If you’ve ever wondered how popular websites are able to drive people to their sites and generate millions of views, it’s likely a result of great SEO copywriting. Knowing how to utilize SEO copywriting can help your site deliver great content and meet the expectations of your audience. When you use the right combination of SEO copywriting, web browsers will find your content without searching too hard. But like many other tools, mastering SEO copywriting requires work and some trial and error. It’s a vital component of any serious developer’s SEO strategy. Digital algorithms are always changing. This change has to be addressed even before it happens. What’s more, your content still has to be enjoyable. So how can you appeal both to your audience and the changing codes behind computer languages? Mastering SEO for successful application can be done by choosing the right words and content presentation that is easy to find and engaging to an audience.

What is SEO Copywriting?

SEO copywriting is a specialized style of digital writing that helps generate web hits. The phrase SEO copywriting refers to search engine optimization. Essentially, this is what helps create the order of results when we use search engine. These lists are constructed in order from most to the least helpful. However, this is not determined by actual user rating. Instead, the lists are generated by how closely the search words match keywords or phrases, as directly related to the content of the sites. Without proper SEO copywriting, search results would be in haphazard order and require even more searching to navigate. For example, if you’re looking for trending musicians, you want the list of bands and singers instead of popular travel destinations. Good SEO copywriting helps you get information. Great SEO copywriting saves you time.

Where is SEO Copywriting used?

As a casual internet user, the primary place you will see the effects of SEO copywriting are on search engine result pages. As someone hosting web content, the SEO copywriting will be found in your actual content. Blog posts, photo caption, navigation tools and site indexes all contain elements of useful SEO copywriting. There are companies that also offer SEO copywriting services. Using one might help improve your web traffic. The keywords or phrases help organize and catalog digital date so that it’s easier for users to navigate.

Differences Between Traditional and SEO Copywriting

There are some key differences between traditional copywriting and the digital counterpart that is SEO. Traditional copywriting is using text for marketing or advertising purposes that is meant to persuade an audience to choose one product over another. This can be seen in newspapers or magazine ads where a product is shown along with any positive results of using it. SEO copywriting takes this practice and puts on the web, but with some alterations. One of the major differences is using key phrases to find and group content. Inputting these target phrases will guide you towards the services or information that you’re seeking. There is more complexity to SEO copywriting, however. It isn’t enough to simply ask a search engine to find a Thai recipe.

Prior to the refinement and advancing of computer coding, some content providers would overload keywords. This practice is known as keyword stuffing. Keyword stuffing allows content developers to get digital pings in result pages not based on quality content but simply using the same words (i.e., Thai or recipe). This inflates search results. While definitely out of favor in modern SEO copywriting usage, there are still some who try to use this style to generate clicks. Doing so can get a website, and associated links blacklisted from search engine results and have shown itself to be highly ineffective in terms of finding content.

The use of SEO copywriting, however, has helped to limit this style of copywriting. Top search engines now want sites to offer more than just matching keywords. The content needs to be authoritative, meaning the site has actual useful information for those seeking it. More than matching words, the content must provide relevant answers. This does not just benefit the search engines. Website content developers like bloggers can use this to their advantage to help them stand out and gain popularity, as well as high traffic.

Research Related Keywords

When preparing your content to utilize SEO copywriting, you need to determine the subject matter for your web content. If you’re making a blog, what is the focus? Will you write about personal events like childcare or something as broad as fashion? Based on what you decide, that is the topic that will help direct internet users to your page. And once you have chosen this topic, you will need a list of associated keywords to help shape your SEO copywriting. This is called keyword researching. Keyword researching is the first basic steps to outlining your content for SEO copywriting. You will need to make lists of relevant keywords and phrases. It will also help to investigate other websites with similar topics and see what phrases are working for them. This will also allow you to see what sites are popular and will be likely competition for audience appeal.

This is also the step to figure out what makes you stand out from those other sites. General topics like food, clothing or art have tons of available sites, but some are better than others. Usually, the best websites have a very specific agenda and do not stray from this purpose, no matter how many posts are published or content put up. You can use your website’s mission statement to further determine your keywords. Even the best websites do not appeal to everyone, and there is no need to try and do that. Instead, focus on using your content to attract a certain target market. By providing unique content, you will be able to gain followers and attention that is specific to your content. This will further push your individuality and make you stand out even more, especially in terms of SEO copywriting.

