Search engines love relevance. They live for relevance. Nothing pleases them more than finding the most informative, appropriate and useful website to match a query. The search engine companies spend millions of pounds and working hours in attempting to formulate ways by which the rubbish can be ignored and only the purest, most useful sites returned. It's a noble quest. They work tirelessly to out-tech, head off and second guess the engine manipulators, the spamdexers, the accidentalists, those who would knowingly or otherwise abuse the integrity of search returns by working the system to return unhelpful and irrelevant pages against queries for their own ends.

The search engines are seeking the foremost authority on a given subject. They want the most reputable sites and those that know the most on a particular topic. The most rewarding approach when seeking to legitimately see your site at the top of the heap is not to ask what search engines can do for you, but what you can do for search engines. It's not up to the search engines to make your site relevant. That's the job of the site owner.

The way you do this is in principle, simple enough - through SEO Copywriting and text-related content. Engines can't read images or graphics, they cannot determine the relevance of Flash in relation to a search term. The two most important factors upon which they can determine relevance is on the site text and more importantly the links from authoritative sites inspired by that text.

The days of the Search Engine Optimisation copywriter weaving their magic with perfect keyword selection, placement and Density to achieve wondrous top page rankings are long gone (despite what many will try to tell you). Of course, keywords are still important, especially in titles as engines prefer nice tight search return matches, but it's more a case of frequency rather than density that improves rankings.

There's a common consensus these days amongst Search Engine Optimisation professionals that the major determinant of ranking position for any particular page is down to what happens off the page, in the form of links from other sites. Reputation built on authority bestowed by other reputable sites through sheer worth and relevance. Good is good is good. When Barack Obama recently quipped 'you can put lipstick on a pig but it's still a pig' what he's saying (without wishing to be piggist) is that you can't properly disguise something ugly, something unappealing. By the same token quality will always out. Compelling content gains eyeballs, gains traction, gains authority, gains high search engine placement, gains eyeballs, gains traction and so it continues.

At SEO-MAMA we understand this clearly and work hard to get the wheels of virtuous search engine performance rolling.

Appreciating something is all well and good; it's acting on that knowledge that delivers results and at SEO-MAMA a great deal of our work is in partnering our clients to formulate and apply the maximum possible value into site Copy And Content.

Getting authoritative links has become the most difficult aspect of Search Engine Optimisation, hence the emergence from 2006 of Social Media Marketing as a way to attract links with compelling content, hence the explosion in online articles and blogs.

The critical starting point before a word of Search Engine Optimization copywriting has been written is the project scope and definition stage.

It's at this point that business objectives need to be clearly defined through goal analysis. What are we aiming to achieve? This helps us measure campaign effectiveness and stay on track and focused.

We then define our ideal site visitors through audience analysis. Through research, surveys and the like we try to get inside the head of the prospective audience and define the campaign's semantic space. Content on the site will be directed specifically at them in a language they understand and appeals. Content needs to press the right emotional buttons to generate positive responses and ultimately inbound links. Similar emotional forces to those that prompt us to buy can also cause us to link, bookmark, Twitter and Digg. Compelling benefits in the form of content provide visitors the motivation to emotionally invest in a site by linking to it. At this stage of the Search Engine Optimisation process we're simply defining an environment in which our audience might best relate to.
"Ask yourself what creates value for your users," Google says.
The audience analysis acts as the foundation for intelligent keyword selection - all part of the semantic space definition process.

We collaborate with clients to create a list of preferable keywords and phrases that, based on our research, present the best opportunities for attracting potential visitors, customers and links. We make a point of revisiting the keyword formulation step as part of campaign assessment so that we can hone and tweak as necessary.

It's impossible to repeat this too often or overstress - Content of value is the key and it's the inbound links that reflect its worth in the eyes of Internet users and therefore the search engines. Of course there are useful optimisation techniques that should also be applied to the site to make it search friendly and at SEO-MAMA we expertly address optimisation issues such as - site structure, site hierarchy, optimised and themed Tag Naming. In reality though, it's only worth pursuing additional optimisation through tweaking once those all-important inbound links have been attracted to the site in the first place. Tweaking a page for higher rankings before the content has been established as compelling is largely futile. The site is 'all dressed up, with nowhere to go.'

As those search engine algorithms move further and further away from old school relevance measurements and increasingly assign site importance and authority to off page factors such as social media tagging and blog-driven links, so expert Search Engine Optimisation copywriters armed with the ability and empathy to prompt inbound links and consequent conversions are finding themselves becoming vital components in search engine marketing campaigns.

SEO-MAMA offers passionate, professional and hugely experienced writers. Both creative and qualified our writers are committed to delivering the very best copy solutions to your campaigns.