Writing for the Web Handbook Version 1.1 By Juan Cullen & Jessica Farrelly

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Introduction 1.0 Writing for the Web

1.1 How Does Online Copy Differ to Print Material? 1.2 Grabbing the Reader

1.2a Layout Readability Tip 1.3 How Much Copy per Page?

1.4 Sentence Structure and Vocabulary 2.0 Web Page Structure

2.1 Page Body 2.2 Meta Data 2.3 Meta Title 2.4 Meta Description

3.0 SEO 101 3.1 How Do Search Engines Decide Which Page is Ranked First? 3.2 How Copywriters Improve a Site’s SEO 3.3 Black Hat SEO

4.0 Keywords 4.1 Excessive Keywords 4.2 Striking a Balance 4.3 Keyword Research 4.4 Finding Relevant Keywords 4.5 Using Keywords in Copy 4.6 How to Choose Keywords 4.7 Make Keywords Easier to Find 4.8 Keyword Frequency & Positioning

4.8a How Many Keywords? 4.8b Where to Put Them? 4.8c Anchor Text 4.8d Keyword Readability Tip

5.0 Writing Meta Tags 5.1 Meta Title 5.2 Meta Description 5.3 Meta Tag Tips 5.4 Meta Tag Design Process

6.0 Generating Copy Ideas 7.0 Assessing Copy Potential

7.1 Valuing Interest 7.1a Google Insights for Search 7.1b Google Keyword Tool 7.1c Google Suggest 7.1d Adwords Campaign 7.1e Google Analytics 7.1f Twitter

7.2 Valuing Competition References & Further Reading Resources & Tools

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Introduction Creating content for the web requires a unique approach to writing, with several key differences between print and online media to be taken into consideration. This handbook has been written for all copywriting staff at Amigo Media as a guide to effective Writing for the Web. The handbook is by no means exhaustive in its guidelines; we have focused on the topics most relevant to the company’s work. A suggested reading list is included at the end and we would welcome any further research or additions to the handbook. We hope that, with continual development, this handbook will serve as a valuable asset in Amigo Media’s journey towards becoming a leading online publisher.

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1.0 Writing for the Web Writing for the web is unlike writing for print in many ways – the greatest difference being that it is not just readers who will be scanning your text. Web content is, of course, firstly for the reader, but search engines such as Google and Yahoo will also be viewing and assessing your copy. We will first examine best practices for writing for an online audience, then look at how to make your copy search engine­friendly in later sections. Google’s own suggestions for best writing practices include:

Write easy­to­read text Stay organised around the topic Use relevant language Create fresh, unique content Offer exclusive content or services Create content primarily for your users, not search engines Copy should be specific to an end goal – make it a resource that will

encourage people to link to it and browse other pages on the site

1.1 How Does Online Copy Differ to Print Material?

“How Users Read on the Web: They Don’t”

­ Jakob Nielson, Site Usability Expert

People search the web and read print materials for entirely different reasons. The internet is designed for instant gratification – searching for specific information and finding it with ease. Very few people will read an entire web page from start to finish. They scan and focus on words and phrases as they go. A key task for the copywriter is to make the information the reader is seeking immediately jump from the page – thus encouraging them to stay and read more. Online copy should be short and snappy. Descriptive text filled with adjectives can be fine in print but is often difficult to read from a screen.

1.2 Grabbing the Reader

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Studies have shown that readers generally decide whether to stay on a web page within three seconds of landing on it. Often they will be encountering your business for the first time and will make a snap decision on whether you are a trusted source of information. There are some simple steps you can take to grab visitors within this limited time frame:

The main point of the copy should be expressed at the very beginning. Use short words, short sentences and short paragraphs. Use headers and bold text to break up long pieces of copy and highlight

main points. Refrain from highlighting entire sentences in this way – stick to a phrase or a few words at most.

Use points and tables rather than long lists or blocks of text. Example The example below shows the difference these tips can make to how appealing a web page is to a reader: Before After

1.2a Layout Readability Tip Another way to test the staying power of your article is to scan the title, headings and any bold text. What you read should flow coherently and explain the subject

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matter without the need to read the rest of the copy. The example below shows the title and headings on an article before and after this test: Title & Headings Before Improved Title & Headings Say it Ain’t So, Joe … … The bad news … … More bad news … The good news …

Coffee Shops Battle Recession … … Cash­strapped consumers kick coffee … … Small businesses struggle most ... Listen to consumers to prosper …

A person landing on the original would be forced to read the entire copy to find what they are looking for, possibly leaving the page out of frustration. The second option presents information instantly using keywords, allowing the reader to locate the answer to their search quickly and easily.

