SEO Copywriting
SOPA’s impact on social media and reactions of the online community
SOPA, short for ‘Stop Online Piracy Act’ bill is a proposition of the US government to curb down the spread of copyrighted content and fight online trafficking in intellectually property rights by bringing the perpetrators to justice. The problem with the bill according to the people who are actively against its implementation is that the whole concept is vague and hazy, with enough concerns to create problems for an individual or a company that is suspected of even the slightest infringement of copyrighted content; knowingly or unknowingly.
Let’s say you have a blog on which you share posts, images and even videos. If you share someone else’s post, image or video on your blog or on a social network, then your blog could be shut down and most probably without even a warning! That’s how this bill can easily be manipulated by the law enforcers to crack down on people speaking the truth and trying to uncover any injustice in different parts of the world.
Worst still, this bill can easily allow judges to order for a shut down of your internet service by asking the ISP to block it. Restrictions to certain websites can also be placed with the process of IP blocking. Experts believe that for this order to be implemented, it will require the government agencies to scan all content coming to and from the suspected individual’s PC and his ISP. This of course is a blatant invasion of a customer’s privacy.
For a lay-man individual, these are all very serious things to consider particularly in today’s age of digital sharing across social media networks. We all know how easy it is anybody to copy content from a friend’s news feed and share it along for everyone else to see. The intention of course may not to be doing anything illegal, but the consequences of this could turn ugly if a person is not careful.
How is Social Media affected?
Social media is all about keeping up to date with your friend’s activities and sharing the latest news, images and videos with one another. Everything is available online nowadays and people don’t even consider for on moment how their actions could be used against them. Social networks like YouTube allow users to view and even copy the music videos and movie trailers, and SOPA bill is exactly designed to restrict that luxury.
Reaction throughout the social media community
Worldwide communities on social media are talking about these issues and trying as much they can to create awareness in uninformed people. The campaign against SOPA has gradually started to become very strong with the announcement of the giant webhosting company GoDaddy to withdraw its support for SOPA and join the ranks against its implementation.
Just like the recent revolutions in the Middle East, social media has yet again managed to successfully bring people together against something that can have a disastrous effect on a lot of lives and families. The social connection between people online has once again proved that change can be brought from the grass root levels if the commitment is there and the community’s voice can be heard by those in charge.
SEO copywriting: Optimizing for search
Search Engine writing needs a little more attention from the writers and a little calculation. It is calculative writing. But it indeed is a skill that all SEO writers experiment with and slowly learn the ropes of. It is all about providing information and solutions that people search for. Following are a few of the pointes that SEO writers should keep in mind.
Minimize graphic files:
Search engines do not go through graphics. They can only read text. Integrating more and more graphics to make your point can be visually appealing but a bad idea as far as SEO is concerned. Search engines do not understand Flash.
Be descriptive:
You need to be clear and descriptive. You need to tell about your offer in clear terms. Use simple language to describe what your website, product and services are all about. Using the term ‘Our search engine marketing firm’ is better than using ‘Out team’. Focus on search phrases. Write ‘small industrial loans’ instead of ‘loans’
Focus on location:
Generally people prefer localized services. Highlight your advantage. Write ‘Our Bangalore office’ instead of writing ‘Our office’.
Creatively use variations:
Understand search patterns. Keyword research is important. You should then creatively use variations of the keywords. Use plurals, add ‘–ing’, use different tenses of the word. Use the word in different ways ‘webcam’ can be used as ‘web cam’ too. If your copy uses the same keywords again and again, search engines can tell that the article is shallow and not very useful. It is important to use synonyms of your keywords in addition to the keywords you are targeting.
Write content well:
Search engine like well-written relevant content. If users find your content useful, they will link to it and they will spread the word . When Google finds these inbound links, that page’s ranking will rise even higher, which in turn will bring in more visitors.
Keyword density:
The keywords that you are targeting should appear at the beginning, in most paragraphs and somewhere near the end. Once you have that down, just focus on producing exceptionally useful and comprehensive content. Do not stuff your articles with keywords, as this is spammy and search engines can tell. You are also a lot less likely to receive inbound links if your copywriting is poor.
Bold, italics, underlined words
When you emphasize a word with italics, underlining or bolding, search engines assume that it is a keyword. Use this to your advantage to tell Google what your keywords are. The flip side of the coin is that you should only use these tags on keywords, or you will confuse the search engines and weaken the effect.
META tags
Use your title’s keywords in the Title and DESCRIPTION tags. Google and other search engines love it if the TITLE and DESCRIPTION tags are similar or identical. Do not repeat keywords in these (or any other) tags, as this is considered spam.
Interlink your articles
Cross-linking your pages will ensure that PageRank is shared among the articles on your website; you don’t want a page that massively outperforms the others. Interlink your pages with contextual links whose anchor text is relevant to the target page. In addition to spreading PageRank over your websites, this technique will also help you tell Google and other search engines what your pages are about.
Have useful external links
Linking to useful websites is vital. It has been shown experimentally that, other things being equal, pages with outbound links have a higher Google ranking than pages with no outbound .You should only link to pages that are relevant to your page’s content. You should also make sure that they have not been penalized By Google and other search engines, or your page can be penalized too.