If your content is easily found and also easy to read, users might search for your brand name or you personally in order to get your products. One exercise that can assist you in choosing your keywords is to pretend that you are a potential viewer. What are you searching for? What words would you use to search for helpful content? You’ll want to think broadly and even consider terms that might be unfamiliar to you but still applicable to helping others find your content. This can include regional descriptions or older forms of updated words. Consider that there might be combinations of these terms, too.

Languages are also subject to changes and fad, so you should be aware of those. If you feel overwhelmed by this task or can’t come up with as many words as you’d like, there are tools that you can use.  Compiling this list will save you time and give you direction. Put the words in order of most to least helpful so that you can imagine what live search results might look like. It might also be a useful strategy to use less popular words in your content to help drive exclusive SEO search results.  

Developing Landing Pages

A landing page is the destination site for where your audience will be taken once a link is clicked. Its purpose is to engage those website users who found your content via specific keywords. Rather than taking them to your homepage, a landing page takes them to exact content match for what they searched. This means a dedicated page that has been prioritized by using a specific keyword or phrase. For example, a keyword search of a trending television show would take them to your post about that subject instead of your homepage. Though they searched for that content, you want to ensure that there are links and other paths to the rest of your pages.

It’s possible that some of the search results will yield the same landing page as a result of keyword optimization. This creates different paths to your content that still serves the function of increasing your audience traffic and providing the content users are searching for. Be mindful not to use keywords just for the sake of getting potential visits. Make the keywords on your landing pages a substantial and relevant part of what’s posted.

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Getting a High Rank

At peak performance, your SEO copywriting will put your websites at the top of search engine results across the web. Even if users search different phrases, outstanding SEO copywriting will still guide them to you. But how do you achieve such a high ranking on search engines without keyword stuffing? The answer is that while yes, you have the key phrases acting as a directional pointer to your page. You are also providing quality content that engages your audience. How you write can sometimes matter more than what you write.  

Content delivery is what keeps SEO copywriting an important part of web research. Users are able to type in vague combinations of words and still get the results they’re seeking. If you find that you’re experiencing no new clicks, page non-conversion or your pages don’t show up on search results pages; it might be your content. Perhaps the information is outdated or has yet to be optimized so that it can be found.

SEO copywriting isn’t totally dependent on live users to increase your ranking, either. The words on your sites must also get the attention of what are called search engine spiders. There are multiple factors and parameters that need to be met outside of human interaction with digital content. How your pages are spidered, as in how the information is spread out on the web, will convince the search engine spiders to either pull your content results down or propel them forward. Well-written SEO copywriting makes it easy for this to happen.

Provide content that actively answers the questions of your audience. If possible, anticipate if they will take one of two options—be satisfied with your answers and stop looking or become more interested in the topic and look further into it. If they choose the latter, your web page must be prepared with the right links to the appropriate landing pages. For example, if someone searches for the academic history of a president, make sure to answer that question first and foremost. However, rather than answer the question simply, using enticing details to persuade your viewers to dig deeper into their topic. If you choose to mention something that is slightly off-topic but still relevant to your content overall, have a keyword and landing page associated with it.

Even with a high ranking on search engine result pages, it’s highly unlikely that you will develop any real profit from merely showing up on a result page. The SEO copywriting will gear your content toward higher, but the next steps are also crucial. Keeping users browsing your content and clicking your links will help drive your rank up because your content will be read as useful, authentic and reliable by the search engine spiders. For your ranking to improve with SEO copywriting, your content must be thorough. If it is too vague, it will drive users away and also lower your chance for new viewers.

On the same token, it should not be too wordy as that might make your page seem boring. There are different formats to use when presenting content. SEO copywriting is just a major step in generating traffic via high search engine page ranking.

Writing Within SEO Copywriting Basics

Once you have your list of words that will appeal to the digital spiders that filter content and your target audience, you have to compose engaging and possibly relatable content to keep them interested. Before you publish a single word of your content, you should engage yourself in a question and answer session. What do you want to write? What do you want your words to achieve? Why are you writing it? Who are you writing to? (This question is very important as it will dictate not only style but the appropriateness of your content by age, sex or gender.) How will you present your information—in list form with bullets or paragraphs? Will you use pictures that you can also attach keywords to? And what other research do you need to do before presenting the information?