1.3 How Much Copy per Page? Yahoo suggests that all online copy should be about 30­50% shorter than print copy on the same subject would be. Sentences should be no more than 30 words long and paragraphs should be no more than two­three sentences long. Remember a page should also contain no less than 250­300 words of copy. Search engines can sometimes see anything less as being too sparse to contain useful information Above all, length of copy will be dictated by the topic. Web pages should be short enough to be clear, concise and relevant and long enough to be informative.

1.4 Sentence Structure and Vocabulary The web lends itself to an informal, conversational tone. Online copy has a universal audience and should be written to include as many of these people as possible. Bear in mind that the person reading the copy may not be a native English speaker or may have a low level of literacy. Make sure to keep all copy simple but informative.

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This simplified language and sentence structure is one of the greatest differences between writing for print and writing for the web. Tim Ash, an internet marketing expert, says this adaptation is essential for reducing the visitor’s cognitive load:

“Instead of being forced to pay attention to how the information is presented, they can devote more focus to getting their intended task accomplished. By getting out of their way, you empower them to be faster, more efficient and effective.” ­ Tim Ash, Landing Page Optimisation, p133

To achieve this, Yahoo recommends that you Do use:

Basic subject­verb­object sentence structure (the boy throws the ball) But vary it from sentence to sentence.

Simple present tense when possible Active voice rather than passive

‘The cat sat on the mat’ rather than ‘the mat was sat on by the cat’ Sentences beginning with ‘And’, ‘But’ etc.

Informality on the web means traditional writing rules don’t always apply, especially if it cuts one long sentence into two or three shorter ones.

And Don’t use:

Excessive punctuation, fonts, font sizes and colours It’s distracting and difficult to read.

Negative words Words and phrases such as ‘unfortunately’, ‘cannot’, ‘never’ should

be replaced or rearranged in a more positive light (‘make sure to’, ‘remember to’, ‘try…’)

Needless words One author on the subject says: ‘Get rid of half the words on each

page, then get rid of half of what’s left’. Keep it short. Jargon and clichés

They sound like promotional copy rather than useful information. Slang

Unless it’s appropriate for a targeted audience. It can alienate readers.

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2.0 Web Page Structure A web page is made up of a number of elements. Of these, the two main concerns of the copywriter are the Page Body and certain Meta Tags.

2.1 Page Body The body of a web page is constructed using HTML, CSS, Javascript, Images, Video and more. The most important element however, is the plain text on the page. The written content of a site is its most important attribute. It’s an asset which attracts readers, encourages hits and browsing, draws advertisers and generally achieves the objectives behind creating a site in the first place. This is why our efforts, and this guidebook, focus on developing copy to a high standard. On the web, copy includes titles, headers, links, lists and anything else you use when compiling the information on a page:

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2.2 Meta Data Meta data refers to various ‘tags’ embedded in a web page. These tags instruct search engines and browsers on how to display the page, what language the copy is in, if the page is suitable for children and much more. It’s essentially ‘data about data’, and most of it is compiled by the web designer rather than the copywriter. Two Meta tags which are the responsibility of the copywriter are the Meta title and the Meta description. Both are displayed on search engine results pages rather than anywhere on the page itself. These particular tags are scanned by both readers and search engines, and should give both an indication of exactly what the page is about. Each page on a website must have unique Meta tags – guidelines on how to write them follow on page 18.

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2.3 Meta Title A page’s Meta title is visible in three places. The most important is on a search engine’s result page, as seen here in red:

It can also be seen on the tab of the browser:

And in the toolbar:

2.4 Meta Description The Meta description appears under the Meta title on the search engine results page. Like the Meta title, it does not appear anywhere on the page itself:

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3.0 SEO 101 SEO stands for Search Engine Optimisation: the practice of writing copy in a way that it is attractive to search engines. By optimising your copy for search engines, you improve the site’s chances of being ranked highly in their search results page. Spas.ie, for example, is ranked first by Google when searching for ‘spas’ on Irish pages:

3.1 How Do Search Engines Decide Which Page is Ranked First? It’s impossible to know exactly how a search engines decide on a site rankings. SEO is a much debated subject, with numerous books written on this topic alone. While we can’t tell exactly how sites are ranked, we do know the following factors definitely play a role:

How long a site has been up and running How many hits the site gets If other established sites have endorsed the site by linking to it Relevance of the copy to the search topic How useful the search engine believes your content is The speed at which a page loads

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3.2 How Copywriters Improve a Site’s SEO The primary aim of search engines is to provide the user with the most relevant sites and pages for their search. Many of the factors listed above are beyond the direct influence of the copywriter, but there are a number of steps that can be taken to improve copy for SEO purposes:

Embed copy ­ from Meta tags to body text ­ with keywords

Keywords are the words and phrases within a piece of text that help search engines (and people) decide if your page is relevant to the topic being searched for.

