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SEO Copywriting: How to Write Content For People and Optimize For Google

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seo copywriting how to write content for people and optimize for google
One of the biggest challenges that bloggers and content marketers face is writing content that’s optimized for search engines, yet will also appeal to people.

If you want to build your blog audience, you’re going to have to get smarter with your content. The principal way to accomplish this is SEO copywriting.

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

To thrive, your online business 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. Don’t worry if you can’t afford an expensive SEO copywriter. You can do it on your own following simple rules.

What Is SEO?

We all know what happens when you type a search query into a search engine and hit “enter”: You get a list of search results that are relevant to your search term.

Those results pages appear as a result of search engine optimization (SEO).

In a nutshell, SEO is a method of optimizing the effectiveness of your content for the search engines, in order to help it rank higher than content from other sites that target the same search terms.

SEO proces - SEO copywriting

Step by step, then, SEO is when:

  1. You research keywords …
  2. Then select a particular keyword and …
  3. Use that keyword to write content …
  4. Which other people then read and share on Twitter, Facebook, their own blogs and other social media platforms.

According to Redevolution, Google displays web pages in their search results based on the authority and relevance of the page to enhance the user experience. How does it measure authority and relevance?

  • Google determines the relevance of your page by analyzing its content based on several factors, including where and how often you use certain words in that piece of content.
  • Google measures authority by the number of links pointing to that page and how trustworthy those links are.

On the internet, links are like votes, with a slight difference. The winner of the election is determined solely by the number of votes, whereas your web page’s rank doesn’t depend so much on how many incoming links it has (quantity), but rather on the quality of those links. You and your marketing team need to understand this.

Quality has become the #1 ranking factor in Google, especially since the Google Panda and Penguin updates.

If you want more information on SEO, check out The Beginner’s Guide To SEO and The Advanced Guide To SEO.

Understanding Copywriting

Copywriting is the art and science of creating content that prompts the reader/end-user to either buy a product, subscribe to a list, take a test drive, or take some other action that will improve your.appeal to the end-user (customers, clients, prospects, readers, etc.),

Copywriting is salesmanship, says Bruce Bendinger. His definition of copywriting will make you smile:

SEO copy writing - quote about what copywriting is

Who drives a user to take action? A copywriter does. A copywriter is a skilled professional who writes copy for advertisements, promotions, and customer engagement. In the marketing world, they’re often referred to as “creatives.” An SEO copywriter tailors this to online content.

A copywriter is someone who understands people, knows what his audience likes and chooses the words that will appeal to them. The headline, words, phrases, sentences and paragraphs used in the content have to persuade and cause readers to take a specific action. An SEO copywriter also understand how Google feels about certain words and phrases, especially long tail phrases.

If you’re a blogger, freelance writer, or online business entrepreneur, you can become a sought-after copywriter when you develop your creativity and perfect your writing skills.

If you want to build a thriving online business and survive in the everchanging world of SEO, your job is to create useful content that’s interesting, persuasive, and well-optimized for search engines; and you have to do it consistently. That is part of the user experience, getting new fresh content on demand.

changing world of SEO copywriting

What is SEO Copywriting?

SEO copywriting has evolved, since Google started rolling out their updates.

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

components of Google's ranking algorithm - seo copywriting

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.

target customers - SEO copywriting

Six Elements of SEO Copywriting

Certain elements of valuable content, such as visual appeal and timeliness, are the hallmarks of copywriting grace.

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

SEO copywriting. - keywords on first page of Google

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 6 elements of SEO copywriting that matter:

1) Site Speed

A study by Akamai revealed these stats:

  1. 40% of people will abandon a web page if it takes more than 3 seconds to fully load.
  2. 47% of end users expect a web page to load in two seconds or less.

Site speed has been a ranking factor since 2010 and it’s good for users, too. If your load time is more than 2 seconds, which is the standard load time for sites, then you should take steps to improve it.

That’s because if your content is useful and interesting, but it takes a long time for your page to load fully, your visitors will leave, because their attention span is short. They leave because of a bad user experience.

How do you measure your site load time? Follow these basic steps — I’ll use Psychology Today as an example:

Step one: Use Pingdom’s website speed test.

tool to measure site speed - seo copywriting

Step two: Analyze your site speed.

results of website speed - seo copywriting

You see that Psychology Today is fast. The load time is 770 milliseconds, beating the standard load time by 0.03 seconds.

