I have a vague idea of what is meant by SEO copywriting, but it's still not entirely clear. Does anyone know of resources to learn more about it? Or an ability to explain it for those of us whose eyes cross upon encountering anything technical?

Hiya.

SEO and SEO copywriting are two expressly different venues.

SEO has to do with researching keywords/phrases and using those
in every possible avenue to gain high placement in google or other
SE's. This is web site work, not writing or copywriting.

SEO copywriting is writing copy for a landing page that includes
all the keywords/phrases but for a different purpose. The purpose
of a landing page is to SELL a product or service.

It is impossible to "break into" SEO if you are not a web site developer
/designer. However, SEO copywriting is a possibility for a copywriter
at large.

Clear as mud? Hope this helps.

Verb

Where do you research keywords/phrases? And is there an optimal number of times to work them into your copy? I can see how too much would make it hard to read, and therefore not effective, but what is the advised minimum of times you would work a phrase in?

Good Evening.

What you are describing is called "keyword density". There are free tools
available, just google for them. Oh, what the heck, here is the one I use
on a regular basis:

http://www.keyworddensity.com

...and it is easy to remember! But there are plenty more density tools out
there, some are better than others.

Keyword density is one of those items where one seo expert says one thing
and the next article you read says another. What it really comes down to
is how competitive your targeted (main subject) keywords are. In a highly
competitive market you need 8 to 20%. With lower competition you can
get by with 2%. This causes a lot of the confusion when so called 'experts'
try to tell us exactly what to do or what is best.

I will tell my OH-pinion and that is this: If you do your keyword research
correctly, you will have a good idea of what your keyword density needs
to be to get good or great google placement.

I could give you two perfect examples but really need to get my hind end
off to bed. Maybe tomorrow...

Blessings.

Verb

circusmama,

In addition to Verb's great advice, you can check out http://www.seobook.com (unfortunately, I can't access the site right at this minute). Aaron Wall has a ton of information about SEO on his site and you don't need to buy the book. He also has some nice keyword research tools. You'll need to just hunt around there to find them.

Also, sign up for the free trial of Worktracker at http://www.wordtracker.com. The trial seems to be completely open-ended and the results from the free version will probably give you plenty to work with in your copywriting SEO efforts.

This looks like a decent resource page... thanks, Mark. At first I thought
it was just a site to sell the guy's book, but on further look, there are more
resouces.

I've noticed this many times and I think I see what the difference is. I think there's
a very defined line between having enough keywords to bring legitimate customers
to a business site and the cheap "writing" jobs that are outsourced to ESL countries
where the number of times a keyword is used seems to be much more important to
the client than what it's actually saying. It's maddening and quite a waste of the
reader's time.

I agree. It's frustrating to see these poorly written sites that are stuffed with keywords. Also, it's hard to understand how sites end up in top ranked positions when they are nothing more than AdSense pages or worse.

I read Bruce Clay's site regularly on the topic of SEO. This is an article that discusses what you're talking about, Katharina, though not specifically geared toward copywriting.

http://www.bruceclay.com/blog/archives/200...ncing_clie.html

That's how things usually work. And Wall's site is a great example of how SEO works. He's filling his site with fresh keyword-focused content daily so people will find and link to it and get introduced to his eBook, which I believe will be be worth every penny since most people find information through SEs.

Wall's site does look like it will really help. Now I'll just have to make some time to read it!

I think the forum that we are currently in is a nice place to learn things about SEO copywriting. However, if you are looking for some other place to enhance your skills, then I would suggest this site:

forums.digitalpoint.com is a good resource for learning about SEO as well as SEO copywriting.

Also try out the warrior forum, as there is alot less clutter there. They are veterans of online marketing and have always been very helpfull towards me.

When I first got into the world of SEO article writing, I felt like a fish out of water and had to learn the basics quickly. I did glean a lot of information from many of the forums and links already mentioned, but for me, the Idiot's and Dummie's books available on the topic came in very handy. I am cheap, so I searched the topic at Amazon to see what they had, wrote down the titles, and got them from my library.

Well SEO is very difficult to understand and learn because we can learn it in school or colleagues. We have to learn it from internet and our experince. But I learn it from this website:

http://www.searchenginewriting.com/