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So what’s the “ideal” number of words of text, as far as SEO goes? 300? 500?

Look at Google’s high fliers and you’ll see that their pages weigh in at anything between at 2k and 100k, but what does that mean in word terms? Of course what’s important here is relevance and usability and that is linked to file size: the bigger the file, the longer the text, the more diluted the effect. A page with just three well-constructed sentences can outrank the rest.

If you were to take the position “the longer the better”, you’d need to pack a huge screed of text with an almost limitless supply of fact/keywords to keep the keyword concentration high enough. The result would be a bloated monster of a page that no-one would EVER get to the end of. Spare a thought for your readers; they’re what your doing it for aren’t they?

While it is true that larger pages have a larger pool of query matches — including Long Tail searches — if a page is 2,000 words long, it is likely to have more than one subject. Multiple subjects simply dilute the message and hit the SEO.

If you have several topics on one page, split the page: smaller pages have a limited number of potential query matches, but the split will also increase the number of <title>, <h1> and inbound links. And more pages are good for SEO.

The patent of Google’s extremely complex search engine algorithm implies that it is designed to reward sites which grow content, which good news for the genuine web builder.

The truth is that there is no such thing as ideal page length for Google and the other search engines: if there were, search engine spammers would create sites with all pages at this length. The point with web content is to avoid doing things that look like spam.

The Google algorithm’s complexity also means that it’s much harder for SEO optimisers/spammers to apply a series of rules to get good SERPs: this frees up web content authors to write more for a human audience rather than robots.

Some say Google’s long-term planning is aimed exactly at this goal. Perhaps they are changing their unofficial motto from “Don’t Be Evil” to “Do Something Good”.

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People’s view of copyright depends very much on where they stand. I’m not talking about nationality, although that is a problem with the global nature of the web: what may be copyright in one country may be free for all somewhere else. No, what I mean is whether you’re paying for copyright or being paid for it.

Ultimately, under agreed international conventions, an author should be able to enjoy the benefits of their work, be it books or images or even software. That means that anyone who “uses” the author’s work should pay for the privilege, usually in the form of a copyright payment.

Sometimes, such as in the case of books or software, that payment is concealed in the original cost. Other times a small payment is made to the author or his/her agent for a use fee, such as in the case of images, music and such.

At its very heart, copyright is simply payment for work done. Who could argue with that? Plenty of people.

• Software Pirates:
  who can honestly say that they’ve NEVER used software for which they’ve not paid a licence (and that includes copies of WinZip where people just ignore the “nag” screens when it goes past the evaluation period)?
• Peer-to-peer sharers:
  how many of you have mp3s or videos that you couldn’t find on the legal download sites and so were forced to use a torrent program to get? Me neither
• Website images:
  go to any fansite and you’ll see hundreds of images in breach of copyright. (no, it doesn’t make it right to tag on the line: “The copyright remains the property of the original authors”).

Now I hope you’re all thoroughly ashamed of yourselves. Well I can offer you some crumbs of comfort in some cases: it’s called fair use, or by others “a right pain in the ass”.

Fair use can be determined by a four-part test:

1. What is the purpose and character of the use, including the commercial nature?
This has two effects, it allows use if you are quoting parts for review or academic purposes and also allows greater use for non-commercial purposes (this does NOT mean that if you are a non-profit — typically a church or school — you can freely photocopy or otherwise violate others’ copyrights). This applies mostly to written material.

2. The nature of the copyrighted work
Does it have copyright? Is it copyright-free? Can it be copyrighted (ideas, for example, cannot be copyrighted)? Is it open source? Do you own the copyright? Has the copyright run out?

3. The proportion that is “taken”
This is the real “pain in the ass” bit — this does NOT mean that you are allowed to sample so many percent of an image or tune or passage; it’s more a case of how substantive is the taking? Does it take the most important, original, or defining part of the copyrighted work and use it in such a way that it takes away the VALUE of the original or use the taken part to give/create value to their own work, in other words, you cannot “write” a column by taking a piece of someone else’s writing, put large chunks of it in quotes and call it a review.

4. The economic impact of the taking
By taking from the copyrighted material, do you inhibit the original author from profiting from their own work?

