Writing copy for SEO

What is SEO? 

Search engine optimisation (SEO) is a method used to enhance relevant information on websites so that our users (or audience) can find it easily via search engines.

Ensuring content is optimised for search is both the job of web/digital teams and anyone across the University who is writing copy or creating content for our websites.  

Below are a range of recommendations that can be implemented to help optimise the copy and content on your web pages. 

Why is SEO important?  

SEO helps make your website or online content discoverable by people using search engines to find information on what you offer or the information you are providing.  

When someone enters a search term a search engine, such as Google, the provider tries to offer the most relevant and most authoritative results for that search term. 

Remember there are many universities and websites competing for the same search terms (for example ‘UK university’ or ‘undergraduate medicine degree’). By optimising our content, we increase our chances of ranking higher in search engines and become more visible to the users we want to reach.  

The higher our web pages rank in a Google listing, the more likely it is that a user will click on them. Think about how you use search engines, aren't you more likely to trust and click on results on the first page? 

Planning your SEO content 

Your audience  

• Ask yourself: Who are you writing for? How will you provide the information that they want?  
• Users look for the information they need by typing in search terms. Search engines will then search the internet for content results that are relevant to those terms.  
• If your webpage is to stand the best chance of showing up in those results, it’s important that the content contains words that closely match the kind of terms your intended audience will be looking for – these are called keywords.  

Choosing keywords  

• If you don't have data to help define your keywords, ensure you don't use internal university terms or language that a user might not understand. Also, think what specific words a user might type into the search engine when creating a web page.   
• For example, if your page contains information on funding options for PhD students in a particular subject area, ask yourself: how would a user be likely to describe what they’re looking for? It is likely that users – and therefore search engines – will regard a page titled ‘Funding for PhD programmes in xxxxx’ as being more relevant than simply ‘Funding’.  
• For a more rigorous approach, Google AdWords’ Keyword Planner Toolis a powerful way of seeing what keywords rank well and how much competition there is for those keywords. 

Writing and structuring SEO content  

Headings and subheadings  

The main heading highlights what information is contained on the page and is the most important place to include keywords. If the main heading doesn't accurately describe the contents of the page, the user may immediately leave the site, or fail to get to the page in the first place. Search engines try and emulate the experience of human visitors to web pages and so put a great deal of emphasis on headings and subheadings as a way to make sense of the contents of a page.  

Make sure that your headings and subheadings:  

• are clear, descriptive and informative; 
• contain keywords as early as possible; 
• are unique to your site and your offering, where possible (remember, you’ll be competing with other universities for search engine rankings).  

Example: 

• Rather than a vague heading like ‘Study’, use ‘Undergraduate study at Manchester’. This heading tells a user landing on the webpage exactly what the content is about and who it is aimed at. Descriptive subheadings then might be: 
• Courses for 2025 entry (instead of ‘Courses’)
• Applying for a course (instead of ‘Applying’) 
• Fees and funding options (instead of ‘Finance’)

Main body copy  

While it’s very important to get keywords into headings and subheadings, it’s less vital for the main body copy.  

It’s much more important to have well-written copy that contains the most relevant information as early as possible. This, coupled with the keywords in the headers and sub headers, should ensure that your page performs well for SEO and user-experience.  

Remember, users skim content so they can quickly determine whether they have found the information they were looking for.  

If you have some very important information or a key message (for example, the application opening date of a scholarship or when an open day is taking place) always write this copy at the top of the page – a web editor will be able to display it in a format that highlights the content is very important.  

Tone of voice and house style  

In addition to the SEO recommendations above, the University’s guidance on tone of voice and house style are crucial tools for anybody who’s involved in writing copy for our websites.

Additional elements checklist

Copy is just one element that makes up a webpage, there are often additional considerations to enhance SEO.