Produce relevant copy Straying off the topic of a page will introduce unrelated keywords. By

keeping copy relevant, search engines (and people) can see that the page deals exclusively with what they are looking for, and ranking can improve as a result.

Make every page on the site unique Search engines completely ignore copy that has been copied from

elsewhere.

Internal linking Including links to other pages on your site acts as an endorsement in

the eyes of a search engine – both for the page itself and the pages you link to. It’s seen as an indication that the linked pages contain useful information and that the original page is interesting enough to be expanded on.

3.3 Black Hat SEO Black Hat SEO refers to unfavourable practices undertaken to deceive search engines into believing a page is relevant and useful. These pages tend to be of little use to a person and are aimed solely at search engines. Search engines, however, have begun to notice these practices and penalise the sites in question. Methods of Black Hat SEO include: Keyword stuffing

Overloading a page with keywords for the search engine rather than creating clear, useful content for the reader.

External link building Posting links to your site on blogs, forums, directories etc. to make it look as

though others have endorsed your site’s content.

Hidden text

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Listing or repeating keywords in a way that is unappealing or nonsensical for a reader, then hiding them by making the text the same colour as the background. This makes the keywords invisible to the human eye but still readable for search engines.

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4.0 Keywords Keywords are the terms that both search engines and people seek out to identify the subject matter of a page. When a search for a given topic is entered into a search engine, the engine will scan for sites that have, among other things, references to that search topic. The user will then scan the results to see which appears most relevant to his/her search. The words and phrases noted by the user and search engine in this process are referred to as keywords. It is important to not to over or under­use keywords in website copy:

Too many keywords can be seen as Black Hat SEO and lead to your site

being penalised. It will also reduce a page’s readability and value to the user. Too few keywords can mean search engines won’t see your page as being

related to a given subject and users will be less likely to read it.

Using the right keywords at a suitable frequency can improve a site’s ranking as well as its relevancy and clarity for the reader.

4.1 Excessive Keywords One common method of Black Hat SEO is overloading content with keywords in the hopes of improving ranking. However excessive use of keywords can lead to copy sounding unnatural to the reader. If readers land on these pages only to discover that there is very little information of value, or that the copy is irrelevant to their search, they will usually leave straight away. Search engines notice if particular websites repeatedly see readers hitting the back button and take it as evidence that the copy is of little value. Ranking can fall dramatically as a result.

4.2 Striking a Balance It’s essential to aim copy at people before search engines to encourage hits and avoid penalisation by search engines. The following section on keywords will explain how best to choose and distribute keywords so as to strike the right balance between SEO and readability.

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4.3 Keyword Research Researching keywords allows you to make small adjustments to a page’s copy that can see its ranking and relevance improve dramatically. There are a number of tools that can be used for keyword research, some of which are listed in the section on Valuing Interest (page 24). For the most part however, we will use the Google Keyword Tool, which generates suggested keywords based on Google’s statistics

4.4 Finding Relevant Keywords The purpose of keyword research is to find and use keywords that will make a site more relevant to users’ searches. Take, for example, a page about yoga for Spas.ie. Before beginning writing, we can use the Google Keyword Tool to see which yoga­related phrases are being searched for. Enter the word ‘yoga’ into the search bar, click ‘only show ideas closely related to my search terms’ and choose Ireland as your location.

This shows there are approximately 90,500 searches in Ireland each month for the term ‘yoga’. Reading down the ‘Local Monthly Searches’ column we can see other popular search terms include ‘about yoga’, ‘what is yoga’, ‘yoga Dublin’, ‘bikram yoga’, ‘yoga classes’, ‘hot yoga’ and ‘yoga and pregnancy’.

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4.5 Using Keywords in Copy From this, some ideas might be to include a paragraph with the heading ‘what is yoga’, explaining the theory you should know ‘about yoga’. We might also describe different styles such as ‘bikram’ and ‘hot yoga’. ‘Yoga and pregnancy’ could also have a paragraph, or even receive its own page. We could also mention some locations for ‘yoga classes’, particularly in ‘Dublin’ and other places listed by the Google Keyword Tool. These might only be small changes to our original idea for the copy, but make it that bit more relevant to people’s interests.

