SEO copywriting

Search engine optimisation, or SEO, refers to the tactics we use to ensure relevant information on our websites can be found by users easily via search engines.

Search engine optimisation, or SEO, refers to the tactics we use to ensure relevant information on our websites can be found by users easily via search engines.

Producing a well-optimised website needs the input of the whole web team. But there’s a lot that you can do as a content producer that isn’t particularly technical yet will help your pages appear higher in search engine rankings.

In this guide we provide you with a range of recommendations that can be implemented at the copywriting, image-editing and uploading stages that will help optimise your website. 

Many of the approaches are the same as those used when producing the content for the new University of Manchester website that launched in April 2014. The Division of Communications and Marketing consulted SEO experts at MediaCom to plan and deliver a fully optimised website.

Better copy for users – and search engines

As a content producer, the very least you’ll have to provide is copy for a webpage. With a little creativity, you’ll find that this is one of the quickest and easiest ways to improve that page’s SEO.

When using search engines, people look for the information they need by typing in search terms. The search engine will then search the internet for content that is relevant to those terms.

If your webpage is to stand the best chance of showing up in those results, it’s important that the content contains words that closely match the kind of terms your intended audience will be looking for – we call these keywords.

Choosing what keywords to include

Your own judgement is often the best guide. If your page contains information on funding options for PhD students in a particular subject area, ask yourself: who is looking for this information, and how would they be likely to describe what they’re looking for? It’s likely that users – and therefore search engines – will regard a page titled ‘Funding for PhD programmes in XXXX’ as being more relevant than simply ‘Funding’.

For a more rigorous approach, Google AdWords’ Keyword Planner Tool is a powerful way of seeing what keywords rank well and how much competition there is for those keywords.

Using a variety of keywords can also help to boost your visibility in the search engine results.

Writing the copy

Try to achieve the following when putting your copy together:

Headers and subheaders

The header is the most important place to include keywords, as this piece of copy describes to the user what information is contained on the page. If it fails to do that, the user may go elsewhere.

Worse still, they might not even get to your page in the first place. That’s because search engines apply the same priority to headers as a user would.

So, make sure that your headers:

• are descriptive;
• contain keywords as early as possible;
• are unique to your site and your offering (remember, you’ll be competing with other universities for search engine ranking).

You can then use subheaders to include secondary keywords – for example, on a page about funding, you might like to include ‘scholarships and bursaries’.

All of this helps from an SEO point of view, but it also helps in terms of user experience, breaking up copy meaningfully and into digestible chunks.

When writing the copy, it’s good practice to mark up the headers and subheaders to denote the hierarchy of headings. This is because, when the copy is uploaded, the text will need to be formatted so that the headers or subheaders are displayed in the right font settings on the webpage. If the content management system your team uses doesn’t allow for rich formatting, then the HTML tags can be added as follows:

Header 1 <h1>text</h1>

Header 2 <h2>text</h2>

Header 3 <h3>text</h3>

Adding these tags also has the benefit of alerting the search engine to the importance of this text – all the more reason to include your keywords here.

Body copy

While it’s very important to get keywords into headers and subheaders, it’s less vital for the body copy. Cramming the copy with keywords can look like spam and be off-putting for the user.

It’s much better to have well-written copy that contains the most important information as early as possible. This, coupled with the keywords in the headers and subheaders, should ensure that your page works from both SEO and user-experience points of view.

Similarly, don’t be tempted to write reams of copy in order to cover a whole range of keywords. It’s important to have enough words to convey what the page is about – but no more. Think about your reader.

Tone of voice and house style

In addition to the SEO recommendations above, the University’s guidance on tone of voice and house style are crucial tools for anybody who’s involved in writing for our websites.

Checklist for SEO copywriting

• Write for your audience.
• Write in plain language.
• Get to the point early.
• Get keywords into your headline.
• Use subheaders to boost SEO and aid readability.
• Cover all the important information, but don’t write too much.
• Use keywords in the right place, at the right time – don’t overdo it.

Content elements

Depending on your role, you may be required to provide more than just copy for a webpage. That’s because a webpage is much more than a set of words and graphical features. There’s a lot going on beyond that. And – you’ve guessed it – these all offer you opportunities to further optimise the webpage.

If you have any questions about this guidance, please email content@manchester.ac.uk.