What is SEO copywriting?
SEO copywriting is the practice of producing keyword-optimized content that's designed to appeal to human users and search engine algorithms.
SEO copywriting is both a key element and a big challenge in every SEO strategy.
SEO copywriting is exactly as it sounds. First: You’ve got the SEO part:
optimizing for search engines(SE), and
Second: you’ve got the copywriting part:
writing for the purpose of marketing or advertising. SEO copywriting is
basically the creation of SEO Content.
SEO copywriting is the process of writing content that is useful, ranks well, and communicates expertise and value to your target audience.
The practice of effective SEO copywriting has changed a lot of people over the years.
Always start with keyword research
The very first step of SEO copywriting has little to do with writing.
First, you need to decide what you’re going to write about. Which
topics do you want to be found for? You’ll need to use the keywords you want to rank for in your copy, so the first step of SEO copywriting is keyword research. Keyword research is what you do in order to list the keywords and keyphrases for which you want to rank for.
Second: Make a list of relevant keywords. Once you have formulated a clear mission statement, you can start making a list of all the search terms
(keywords) you want your website to be found for. If your mission is
clear, you should have little trouble coming up with search terms that
apply to your niche market and your unique selling points. These will be the keywords you want to be found for.
Copywriting: is the act or occupation of writing text for the purpose of advertising or other forms of marketing.
A copywriter is someone who creates written messaging for a business or organization, usually with the intent to sell or promote a product.
It’s
well established that SEO copywriting is all about creating useful content
for humans, with the right keywords for search engines, just like Google or Yahoo!. Of course you want your website is ranked in a Search Engine Results Page (SERP) as high as possible.
SEO copywriting:
combines the technical aspects of keywords and entities with the art of
writing great content for your human audience. This discipline brings
together several quantitative and qualitative considerations to produce
content found by Google-Yahoo and entices your readers to take action.
Successful blog How to.
In order for your blog to be
successful, you need to do more than just “write content". Your copy
needs to:
- Appeal to your target audience
- Solve a specific problem
- Show how YOU, specifically, solve that problem
The easiest way to convey all of the above is by using strategic SEO keywords to drive targeted traffic to your website.
So what is SEO?
SEO stands for Search Engine Optimization(SEO). It
refers to the process of writing your website copy and setting up your
site in a way that helps it appear on best places in a Search Engine Results Page
(SERP).
The perfect SEO cycle
Let’s deal with the obvious first. The best way for a website to get
onto the first page in a search engine result (other than buying an ad,
that is) is to fill the site with useful information.
The more useful the information, the more people visit the site, the
more popular the site looks to search engines, the more the search
engines rate the site highly, the more people visit the site. It’s the
perfect SEO cycle.Therefore, that great SEO copywriting starts with great copywriting. All the usual well known vital rules apply.
- Know your audience
- Write about subjects that interest them
- Choose the right structure, length and tone of voice
- Make it crystal clear what you want your audience to think, feel or do, and
- Load your copy with undeniable benefits.
Short- and long-tail keywords
Give your site the best chance of being found by using as many variations of your main keywords as possible.
Follow these SEO copywriting tips and you’ll be on the road to more website traffic!
- Understand (and match) keyword intent
- Get to the point
- Refrain from keyword stuffing
- Speak your audience’s language
- Shoot for the featured snippet
- Think hard about your headline
- Optimize your meta tags
Three phases of writing an article
Once you’ve decided upon a topic or a story you want to write, the actual SEO copywriting begins! The SEO writing process consists of three stages: preparing(40%), writing(20%) and correcting (40% or editing).
The 5 most important elements of SEO copywriting
Like has been said: there are lots of things that contribute to a web page’s SERP
ranking, but when it comes to copy, the most important elements are:
- Headlines
- Content
- Meta descriptions
- Keyword frequency and density
- Page links
Title tags (the large blue text at the top of search results) are
among the strongest relevancy signals for a search engine. These provide
an accurate description of the page’s content. Ideally, the keywords
should be placed at the start of the title tag. Capitalize First letters.
From an SEO copywriter’s point of view, writing good H1, H2 and H3
tags is simply about writing good headlines and subheads – something
good copywriters have been doing for years anyway – and making sure they
contain a keyword or two.
The H1 tag – the main headline – is the most important in terms of SEO as this usually becomes the title tag for that page.
Most Content Management Systems operate like word processors and
allow you to highlight words and phrases you want to make bigger, bold,
underlined or italic. In WordPress, you can format headings using the
HTML coding in text mode or the drop-down menu in visual mode.
If you’re using Word or an equivalent word processor, you could use
the Design or Styles menu to vary the font size of headings and
subheadings.
Keywords in hyperlinks and anchor text
Hyperlinks create a bit of a dilemma for SEO copywriters. They are
extremely useful SEO tools but if used inappropriately (i.e. using
keywords to link to inappropriate sites or pages), search engines will
penalise websites and rank them lower.
Anchor text is the clickable text
in a hyperlink. Keywords in anchor text are one of the many signals
search engines use to determine the topic of a web page so they should
be relevant to the page they link to, rather than generic such as “click
here”.
“Click here” tells the search engine that the page the hyperlink
links to is about the subject “click here”. If you have a page showing
your opening hours, don’t write “click here for our opening hours” just
write “opening hours” and make “opening hours” the anchor text for the
link.
Keywords in alt text
Alt text (alternative text) is a word or phrase that can be inserted
in an HTML document to tell site viewers the nature or contents of an
image. The term “alt tag” is a commonly used abbreviation for an “alt
attribute on an image” tag.
The main purpose of the alt tag is to describe what’s on an image so
that screen readers for the blind and visually impaired people will read
out this text and make your image accessible.
As for SEO purposes, Google places a relatively high value on alt
texts to determine what is on the image but also to determine the topic
of surrounding text.
It is what you say – and how you say it
If I had to sum up SEO copywriting in just two words, I’d say “relevance” and “popularity”.
Think of search engines as very fast and efficient librarians. When
people search online, the search engine librarians scour their billions
of documents and do two things:
- Return only those results that are relevant or useful to the searcher’s query
- Rank those results according to the popularity of the websites serving the information
To become popular, you need to be relevant. Write about relevant
subjects. Use relevant words, i.e. words target audiences use. Put those
words in the relevant places. Do it well and (eventually) you’ll become
popular.
Just Write!
The most important tip for this phase of SEO copywriting is to just write.
The very final step in your SEO copywriting process is getting feedback.
After editing your text, you should ask people for feedback.
The Best book on CopyWriting
The Copywriter's Handbook: A Step-by-Step Guide to Writing Copy That Sells (4th Edition) [Bly, Robert W.]
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