4.6 How to Choose Keywords Keyword suggestions can be endless. The main factors to take into consideration when choosing which to use are:

Popularity of search term – it shows there’s an interest in the topic. Relevance of search term to your site/page – it will help keep your copy on

topic. Competition for search term – low competition for a keyword could improve

your ranking for that term, see more on page 29.

4.7 Make Keywords Easier to Find If a keyword receives a large number of searches it should most certainly be included. However if hundreds of thousands of other sites also use the same keywords you may face stiff competition in achieving a high ranking for that keyword. One method of improving keywords is to make them longer, as single word keywords are repeated endlessly throughout the web. Yahoo recommends combining a search term that receives a large number of searches with one that doesn’t receive as many. Example: From the above example we can see ‘bikram yoga’ is a popular general search term, with 9,900 searches, while ‘yoga poses’ is more specific but receives fewer searches (1,600). Combining the two, we could create the keyword ‘bikram yoga poses’ – which would be picked up by searches for ‘bikram yoga’, ‘yoga poses’ and ‘bikram yoga poses’

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4.8 Keyword Frequency & Positioning The Keyword Frequency of a page is the number of times a keyword appears in relation to the total number of words on a page. The traditional view is that if this is too low the site will be seen as irrelevant and not ranked, but if it’s too high it will be seen as keyword stuffing and penalised. The best approach is to write keywords into text as naturally as possible. One tool available for assessing the keyword frequency (or density) of a page is the David Naylor Keyword Density Tool. By entering a link to a particular page, the tool will return a list of the most used keywords on that page, how many times each is repeated, where it is repeated, and the density as a percentage:

The above example of ‘Are Fish Pedicures Safe?’ on Spas.ie shows that the targeted keyword of ‘fish pedicures’ has a frequency of 2.17%, and related words such as ‘safe’ are also repeated.

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4.8a How Many Keywords? Yahoo recommends that you choose three­five keywords for each page of your site and repeat each one in its exact form two­four times for every 200 words of copy. Extra keywords can be placed in Meta tags, headings, titles etc., and single keywords can be repeated slightly more than two or three word phrases.

4.8b Where to Put Them? Search engines scan copy in a similar way to the human eye, noticing headlines, bold text etc. Keywords should be distributed evenly throughout copy, making sure to place some in the introduction and conclusion. Including keywords at the beginning of the first sentence of the first paragraph, for example, gives the keyword weight, as the search engine will assume that the copy that follows must then be relevant to that keyword. Other essential places to include keywords are:

Meta title Meta description Page title Headings Bold text Lists Links (Anchor Text)

Again, all of this should come relatively naturally if your copy is relevant to the keyword and doesn’t stray off topic.

4.8c Anchor Text Anchor text refers to linked words or phrases within body text:

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These links may be:

Internal – linking to another page on your site External – linking to a page on another site

Including keywords in these links adds value both to the page itself and to the page you are linking to – making it particularly beneficial in the case of internal links. This means that links such as ‘…one of the most effective spa treatments for weight loss (click here for more)’ is a wasted opportunity (the anchor text here is ‘click here’). Always link the relevant phrase, e.g. ‘…one of the most effective spa treatments for weight loss is…’

4.8d Keyword Readability Tip Search engines only recognise keywords in their exact form. For example, the keyword ‘holiday’ receives around 1 million searches per month, while ‘holidays’ receives 823,000. Both are significant results, but in some cases the plural (or singular) of a keyword might receive fewer searches than the original exact form. One issue that can arise when repeating keywords in their exact form is that copy can begin to sound jilted and forced, especially with longer keywords. One way to counteract this is to break them up using punctuation ­ search engines ignore punctuation and will still recognise it as the exact keyword. Example: Selected Keyword: Spain package holidays from Ireland Possible Use of Punctuation: … Our special offers include a range of Spain package holidays. From Ireland, flights depart from Dublin, Shannon…

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Selected Keyword: Cheap holiday Spain Possible Use of Punctuation: Have you considered the Costa del Sol for a cheap holiday? Spain has an abundance of budget­friendly accommodation… Remember:

Repeat three­five keywords, two­four times throughout copy

Include keywords in titles, headings, links, lists, Meta tags…

Use punctuation to improve readability of keywords if needed

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5.0 Writing Meta Tags Meta tags are generally written after copy has been completed to ensure they are relevant to the content. Every single page on a site should have a unique Meta title and Meta description. This shows search engines and people how one page differs from the next, as well as allowing you to use as many keywords as possible.

