One of the biggest challenges that bloggers and content marketers face is writing content that’s optimized for search engines, yet also appealing to people. Should you want to build your blog audience, you’re going to have to get smarter with your content. The way to accomplish this is with SEO copywriting.

I know that SEO may sound complicated, but it’s easier than you think; especially if you understand that writing for people, and not search engines, is a best practice.

In order for your online business to grow and become successful, you must go beyond simply “writing content.” Your content needs to accomplish two goals:

1. solve a particular problem
2. appeal to the end-user (customers, clients, prospects, readers, etc.),

How do you create content that meets those goals? How do you create content that ranks well with Google and also persuades people? That’s what SEO copywriting is all about. But don’t worry, we’ll tell you exactly what to do in order to achieve that. 

 

What is SEO Copywriting?

SEO copywriting has evolved since Google started rolling out its updates.

If you want to create highly useful content that ranks well in Google and simultaneously attracts customers to your online business, you must think about the components of Google’s Ranking Algorithm.

SEO copywriting is all about creating useful, compelling, and valuable content that targets specific keywords so that other people will gladly promote it on social media platforms.

This increases the authority and relevance of your content and improves its ranking in Google for the selected keywords. So when you highly recommend something, Google sees it relevant and you will achieve greater SEO content results.

SEO copywriting helps you target your customers and solve their specific problems with well-crafted content.

 

Five key elements of SEO copywriting

There are certain elements of valuable content such as focus keyphrase and headline which are very important and useful for copywriting.

Implementing SEO best practices consistently throughout your content will naturally push your content to the Google top 10 and increase your traffic.

However, there are elements that will always enable you to rank highly in Google, as well as increase your conversion rate. Before you implement the elements of SEO copywriting, remember that there are things that should come before on-page optimization.

Here are the 5 elements of SEO copywriting that matter:

1. Focus keyphrase 

Your focus keyphrase is the keyword(s) you want your post or page to rank for. If you’re particularly eager to rank for a specific keyword, you’ll probably be tempted to optimize many articles on your site for that keyphrase. But, that’s not what a focus keyphrase is for! You should only ever use a focus keyphrase once.

The main reason why you shouldn’t use your focus keyphrase more than once is that you don’t want to compete with yourself for a position in Google. This phenomenon is called keyword cannibalization. If you optimize two different articles for the same focus keyphrase, you’re telling Google that both are suitable for people searching for that keyword, and you want both of them to appear in the search results.

You’ll need to write a lot of posts, each covering a different aspect of long-tail key phrases. And then link from these long tail articles to your main article. 

2. Headline

Your content may be valuable, but if your headline is mediocre, your click-through rate will be low.

In SEO copywriting, your headline should attract people’s attention, then prompt them to click and read further.

As you learn to become a better writer, focus on the things your leads will see first. Such as the headline.

When you rank in Google’s top 10, if your headline is clickable and attractive, it doesn’t matter that much the rank you’re in, because you will still attract organic visitors to your site. As a rule of thumb, a successful SEO copywriter creates the headline before moving on to the body of your article or blog post.

Headlines that have numbers in them usually get shared more on Facebook and Twitter as well. 

Analyzing the search engine results: Let’s say that we do a search in Google for “SEO Copywriting” You can see that most search results are SEO-friendly (and target a keyword), but some of the headlines themselves are not attractive to the user. Adding a long tail to the title might help those with specific inquiries.

Once you learn SEO copywriting, you can write content that will both rank highly in Google result pages and also attract clicks from prospective customers or clients.

3. Page Titles

A page title is the HTML title tag, which we also call the SEO title. When you look something up in a search engine, you get a list of results that appear as snippets. The SEO title is part of the snippet together with, at least, a URL and a meta description. 

Just to be clear, you should not confuse the SEO title with the main heading of the page. The main heading is what users see after they click on the SEO title and get on the page itself.

Create a page title where a keyword is as close to the beginning of the title phrase as possible. Put keywords close to starting and modifier (buy, guide, review, offer, etc) to the end. Make sure to never duplicate titles.

Example: Content marketing made simple: a step-by-step guide – Travelpreneur Tribe

4. Content & Content Creation Rules

The content itself is a vital element of SEO copywriting. The major reason why people conduct searches in Google and other search engines is that they’re looking for useful content. Search engines also feed on fresh SEO content, which is why you must consistently update your site.

If you want to write the best content that will rank well in Google, you have to target keyword phrases. Avoid stuffing keywords or over-optimization. Ideally, put the keyword in your headline, but make sure that it reads smoothly for your readers.

The Google Panda 4.1 update was designed to penalize “thin” or shallow content, by keeping lousy content from ranking highly in Google. A typical blog post or article should be at least 1000 words. But, it’s not all about length, because several detailed articles still struggle to rank and retain their position in Google results pages.

Before you write your SEO content, it’s essential to understand your reader. Then, niche down and focus on a particular problem that the reader is struggling with. Dare to solve that problem with your content – that’s another goal of combining SEO and copywriting.

Every piece of content you write needs a compelling introduction. The introduction is the portion that comes right after the headline (and sub-headline if you include one in your content). Your introduction should contain at least one of your targeted keyword phrases, especially a long tail keyword.