Step three: Check the history. You want to determine the previous load times for your site.

page speed history - seo copywriting

In our example, the history shows that Psychology Toda≥≤≤÷y had a load time of 2.58 seconds on January 10, 2015. The page size was 1.6 MB at the time. Today, the page size has been reduced to 1.5 MB and the load time improved to 770 milliseconds. This is what SEO firms check first and so should you.

Go ahead and check your site load time using Pingdom.

If you want to improve your site speed, read these step-by-step guides:

Does site speed lead to improved conversion rates? Yes it does.

This case study reveals how Smashing Magazine experienced an impressive boost in their conversion rate when they cleared their database of all of the clutter that old plugins had created, then merged all of the databases into one.

case study - seo copywriting

2) Headline

Your content may be valuable, but if your headline is mediocre, your click-through rate will be low. Don’t waste valuable SEO copy.

On the average, five times as many people read the headline as read the body copy. When you have written your headline, you have spent eighty cents out of your dollar. —David Ogilvy

For the most success, bloggers should spend about six hours per post. Tasks that should be performed in those six hours include creating content, monitoring social signals and consumer reactions, tracking analysis, etc.

How much time do you spend crafting the perfect headline?

time spend on headlines - seo copywriting

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.

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When you rank in Google’s top 10, if your headline is clickable and attractive, it doesn’t really matter whether you rank #1 or #4, 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.

Note: Headlines that convey a specific message or idea work best with search users. According to Conversion XL, headlines with numbers are always winners. If it makes sense, include a figure in the headline.

headline preferences - seo copywriting

Several authority content sites use numbers in their headlines. Three out of 5 of Lifehack’s posts have headlines that use numbers. Sites like Inc, BusinessWeek, Mashable, and Upworthy all understand the psychology behind numbers.

numbered headlines - seo copywriting

Headlines that have numbers in them usually get shared more on Facebook and Twitter as well. For example, one of the most popular posts on HubSpot is a number-type headline.

example shares for headline with numbers - seo copywriting

Generate article ideas: If you’re stuck and don’t know what to write about, you can use the Inbound Now tool to generate blog post/article ideas before you hire that SEO copywriter.

example blog post title generator - seo copywriting

There are several resources for writing click-worthy and sharable headlines. To demonstrate, let’s write some fresh headlines in three popular industries: small business, fitness, and relationships.

Clickable and optimized small business headlines:

  • 7 Small Business Trends That Will Affect Your Sales
  • How To Start a Small Business That Customers Will Love
  • Small Business Funding: How To Raise $20,000 In 60 Days

SEO and user-friendly fitness headlines:

  • 10 Workout Secrets For Women That Work
  • Best Way To Lose 10 Pounds After Pregnancy
  • Personal Trainer Kits: Become a Certified Personal Trainer

Well-optimized and catchy “relationship” headlines:

  • 3 Funny Ways To Get Your Ex-Boyfriend Back
  • How To Renew Your Love Life with Your Spouse
  • What Does It Take To Have a Fabulous Wedding?

Analyzing the search engine results: Let’s say that we do a search in Google for “save money.” 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 for those with specific inquiries.

headlines in SERPs - seo copywriting

New and experienced SEO copywriters highly recommend downloading Yoast SEO as a WordPress plugin to help optimize SEO copy. 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.

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Note: If you want your whole title to be visible in search engine results, keep it under 72 characters. This will also increase your click-through rates.

3) Content

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.

Marcus Sheridan grew his swimming pool company from less than 10,000 to 80,000 monthly visitors; within 6 months and he grew his organic traffic by blogging 2 -3 times a week.

fresh content - seo copywriting

When Marcus began to target long-tail keywords in his blog posts, everything changed. He said that “within hours of writing an article with specific keyword goals, we were showing up on the first page of Google.”

keyword goals - seo copywriting

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.

However, it’s crucial to understand that modern SEO copywriting has gone beyond keyword targeting and placement. The best approach now is to write content that addresses keyword intent. You will learn about that later on…

4) Meta Description

Before writing your content and again, before publishing it, use meta descriptions to help guide search engines. Meta descriptions help search engines and searchers understand what the topic is and why your targeted keywords and phrases keep appearing in the content. This is where SEO firms earn their money, only because they understand this.