5.1 Meta Title The Meta title should include the page’s main key phrase (or keyword), or a variation of it. For example, if targeting the keyword ‘family holiday’ then a suitable variation might be ‘family holiday breaks’. Aside from keywords, Meta titles should include certain features:

Call to action (when applicable) e.g. ‘Book’, ‘Buy’, ‘Find’, ‘Book Now’ Capital letters on all keywords and calls to action Attractive adjectives e.g. ‘Best’, ‘Top’, ‘Great’, ‘Deal’

As this title is the first thing a user will see when viewing search results, it is important that the wording is attractive, accurate and encourages them to click. Meta titles should be no more than 60 characters in length (including spaces). Anything longer will not be displayed in full in the search engine results:

5.2 Meta Description The Meta description should:

Simply and accurately summarise the content of the page Contain some of the main keywords or a variation of them

Overloading Meta descriptions with keywords is a common feature of Black Hat SEO. Instead, Meta descriptions should consist of a one or two sentence summary of the page’s content.

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Meta descriptions should be no more than 150 characters in length (including spaces). Anything longer will not be displayed in full in the search engine results:

5.3 Meta Tag Tips

Include the main, high volume keywords on your homepage Meta tags. This is the most important page on the site, both to the person reading it and to the search engine.

Other pages containing more specific information are where to include the

more specific keywords.

See Google’s guide http://support.google.com/webmasters/bin/answer.py?hl=en&answer=35624

5.4 Meta Tag Design Process Step 1. Define Parent Keyword The parent keyword should be one of the following, or a combination of both:

a. The most popular search term to the topic b. The most relevant search term to the topic

Example: Popular term = “All Inclusive Holidays” Relevant keyword = “Rhodes” Suggested Combination = “All Inclusive Holidays in Rhodes” Step 2. Keyword Idea Generation Build a list of keywords relevant to the parent keyword and the page copy. This can be done using:

Google Keyword Tool

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Your own ideas – what would you enter into Google if you were looking for the information on your page?

Example: All inclusive Holidays Accommodation In Rhodes Last Minute Resorts 2011 Rhodes from Ireland Packages from Dublin Deals from Cork Cheap Step 3. Narrow Down Keywords Select the most relevant keywords: Example: All inclusive Holidays Accommodation In Rhodes Last Minute Resorts 2011 Rhodes from Ireland Packages from Dublin Deals from Cork Cheap Step 4. Build Meta Title & Description Using the guidelines above, put together a Meta title and description:

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Result: Meta Title: ‘Book All Inclusive Holidays in Rhodes’ Meta Description: ‘All Inclusive Deals from Ireland to Rhodes. Find Holiday Packages and Accommodation in the top resorts in Rhodes’

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6.0 Generating Copy Ideas As mentioned earlier in the handbook, all copy on a website should be informative, unique and relevant. Websites that update and add content frequently are viewed favourably by search engines, so whether developing a new site or updating an existing one it makes sense to spend time developing ideas for content. Ideas for a site’s content can arise from various sources:

Personal interests/ideas Recent news pieces, launches, promotions, openings… Competitors’ sites Popular search terms on the Google Keyword Tool

Regardless of the source of inspiration, it’s important to asses the copy’s value to the site before proceeding to write and publish it. All web content should fulfil an objective, whether it be to:

Draw more hits to the site Encourage purchases/bookings Attract members/advertisers Create a good first impression of the site Make the site ‘sticky’ – encourage visitors to browse further pages rather than

leave straight away

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7.0 Assessing Copy Potential Ideas for copy should be assessed for the following before being implemented:

Interest

Is there an interest in the topic? Is it being searched for? Has a recent event/launch/promotion seen a spike in searches for the topic or

is it a consistent search term?

Relevance Is the topic relevant to the subject matter of the site? Will your copy provide the information people are searching for?

Competition

Is the internet already saturated with similar copy? Will your keywords compete?

How does the level of competition compare against the level of interest in the topic?

Added Value

Will the information be of value to the reader? Will it encourage readers to link to the page from elsewhere?

Will the copy add to the value of the website?