The research can include facts and dates, but if you’re writing about your personal life, you might be able to skip this question. It will be exciting as you prepare to post, but you want to guarantee well-thought out and well-packaged content. Once you’ve decided on the subject matter, the next step is the structure of the text. Most writing forms have a structure that follows this pattern—beginning, middle and end. Though there can be a deviation in the length between these sections, this is the typical pattern.

Your content structure is not only the backbone of your content but also how your audience will navigate your material. When you put information online that is scattered, it’s not just your viewers who will have a difficult time using it. Search engines will also be unable to categorize your work. Without structure, your SEO copywriting search result ranking will suffer. Having clear deliverable content, however, can result in any of the following:

• Repeat views

• Subscriptions

• Ad revenue generation

• Boosted sales (if you have products to sell)

But knowing what you want to present is only one step in knowing how you will showcase your ideas. Every writer has their own writing style. Some of these styles develop naturally through continued writing while others are learned from academics. Both are valuable assets to developing your web content. Knowing how to properly express yourself will determine how well your SEO copywriting can pay off and also how well your audience can bond with your work. Reading is a great way to improve your writing. Reading a variety of materials (other websites or blogs, novels, magazines, etc.) will introduce you to how other people write. You can see how they share anecdotes and what words they use to evoke meaning and feelings. Reading a variety of authors will teach you how to manipulate language. You can insert jokes when the tone is light or use informative word construction for more serious topics.

Developing your own style will happen in time. You will be able to integrate SEO copywriting fundamentals into your style without copying another writer. Another strong benefit of reading to improve your writing style is you’ll gain an understanding for what kind of writing resonates with an audience, particularly you. Sifting through your reading material, you will know why you like certain types of writing. Figure out what about that author’s words you enjoy and try your hand at writing in a similar style. How are their sentences put together? Do they have similar lengths? What literary devices do they use and are they effective? You can even consider reading as part of your research. This is another tactic that can aid you in developing an attractive writing style.

SEO Copywriting Content Writing

Once you have your outline, keywords, and answers to your questions, you’re ready to write. When you write, maintain awareness of using your keywords. SEO copywriting hits come from using specific words or phrases more than once, so you want to be sure to include them. You’ve reached the most important step now—just write it out. If you’re nervous about SEO copywriting key phrase inclusion, just skip it. Depending on your topic, there will be some keywords or phrases that naturally repeat. These words will become the focus on your writing and serve as guides to gaining an audience.

Often times, despite researching and making preparatory steps, web content providers have difficulty creating an opening paragraph. It might feel like too much pressure. A trick around this is to merely skip the intro. You have content to share so being stuck on an introduction can be a problem. Make notes about what an introductory paragraph should have. Introductions usually cover the basic ideas, explanations and overall theme of what you’re writing. The second paragraph is where you start sharing the bulk of your content. Go into more details about your topic. This can also be a great place to include keywords for secondary or tertiary landing pages.

As you continue writing and gain comfort with your topic, you will find that introductions and closings are easy to compose.  Do not slow yourself down with editing at this stage. Undoubtedly, during the writing process, you will find things you want to change. Maybe the tone of the paragraph is off, or you want to reevaluate your use of SEO copywriting keywords. While you should have a watchful eye for accuracy, editing is another separate step. Rewriting will be easier once you have established content. This step is to help ease you into the process of writing for the web so that you will have deliverable and well-received content. Once you start writing, just keep at it until you’ve said what you wanted to and exhausted other ideas. Don’t rush this process as this might create a bigger series of mistakes that you’ll have to correct.

Another tool to help you avoid error is the guidelines and parameters you set during your research phase. You have the outline so use it. Without an outline, you might struggle to properly integrate key phrases. It might also be hard presenting your ideas in a cohesive manner. Your paragraphs should be both easy to read and interesting. Even if your reader skims through your content, they should be able to get the most pertinent information. A good lead-in will help create interest. A lead-in can be a strong opening sentence. It should describe what your work is going to cover. A good opening sentence also addresses possible viewer responses. Following the opening, you want your paragraphs to deliver your content. Depending on your intention, your writing should be humorous, persuasive, informative and maybe emotional.  This will further help you connect with your audience..