Commercial concerns should abide by copyright rules — after all, they would be reaching for the lawyer if some started stealing their services; however, in practice, the first test is all that applies for most hobby sites because of their non-commercial nature, although strictly speaking the minute you stick Google Ad-Words on your site you release yourself from the security of non-profit-making status.

And much though legal departments will claim it isn’t so, there is a reluctance to sepnd large amounts of money and court time chasing the little guy for copyright infringements amounting to pennies and winning lots of bad PR in the process. (The music companies are an exception, it seems). However, if you are ever asked to remove copyrighted material by the author or their agents, do so.

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Generally, for published material — literary, dramatic, musical and artistic — work remains in copyright in the U.K., the E.U. and the U.S. until 70 years after the death of the author.

Literary, dramatic, musical or artistic works:

• until 70 years after the death of the author

Films:

• 70 years from the death of whoever is last to survive of director, screenwriter or composer

Typographic copyright in the printed page:

• for 25 years from publication in that edition, so a recent edition of a long-dead author cannot be freely copied: the publisher has copyright in the typography and layout.

Sound recordings:

• are protected by copyright for 50 years after they are published or performed (so recordings from before 1954 are in the public domain from 2004)

Photographs:

• for 70 years after a known photographer’s death, or
• 70 years after the publication of the work of an unknown photographer

Databases:

• as well as the full term of copyright in the material included, there is a 15-year database right: this begins from each time the database is updated

Unpublished Material:

• ALL unpublished material is currently in copyright
• pre-1989 material remains in copyright until 2039
• post-1989 material is copyrighted until 70 years after year of creation

Remember that there may be more than one copyright holder (multiple authors; writer and composer, etc.)

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This is probably the most crucial question content managers must ask themselves.

Who are you writing for? People? Or Search Engine spiders?

There’s no easy answer. After all, good search engine placings are essential to get people coming to see your content but overdo the SEO and you risk making those visits downright painful.

We’ve all seen examples of pages aimed at spoofing the spiders — hidden text, repeated phrases, endless links — and thankfully search engines are now much better at spotting them and penalising them; however, some other genuine pages are so heavily SEOed that they come close to being unusable as worthwhile content. It’s a fine balance.

Thankfully, good well-written text is as attractive to search engine spiders as it is to human beings. It has to be. Why do search engines exist? To point people in the direction of the websites best suited to their need. And, in an ideal world, the most suitable websites are the ones who display the best information in the best way. So in giving some guidelines for good SEO-friendly content I will hopefully be giving you good guidance for writing interesting content too.

Phantom Keywords

If content is king, then keywords are the princes of content. Good keyword research is essential to attract good rankings but for the purposes of content good keyword research is no more that knowing your subject and not padding out your words: on the web — as in most writing, frankly — keep your text tight and to the point. For instance, if you were trying to get a good ranking for “serviced offices”, your text must have that phrase in it. There would be little point in composing the sentence “it’s good to find an office that is serviced” when what you want to get the spiders to spot “serviced offices”.

Incidentally, the phrase: “His car was regularly serviced. He parked outside his offices” would do quite well for SEO for “serviced offices”. If you can’t use the exact phrase, then keep its components close by.

Many people find SEO difficult for the reason that they are not really passionate about their subject

For SEO purposes, a well-optimised page should contain at least 250 words of text of which the term you are targeting should make up about 5-15%. More than that and you actually risk denting your score. Look at it another way: as a reader, how many times could you cope with variations of the phrase “serviced offices” in a sentence before you started tearing your hair out.

You should also load the most important search terms towards the front. There’s a rule which budding reporters are taught about good writing: put the most important facts as high up the story as possible — many readers only ever read the first few paragraphs. I’m sure you can see the parallel.

Keep mentions of your phrases to around five per block of text: more phrases means more text for high frequency and, if you can, link one of the search phrases to the most relevant page on your site: this will give your rankings a boost.

You can find a handy tool which gives you an idea of good keyword density elsewhere in this site.

SEO and content is a vast subject — possibly the raison d’être of this site — and much too big for one posting, so I’m going to leave the topic here for now. Yet I have one final thought: many people find SEO difficult for the reason that they are not really passionate about their subject (they probably only do it for a living); enthusiasts, on the other hand, live their passion.

For most enthusiasts writing about a hobby or a band or a pastime or an interest, keyword density is not a problem. No, the main hindrance there is jargon … but that’s for another posting.

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