Moz noted that the meta description is the HTML attribute that provides a “concise explanation” to the search engines of your page’s content. The tag is enclosed with the <head> section </head> on your web page. This is the code sample:

meta descriptions - seo copywriting

Google uses the meta description on your page as a snippet when people search for keywords that are relevant to your page. This snippet copy is what will determine whether or not you get clicks, no matter how highly you rank in the search results.

For SEO purposes, the meta description should be 150 – 160 characters and usually appears like this in Google:

meta description in google - seo copywriting

Note: If you own a WordPress blog, you can install the All-In-One SEO Pack plugin and use it to set up your title, meta description, and relevant keywords. If you’re new to blogging, this guide will help you set up the plugin.

How do you write meta descriptions that catch people’s attention, as well as rank well in Google?

Step #1: Understand keyword intent. Keyword intent is the main purpose or reason behind keywords (whether seed or long-tail keywords).

For example, say you’re a social media consultant and you want to attract clients to your business. Then, your primary keyword might be “social media expert advice.”

When prospective clients type that keyword into Google search, what do you think they’re really interested in?

What they want is clear – a social media expert with advice on how they can move their online or brick-and-mortar business to the next level.

Maybe they want more Twitter followers, greater engagement or tips on how to acquire more leads. Your meta description has to be relevant and appeal to them.

Step #2: Once your article or blog post has been written, the next thing is to write your meta description. Swell Path recommends you follow this checklist:

example of meta description - seo copywriting

To demonstrate, let’s put the tips to work by writing two meta descriptions that are SEO-friendly and relevant to our target audience.

a) Begin with a question: Looking for expert social media tips to acquire new leads, convert visitors to customers, and improve your brand? First, set a definite goal.

Length – 141 characters.

b) State the obvious: Many companies have given up on social media marketing, because they don’t know what to do. All you need is expert advice that has produced success.

Length – 148 characters.

Note: You don’t necessarily need to include your exact keywords in your meta description, especially when it doesn’t flow smoothly. I’ve seen a lot of web pages rank in Google’s top 10 without the main keywords.

example meta description in SERPs - seo copywriting

5) Keyword Frequency

Keyword frequency means how many times your chosen keywords appear on the web page.

For example, if your target keyword is “best london hotels,” how many times will this exact keyword phrase appear in your 300, 500 or 1000+ word article? In contrast, keyword density is concerned with the ratio of “best london hotels,” to other words on the same page.

Keyword frequency and density are no longer as effective as they used to be, before Google started rolling out frequent updates, but are still important parts of SEO content. Avoid on-page optimization mistakes, like keyword stuffing, excessive keyword insertion and header tag stuffing.

However, keyword density still impacts organic ranking to some extent. According to Brian Dean, keyword density/frequency is one of the 200 ranking factors, which means that you should still consider it. But, don’t go overboard.

Here’s what Brian Clark had to say about it:

The only way to tell if your repetition of keywords is super or spammy is to measure that frequency against the overall length of the content. A keyword density greater than 5.5% could make you guilty of keyword stuffing and your page could be penalized by Google. You don’t need to mindlessly repeat keywords to optimize. In fact, if you do, you’re likely to achieve the opposite result.

To check your keyword density, use the SEObook keyword density tool.

check keyword density - seo copywriting

6) Page Links

Links are the basic building blocks of your web page. One of the 10 things Google knows to be true is that “there’s always more information out there.”

Page links tell Google that you’re connected and sociable and that you’ve got useful content that people can access somewhere else. This content could be your own or it could be from another author or site.

Linking out to other authority sites and pages is an indication that you value what other people create. Google will reward you for being in sync with their mission: organizing the world’s information and making it universally accessible. A good marketing team would highly recommend to appropriately link.

google's mission - seo copywriting

What copywriters usually do is to find appropriate keywords, research accurate data and then use both to craft irresistible content. That’s why copywriting is one of the fundamental factors of search engine optimization.