Creating a connection via text with your audience also depends heavily on how the information is presented visually. Reading for long lengths of time can cause eye strain when staring at the screen. So you want content that is derivable fairly quickly and efficiently. Consider the formatting of your text and how it aligns with any pictures or motion graphics you might add. The typeface you choose will also affect your content’s readability. Decorative fonts should be used sparingly. Your SEO keywords do not need to be a different font. When users are browsing for particular keywords, they want content to be attached to it and not just examples of the words. Sites that present massive lists of keywords for SEO copywriting are not helpful and do not demonstrate any writing skill. Once again, you want to tailor your work to your audience.

Depending on who you think your readers are, you will need to use appropriate vocabulary. For example, if you are writing for medical professionals, it might be okay to use formal jargon. However, when writing for the general public, jargon should be avoided. Jargon, field-specific terminology, can be a tool for exclusion. Having a few terms might help bolster your SEO copywriting search results, but it might also drive audiences away as they search for definitions. Knowing your audience will also determine what mood or tone you want to convey.

Even if your subject can appeal to many different users (and thus be full of potential keywords for SEO), you should still have a target market which your writing focuses on. For example, many people seek faster ways to clean their homes. But if you write for mothers, specifically, you can address issues like cooking dinner for the children or helping with homework. If possible, try to be specific and also broad. This will help your SEO copywriting work twice as hard to get viewers to your content. You can have a broad topic like father’s day and tie-in specific reviews on what makes good gifts. Regardless of the topic, you need to ensure that your content and text are readable. Readable text is informative but also has the ability to be shareable. Users who share content help increase your SEO copywriting with you having to do anything other than providing quality content.

There is another vital component to content writing that is sometimes overlooked. And that is taking a break from the writing. Crafting, editing and reading content for SEO copywriting can be not only daunting but also very tiring experience. There is no set time frame for writing. In fact, you can set your own schedule for when you’re content is scheduled to be published. Writing for longer time periods can cause a lack of focus and even frustration. How long you can sit and write will have to be something you monitor for yourself. You can try a variety of activities for a break (getting up and walking around, browsing social media or even taking a nap).

Making Edits

One of the last steps to undertake before publishing content is to edit it. Editing means reviewing what you’ve written, checking it against your research and questions and establishing a solid usage of SEO copywriting keywords. Did you say everything that you want to? If not, what would you add? If you feel it’s a cohesive piece, you might want to save the information for another post. This secondary post could also be used a tie into your keywords to help drive audiences to your web page. It is necessary to check and recheck your content for clarity, awkward phrasing, and any poor grammatical structure. Because the goal of SEO copywriting is search engine optimization, you’ll want to check how your words stack up against preexisting sites of the same subject. For this, you can try using a digital plug-in.

The plug-in will be able to cross checks against other digital content. It will find the priority keywords in your content and also make your test easier to read. But plug-ins still won’t cover all the needed steps of editing. A reliable method of editing written pieces is to share it with someone else. In your mind, you have an idea of what you’ve written and how it should look. Sometimes these two visions do not match. There might be missing words, spelling errors or it may not make sense to your reader. Having someone else proofread with help keep you content error-free. Besides reading for grammatical correction, this is also a great opportunity to get feedback. This feedback can help gauge audience-response, whether negative or positive.

Feedback will help you adjust your style of presentation and communication. If possible, have more than one (usually three is best) proofreader. This will allow multiple eyes to find multiple but different errors and also allow you to get a report from differing perspectives. If you find you only have one proofreader (or maybe none at all) you can still do this on your own. Read the text aloud. By reading slowly and carefully, you will be able to hear where there might be confusion. It’s okay to be critical during the draft stage. Reading your words aloud will also help determine whether or not the order you have your paragraphs in makes sense.

Another area to check is the layout of your words in terms of sentences and paragraphs. Sentences are the foundation of your content and should be clear, concise and free of mistakes. They should also be put in sequential order so that they flow into a unified paragraph and not a jumble of ideas. You should also be wary of sentence length variations. Some of your sentences might be too long. Others might be too short. You’ll want to find the balance that works best for your content and SEO copywriting.  When editing your content, you want to focus on smaller sections. This guarantees that you’ll notice smaller errors that might be otherwise ignored. Verify that your paragraphs are set up in a logical order. Within each paragraph, you want to stay on topic. The first sentence should be an indicator of what you intend to speak about. Without the additional sentences, would that first sentence thoroughly communicate your intent?