Here are some of the rules you should follow:

1. 1. Make your blog post 300+ words, and cornerstone content 900+ 
   2. Create a page title where a keyword is as close to the beginning of the title phrase as possible.
   3. Use one H1 heading per post or page. Update page headlines (H1) with the primary keyword
   4. Update page subheadlines (H2, H3) with additional keywords to further provide details about these sections.
   5. Find a good balance in using your focus keyphrase, synonyms, and related key phrases throughout the page
   6. Use your focus keyphrase in your introduction
   7. Use a focus keyphrase only once per website 

5. Meta Description

The meta description is a snippet of up to about 155 characters – a tag in HTML – which summarizes a page’s content. Search engines show it in search results mostly when the searched-for phrase is within the description. So optimizing it is crucial for on-page SEO.

Its purpose is simple: it needs to get someone searching with a search term on Google to click your link. In other words, meta descriptions are there to generate click-throughs from search engines.

 

SEO Copywriting Tools and Resources

To fully understand and implement SEO copywriting best practices, you need viable tools and resources. Some of the tools that I recommend are:

1. Unstuck-it: This is a free web app that you can use to make your words, sentences, and paragraphs flow smoothly
2. Kill Writer’s Block: This is a tool to generate creative ideas for your next blog post.
3. Google’s 200 Ranking Factors

 

Some other things that you should keep in mind are:

• Copywriting optimization points:
  Search engine rankings can’t be predicted, no matter how knowledgeable you are, because Google is always updating its ranking algorithm.
• Title tags:
  It’s very important to know how to write title tags for search engine optimization. The title tag is a meta HTML tag, like the meta description we saw earlier. It is like the title of a book. It’s the first thing that appears in Google search results.

The title tag should be a concise and accurate description of your web page. Google will display 50 – 60 characters of your title in their search results. As well as thinking about length, write titles that will align with your brand.

• Heading tags: The heading tags are labeled h1 – h6. The heading tags will enlarge your font size and make it stand out. When you write content, it should be well structured for readers.
• Optimizing your title: This is one of the most important things that you can do to ensure that your title ranks in Google, as well as attracting an audience.

 

Writing Useful Content For People

If you can piece words together to produce a valuable piece of content, your target audience will love you for it and they’ll stick around. There is no alternative to writing great content.

The number of blogs that produce fresh content daily is ever-growing. Remember that duplicate content, keyword-stuffed content and low-quality content will not help your target audience. This is not a good SEO content strategy and it also won’t do a thing to improve your organic ranking. 

We are going to look at some methods to try out in order to improve your writing of great content

 

1. Storytelling

As an SEO copywriter, storytelling can set you apart, because human beings love good stories. If you can weave your brand story into your blog post, article, or video, you will attract more attention.

Brand storytelling is not something new. Several brands have used it in the past and still do. According to Kristen Matthews, when you use natural storytelling in your content, you can make the maximum impact on the reader.

In other words, your story should show others the possibility of achieving the same results. Your story shouldn’t be about you alone, however. Instead, find a way to make it appealing to your target audience.

That’s when brand storytelling will help improve your organic ranking, traffic, and sales conversions.

You can check out our blog about storytelling here

2. Use Humor

One reason why you should write with humor is to keep the reader/audience engaged. You can also infuse humor to simplify an uncomfortable or controversial topic.

SEO copywriting is not just about writing useful content that solves a particular problem in a boring manner. Your content also has to excite your readers.

They should be excited to click your headline, then move on to read the introduction and then lastly move on to the body. 

That’s what it means to write persuasively. If you can do that, it doesn’t matter what you create: people will love it. Whatever you highly recommend, they will buy.

3. Getting People to Act Through SEO Copywriting

Another piece of the puzzle is “persuasion” – the ability of your copy to drive people to action. This isn’t difficult, because there are many high-quality resources and tools that you can use.

Copy is written to sell a product, service, or idea. It all begins with selling yourself because you’ve only got a maximum of 30 seconds to sell yourself and leave people wanting more.

One of the ways to push people into action is to highlight the key points of your content or topic using bullet points because they will help your readers find what they are looking for by making it easier to read at the same time.

4. Create Irresistible and Valuable Headlines

Columbia University recognized headlines as the most important element of a copy. They advise that you think like a reader and write the headline first. The headline should target a keyword and also look attractive. If your headline looks attractive then more people will click on it in order to learn more. That’s why a headline should be made by taking the readers into thought.

5. Have Clarity of Purpose

Getting clear with your copy, blog post and message is very important. For example, Wider Funnel increased its conversion rate from 10% to 277%, just by implementing clearer call-to-action buttons and reducing the number of form fields.

When you write content for your blog, focus on one idea and write your post to address a challenge, solve a problem or explain a complicated issue.

Some ways you can achieve that are:

• Know exactly what you want, before you write it — e.g., How to Save $100 in the Grocery Store.
• Use the word “you,” when writing for B2C customers and “we,” when your recipients are mostly business organizations.
• Research accurate data that are relevant to your topic. This study by ConversionXL shows that using a data-driven approach and creating infographics that have accurate data points will improve social shares…

 

By following these SEO copywriting strategies you are more likely to absolutely generate more traffic, improve your brand, and fall in love with content marketing. So the best time to start implementing them is now.

And to learn how to actually set up your new content on the website for SEO to get the maximum results of your efforts please visit – On-site SEO optimization – How to make onsite SEO simple and effective.

And to learn more about how to multiply your efforts instantly by repurposing content to reach more dream clients read our blog – Repurposing blog content. 

What’s your take on SEO copywriting? Do you think it’s a major factor for online content marketing success? Have you ever implemented any of these mentioned above?