The rules for linking out to other sites are not set in stone. There are also no hard and fast rules for internal linking. However, as a smart online marketer who wants to achieve tremendous results in the search engines, you should:

  • Link to relevant pages within and outside your site in your introduction
  • Link to more in-depth guides or content on your page or other sites
  • Link with appropriate anchor text, which flows naturally with the content

As I said earlier, these rules are not set by Google or other search engines. If you can understand your target audience and you produce the best content that will solve your readers’ problems, you don’t need to worry about keyword density, page links, and social signals, because they will occur naturally.

Remember that the goals of highly useful content include thousands of social shares, comments, leads, clients, and sales. This is your job as the SEO copywriter.

SEO Copywriting Tools and Resources: To fully understand and implement SEO copywriting best practices, you need viable tools and resources. Here are some that I recommend:

Unsuck-it: This is a free web app that you can use to make your words, sentences, and paragraphs flow smoothly. You can replace jargon with fun words in five seconds.

replace jargon with fun words - seo copywriting

RhymeZone: A lot of people love reading poetry and admire poets. Use this handy tool to make your copy appealing to the right audience.

Read-Able: This simple tool helps you optimize your content for 7th – 8th grade level. This ensures that a wider audience will enjoy your content and click the headline when it shows up in Google results pages.

Live-Keyword-Analysis: Use this free SEO tool to accurately calculate the keyword density ratio for a piece of content.

Kill Writer’s Block: Highly recommend this tool to generate creative ideas for your next blog post.

Quick Sprout: Find out why you’re not generating enough traffic from Google, even when your long-tail keywords are ranking highly.

EMV Headline Analyzer: How much does your headline appeal to your readers’ emotions? I highly recommend this free tool to analyze your headline and give you a score.

emotional marketing tool - seo copywrting

Google’s 200 Ranking Factors: The Complete List – this one is self-explanatory.

For a list of other resources and tools that are useful for SEO copywriting, check out Writtent.

Copywriting optimization points: Search engine rankings can’t be predicted, no matter how knowledgeable you are, because Google is always updating their ranking algorithm. If you plan on hiring an SEO firm to create CEO copy, realize they are subject to a changing game as well.

However, there are actions that you can take to increase the likelihood of your web page showing up in Google for relevant search queries. Let’s explore those factors:

Title tags: It’s a good idea to know how to write title tags for search engine optimization. Again, Yoast SEO can help here. 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.

example title tags - seo copywriting

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.

Moz does highly recommend that the optimal format for your title is: Primary Keyword – Secondary Keyword | Brand Name

For example: Learn CSS online – CSS formatting Tips | WebDesignClub

optimal format for title tag - seo coopywriting

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.

header levels - seo copywriting

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. This screenshot of the Moz resource on title tags helps you optimize your titles effectively:

screenshot on how optimize title tags - seo copywriting

Writing Useful Content For People

Words are powerful. Words drive engagement. 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 can’t be emphasized enough. It also won’t do a thing to improve your organic ranking.

example of how many blogs were written today - seo copywriting

One study shows that even if your content is useful, it still needs three additional elements in order to drive organic traffic:

  1. optimize for many keywords with lots of searches
  2. gain a reasonable number of trusted backlinks
  3. write about an evergreen idea/topic

That’s how Brian Dean increased organic traffic by 110% in 14 days.

increase organic traffic - seo copywriting

Keyword Research

Keyword research is still necessary. The most important aspect of any keyword used by search users is the intent. Before you can write great content that solves a particular problem, you’ve got to know what each keyword stands for.

Don’t forget to pay attention to keyword classification. In other words, understand whether search users want to buy a product or not.

There are two important keyword classifications: informational and commercial keywords.

keyword classification - seo copywriting

Informational keywords: The major reason why people search with these is that they want useful information without having to pay for it.

Informational keywords are usually “how-to” in nature. Here’s an example from Ubersuggest:

"how to" keywords - seo copywriting

Of the seven keywords on this list, five of them begin with “how-to.”

These are informational because the searchers are probably only interested in free articles, videos, blog posts and lessons.

As an SEO copywriter, you can write useful content around informational keywords, but don’t expect to convert readers into customers, because most of them don’t want to buy. Instead, use informational keywords in your content to nurture an audience, engage them and build your brand.

Commercial keywords: Commercial keywords show an ‘intent’ to buy. These keywords usually show “desperation” from the searcher. They want solutions quickly – e.g., “lose 10 pounds in 3 days.”