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7.1 Valuing Interest There are a number of online tools you can use to assess interest in a given topic:

a. Google Insights for Search (Google Trends) b. Google Keyword Tool c. Google Suggest d. Adwords Campaign e. Google Analytics f. Twitter

7.1a Google Insights for Search Google Insights for Search compares search numbers across specific regions, categories and time frames. The example below compares the value of a page on Swedish massage with a page on fish pedicures:

Searches for ‘Swedish massage’ are shown in blue and for ‘fish pedicure’ shown in red. From this we can see Swedish massage receives a steady number of searches, but that the level of interest is relatively low. Fish pedicures on the other hand have

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seen a spike in interest in recent months and search numbers are slightly more haphazard. We can take from this that there is a greater interest in fish pedicures than in Swedish massage. Deciding to proceed with a page on fish pedicures, we can then use Insights for Search in a similar way to Adwords to compare which keywords would be best to include in the copy. Importantly, Insights for Search shows us rising search terms related to the topic:

7.1b Google Keyword Tool One of the most useful tools for assessing consumer interest is the Google Keyword Tool. The Local Monthly Searches column gives a relatively accurate idea of the number of searches for a given keyword in Ireland each month.

From the above results we can see that there is considerably more interest in ‘fish pedicure’ than there is in ‘Swedish massage’.

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7.1c Google Suggest As you type a search into Google, Google's algorithm tries to predict the remainder of your search term in a drop down box. This prediction is based on other users’ searches and the popularity of terms recently entered into Google. This data is updated frequently to offer fresh and rising search queries.

7.1d Adwords Campaign Running an Adwords campaign involves paying to have your site appear at the top of Google’s results page. These ads can be seen here:

Running one of these campaigns can offer insight into search terms and interest in a topic.

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7.1e Google Analytics Google Analytics can be a highly useful tool in assessing interest in a topic. Giving details of the most popular pages on your site within a given time frame, we can see that the following are the top pages on Spas.ie:

Articles one and two above are about fish pedicures, showing a significant interest in the topic. Article four is about hen party ideas, article six about a skincare brand called Yonka, and article seven about spa thermal facilities. We can then view information about these individual pages, including where the page hits originated (Google, Yahoo, newsletter, external links). The second fish pedicure article for example, received hits from searches on Google, Bing and Yahoo:

We can also see what keywords were searched for by the user before they ended up on the page. Some of the hits to the hen party article, for example, originated with searches for the following keywords:

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While the numbers aren’t huge, we can still see that there is an interest in girly spa weekends and getaways. From this, we might decide to write an article on this topic for Spas.ie.

7.1f Twitter Twitter is an excellent site for assessing recent interest in a topic. Simply see what’s trending and what is being said about a given topic. Both worldwide and local trends can be viewed by specifying your location:

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7.2 Valuing Competition The most accurate way to determine the competition for a given keyword is by comparing Google page results with search numbers from the Google Keyword Tool. Google Results Searching for your keyword on Google can give you an important indicator of competition. Below is a search for two keywords on Google Ireland:

“Fish pedicure” returned around 36,500 pages of results and “Swedish massage” returned 36,600. By comparing these two results we can see that Google has found roughly the same number of web pages for each keyword. Google Keyword Tool We then go to the Google Keyword Tool to find out the level of interest in these two topics.

As we saw earlier, there is far more interest in ‘fish pedicure’ than there is ‘Swedish massage’, but they have a similar number of results pages. This immediately tells us that the competition for fish pedicure is far less than that for Swedish massage.

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This is shown using the following ratio:

Number of monthly searches : Number of results pages For fish pedicures this is:

2,400 : 36,500 = 1 : 15

(by dividing the first figure into the second: 36,500 ÷ 2,400 = 15) Which tells us, very roughly, that for every one search for the term fish pedicure, there are 15 results. For Swedish massage:

880 : 36,600 = 1 : 41

This tells us there are around 41 pages of results for every one search for Swedish massage. Comparing the two we can see that there is far less competition for fish pedicures. Google Keyword Tool Competition Bar The formula above was developed to achieve more accurate results than offered in Google Keyword Tool’s competition bar. This can be seen highlighted below:

The Google Keyword Tool generates the competition bar based on paid advertisements, not actual organic searches, so it is not entirely accurate in indicating competition for a keyword. Using the formula above guarantees a more precise result.

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References & Further Reading The Yahoo Style Guide Don’t Make Me Think! A common sense approach to web usability, 2nd ed. Steve Krug Content Strategy for the Web Kristina Halvorson

Resources & Tools David Naylor Keyword Density Tool Google Analytics Google Insights for Search Google Keyword Tool Wordtracker

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