Bulleted Lists - Writing With The Search Engines In Mind

This is another in the series of items about 'writing with the search engines in mind', but what exactly are we talking about here, getting rankings of course? Rankings for your chosen keyphrase.

Now all this is very fine and dandy, but you also have to remember that you are writing with the human in mind too. Some of these tricks may look a bit clumsy from some standpoints, and in a way that is true, you would not write this way under 'normal' circumstances, but if there is no other way of moving your pages up the list (so you can get some visitors) then following the rules laid down here will help.

One word of warning however, if you see your rankings rise and get the visitors in AND then find that the pages are not liked (visitors 'bounce' off them and don't stay long) then you will need to de-tune the pages a bit, reducing the amount of 'keyword writing' in the copy, as this may well make the pages more palatable for your visitors (again down to checking on the results).

Anyway to business:-

This section is all about using 'Bulleted Lists'. These are common enough on the web today and are excellent in getting messages across, the text being easy to read and scan. However, many a trick is lost when it comes to increasing keyword density in the copy.

The problem is that most lists are written in a way that only uses the main keyphrases once or twice, failing to use them (or something like them - remember the engines are clever at associating different terms) in the actual list items themselves.

Example for keyword 'number plates':-

We can supply number plates to fit all cars in a huge variety of styles

• no documentation required
• fixing kits available
• old fashioned black and white plates
• online plate builder
• Fast Delivery
  

Here just one mention of the term was used, whereas with a bit of work we can re-write it to look something like this:-

Number plates available to fit all cars in a huge variety of styles shapes and sizes

• your number plates can be supplied without documentation
  
• fixing kits available for all types of car and bike number plates
  
• old fashioned black and white number / licence plates available
  
• use our online number plate builder to include all sorts of images
  
• your number plates delivered safely and fast too
  

Using this method the number of mentions of the term 'number plate' is increased whilst also using the term 'licence plate' and bringing in the word 'bike' too so that the engines know that we also deal with motorcycle plates.

More on writing for the engines tomorrow