Also very important is the sequential order of the paragraph. Does the order of the sentences flow from beginning to end? Are there proper transitions between subjects? How are you utilizing keywords? Are your paragraphs geared toward SEO? That is, instead of having one or two key phrases at the beginning or end of paragraphs, do you have enough of them used throughout to generate hits on search engines? These are things to keep in mind while creating your content.

Another thing to remember is that the content you put up is not necessarily permanent or perfect. There will be times where, despite your checking or having outsourced feedback, that someone in your audience catches an error. Maybe you reported a date wrong, or there has been a new development in your subject. This means that you will have to make edits after publication. You should follow the same rules as you would for editing for pre-publication. If you have an established readership or want to maintain transparency with your audience, you can also make small notes of where and why you made the edits.

Another reason you might make edits is that your SEO copywriting words are not as effective as they could be. This should not be seen as a complete negative as edits are just part of the writing process. In fact, to get the best use of search engine results and SEO copywriting, you should be prepared to edit your content. Following the initial introductory posts to your content, you will be able to gain insight into your audience and what appeals to them. This will be knowledge you could only speculate before posting. Taking their preferences and making edits will increase viewership and SEO copywriting hits.

Search Engine Optimization Principles

Search engine optimization copywriting is in itself an entire process. Getting to the top of a search engine’s result page requires more than using buzzwords. There is a lot of thought and preparation needed before and after the generation of web content. Once it’s posted, that is not the end of your work on that content. You’ll want to track how it performs—especially when you have other content uploaded. If one post is outperforming the others in terms of SEO copywriting keywords, determine which words those are and apply them to content on your other pages, if possible.

Keep in mind that there is no shortcut to guaranteed SEO copywriting success. For overall website success, SEO is one of the greatest uses of content. There are other perks to creating refined content that makes use of SEO copywriting elements. Using SEO, your website will help maintain a steady flow of good traffic. Rather than stray clicks or random views, your content will be consistently accessed by people who are searching for it. This can be developed into building your brand and also lead to monetary gains like renting out ad space, selling products or affiliating with other websites.

There are other benefits, too. SEO copywriting will structure your content’s keywords at optimal places. This is dependent on you choosing adequate words that can be placed anywhere on your pages. The right combination of SEO copywriting and excellent content will not only address but also appeal to both digital scanning algorithms and live users. Understanding how SEO copywriting works will help you avoid common mistakes that might hinder your chances of digital success. Treat SEO copywriting as part of your digital tool package to help cultivate an audience and great search results.

Conclusion

Getting the most of your website-driven business involves a combination of attractive content that is both fun to read and visually appealing and having the best keywords to drive digital traffic toward you. This specialized writing directs web audiences toward you by pulling in those looking for specific services, products, and information. The optimization of your content helps to put you ahead of your competitors. By avoiding content that is hard to read, repetitive and strays from the central theme, you will get closer to mastering SEO copywriting.

Key phrases will drive you towards being the first result when people search for your subject matter. Being comfortable with and excelling in SEO copywriting can be done by predicting not only what words users will use but also figuring out how internet algorithms will behave. The search engine spiders want to organize all of the related content on the web. The organization of this information is what helps assign your rank when it comes to search engine results. When acting as an SEO copywriter, the importance is not overloading with catchy or trending words to force traffic toward your website. The real value of SEO copywriting is not only getting a spotlight directed at your content (provided that the content is worth reading) but also having that content be noticed by digital organizers.

Essentially, web authors do not have to take additional steps to utilize the power of SEO copywriting. Consistent content that demonstrates quality, ease of readability, understands its audience and can be processed by search engines will always be pushed to the top of search results. The reason is not necessarily due to the popularity of the subject or the author. SEO copywriting uses the merit of the website’s content plus the key phrases interlaced throughout to organize the search results. Knowing how to navigate SEO copywriting will definitely gear you towards the top of the search pile and get you optimal audiences and traffic.

Author: Garenne BigbyWebsite: http://garennebigby.com

Founder of DYNO Mapper and Former Advisory Committee Representative at the W3C.