided to find out.

Keyword #1 was currently in the ALT tags and the title tag, so I
decided to eliminate the keyword in the title tag.  This would
let me see if the ALT tags alone could hold the position in the
search engine results pages (SERPs).  To make things more
interesting, I also decided to research and find a keyword that
was a little more competitive and insert it into the title tag.
On the same day I removed Keyword #1 from the title tag, I
inserted Keyword #2.  My home page was not ranked in the top 50
at that time for Keyword #2.

A few days later, the Googlebot came by and boosted my home page
to position #18 for Keyword #2.  Not bad!  The page fell one
spot (from #17 to #18) for Keyword #1 since the removal of the
phrase from the title tag.

Keep in mind, these are not the most competitive keywords ever
known.  They each got between 100 to 200 searches a day.  Also,
the home page of this particular site had been (and still is)
well ranked for years for other keyphrases and had a positive
legacy with Google.

Five days later, Keyword #2 was moved up three notches to a
ranking of #14 while Keyword #1 stayed the same.  Things
remained in their status quo for roughly 10 days and then began
to shift again.  Keyword #1, the original that was previously in
both the ALT tags and the title tag, vanished completely.  It
was not found in the top 50.  Keyword #2, that was only found in
the title tag and nowhere else, dropped to position #25.

Four days later, Keyword #2 was back up in the rankings and was
now at #16. To see if I could improve rankings further, I began
to make small tweaks to the page attributes.  I added Keyword #2
to the ALT tags (taking the places where Keyword #1 had once
been), and I also added Keyword #2 to the body copy.   The
keyphrase was added to one, bold sub-headline and at three
places within the body copy: none of which were above the fold.
It was not added to any primary headlines that used  tags,
and no keyword density formula was followed for the body copy.
No other pages on my site used this term as anchor text in links
pointing to the home page.  That gave the page keyword placement
in the:

·           Title tag
·           ALT tags
·           Body copy

Seven days later, the home page hit the top 10 for Keyword #2!

So, what does all this mean?  Simple.  There is no single
primary factor in search engine rankings.  It takes balance,
testing and tracking to find out what works for your particular
pages.  Your best bet is to do exactly what I did. begin one
step at a time and track your progress.  Did something cause a
positive movement?  Keep it.  If something causes a negative
shift, take it out.

I'm not finished with this page yet.  I'll keep trying different
things from time to time just to see what happens.  Maybe I'll
add anchor text links from the internal pages to the home page.
I might try writing articles with keyword-rich anchor text links
to help boost the rankings more.  There are many acceptable
practices I can implement for this page (or any page) that will
allow me to observe the shifts in ranking.  As the old saying
goes, "Don't put all your eggs in one basket."  A diversified
approach to SEO copywriting that includes tags, copy and links
is always a wise start down the road to top 10 rankings.

================================================================
Copy not getting results?  Learn to write SEO and online
copywriting that impresses the engines and your visitors at
http://www.copywritingcourse.com. Be sure to also check out
Karon's report "How To Increase Keyword Saturation (Without
Destroying the Flow of Your Copy)" at
http://www.copywritingcourse.com/keyword.
================================================================

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