You Need Great Website Copy: Quick Advice for Copywriting

Search engine optimization is an integral part of a successful website. If your website is not found then what is the point of having a website? Similarly, if your website does not have well written and useful copy, what is the point of getting it found in the search engines?

People's attention spans are shorter than ever so if your website copy does not speak to each reader personally, don't expect them to stick around, let alone come back in the future.

Karri Flatla's Five Ways to Write Web Copy That Sells article is a great quick and easy to follow introduction to writing for your website visitors. You should not be writing for the search engines only.

Although many copywriters will tell you not to write for the search engines at all, at AtoZNetVentures we do not quite agree with this. It is very rare for a webpage to find the perfect balance of content that reads well to a human and also is well optimized for higher search engine positions. The fact is, unless your website is already well established in the search engines with great PageRank and high search engine positions, you will need to modify your copy to make sure it includes the keyword phrases you want it to rank for. The key is to make sure you do not over-use your keywords (learn more about 'keyword density') in such a way that it does not sound natural when a human reads it. TIP: After writing your website copy, be sure to read it out loud to yourself. You will very quickly be able to spot when you have crossed the line.

USATODAY.com Article About Online Marketing for Small Businesses (Not just using SEO!)

If you have an online business or want to start one on a budget you very well may be aware of the main obstacle businesses such as yours face. Traffic. Without traffic, or visitors to your site, how can you possibly break even, let alone turn a profit?!

There are many ways to generate traffic to your site to convert into business. Although AtoZNetVentures specializes in search engine optimization, there are many other important methods you should be investigating to generate visitors and interest in your site. This article introduces the use of blogs, MySpace and various other avenues you can use. There are comments from some leading industry experts and even Matt Cutts, a rather famous Google engineer who runs a popular blog.

Read the USA TODAY article; 'Website designers want searches to work for free'.

The Best Way to Get Listed in The Search Engines

Do not fall for those cheap search engine submission services charging a small fee to submit your site to thousands of search engines. They are not worth it and can actually harm your efforts with the major search engines. Best case senario is that they make no difference.

Despit what these services tell you, you do not need to submit your site to Google, MSN, Yahoo! or any of the important search engines. They will add your site to their index when they find you by themselves. The key to getting listed is to make sure they CAN find you by themselves.

How do you make sure the search engines can find your site by themselves? The answer is simple. You need to work on establishing links to your site. Search engines like Google will add your site when they find incoming links to it from other sites already indexed. Although Google has a submission page, your site will not be added until Google sees that other sites are linking to you.

Has Google Been Dropping Your Pages?

With Google's recent update (known as the 'Bigdaddy Update'), many site owners have seen the number of their site's pages reduced. Google appears to have 'dropped' a massive amount of pages from it's index. If you have noticed this problem with your site then there are measures you can take.

We have noticed that pages coming from sites that are newer have been more vulnurable. Established sites don't seem to have been affected. This leads us to the conclusion that Google is now putting more importance on the QUALITY of links to your site. You should be working to aquire links from sites Google trusts. Of course, it can be hard to know which sites are trusted by Google but with some research, you can make a pretty good educated guess.

Yahoo! Testing a New Homepage

No doubt you will have noticed over the past weeks that Yahoo! is switching between a new version of it's homepage and it's old version. Personally I like the new format as it seems a little friendlier and more modern. I'm a sucker for cool looks but at the same time, the user's experience is paramount.

My strongest memory from studying Industrial Design at university, other then the good times, was that form should follow function so does Yahoo!'s new design fit this? My first impression is that they've done a pretty good job.

Google's Display of Your Backlinks is Incomplete

When you check the number of backlinks to your site using 'link:www.yoursite.com' at Google the results returned are not complete. It can be especially dissappointing when you are just starting a link building campaign and Google doesn't appear to be picking up on your hard-earned incoming links.

The fact is, Google deliberately does not display all of the backlinks it is aware of pointing to your site. Both Yahoo! and MSN will display a great deal more backlinks including all those scraper sites that just use software to generate useless content. Google will filter out sites linking to you that it considers as low quality. This is a good reason to seek out backlinks that are related to your site's subjects and are also from sites Google considers to be of a higher quality.

There are a number of factors Google will consider when deciding the quality of the site linking to yours. You can look out for a few warning signs yourself:

• is the page indexed by Google (check Google's 'cache' - the Google Toolbar is an easy aid to monitor this)
• the page is indexed but does it have any PageRank? If so, how much?
• will your link provide SEO benefit - can search engine spiders follow it? (This will depend on how the website owner decides to code your link)

There are other factor in play and any professional search engine marketing firm will be able to help you build links that will help improve your search engine positions.