The person searching for commercial keywords is likely going to buy a product, or sign up to an email list that will eventually convert them into customers.

The fact that someone typed a commercial keyword into Google means the person is ready to take action. Commercial keywords usually contain certain prefixes and suffixes, like reviews, buy, order, review, comparison, compare, free shipping, best, fast, etc. See this example in the weight loss niche:

Examples of commercial keywords from this list include lose weight gnc product, gnc product to lose weight, herbalife weight lose product, and herbalife product to lose weight.

Note: When you write content around commercial keywords, the ultimate goal is to provide useful information on how to use the product, its benefits and features and how to install it, if that’s required.

Should you target keywords? Yes. Google still uses keywords to gauge what a particular web page is about. Use caution and avoid over-optimization.

I follow a 3-step plan when targeting keywords in my content.

  1. I include the primary keyword in the headline. For example, if my keyword is: conversion rate optimization. My headline may be, “7 Ways To Make Conversion Rate Optimization Work For You.”
  2. I use alternative keywords in the introduction, meta description, and title tags. For example, What is the best way to increase your conversion rate with every blog post that you write? You know how important this is, especially when it seems as though your best content isn’t generating organic traffic, social shares, and sales.
  3. I write naturally to please my readers and then deliberately include the primary keyword in the conclusion.
generating traffic.- seo copywriting

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.

I’ve shared the story of how a Ferrari made me a million bucks. I also wrote a blog post on how spending $162,301.42 on clothes made me $692,500. So far, the two posts have been shared more than thousands of times on Facebook, Twitter and Google+ combined.

spending money makes money - seo copywriting

A great example of a successful brand story is The Lego Movie. According to Marcus Sheridan, who is also a great storyteller, “Lego doesn’t sell ‘blocks’ at all, they sell possibilities.”

(Read the full story here: The Best Example of Brand Storytelling Ever: The Lego Movie.)

brand story telling- seo copywriting

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.

Use Humor

One of the reasons 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, read the introduction and then move slowly down 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.

Here’s an example. A professional blogger and public speaker who usually adds humor to her content is Marie Forleo. Each of her video intros always entertains me.

using humor - seo copywriting

Use Case Studies

Case studies are one of the 15 types of content that will drive more traffic to your site. Case studies can make for powerful content. I’ve seen them rank in Google’s top 10 several times, because they’re highly useful.

A study at Content Marketing Institute shows that B2B buyers prefer case studies and research-based content.

content types - seo copywriting

If you consistently write useful and detailed case studies, your major long-tail keywords will start showing up in Google’s top 10 for relevant keywords.

ideal content length - seo copywriting

Case studies usually explain what your products and services are. A good case study will show the experiments, research studies and interviews that you conducted, as well as the results that you got. An SEO firm can help in analytics but isn’t absolutely necessary.

You can share any type of case study, even ones that didn’t get the results you hoped for. If you want to create a valuable and optimized case study, this screenshot will guide you:

create a case study - seo copywriting

Keyword Research for Content Creation

The first five sites that come up in a google search get 67.6% of the clicks.

More than 66% of all clicks go to the top 3 search engine results. If you want to tap into this rare opportunity to rank in the top 5 positions, then you should learn keyword research best practices.

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Long-tail keywords are the best way to go in modern SEO because top brands are not targeting those terms. And, if you can produce good content while naturally targeting these types of keywords, you will definitely dominate the search engines.

popular keywords vs. long tail search traffic

SEO isn’t complete without keyword research. That’s part of how you determine the mindset and intent of your target audience. Long tails help define that mindset.

In niche marketing, picking the right keywords is the most challenging aspect of building a profitable niche site.

Once you’ve chosen your topic, it’s time to find relevant keywords in that industry. Let’s find keywords for “waterproof digital cameras.”

Go to Ubersuggest. Plug the topic into the search box, then click “Search.”

find keywords for specific topics - seo copywriting

Here’s what the search returns:

keyword research - seo copywriting
  • Search volume – number of searches the keyword has during a month
  • SEO difficulty – estimated competition in organic search
  • Paid difficulty – estimated competition in paid search
  • Cost per click – average cost per click for a Google Ad

You’re also provided an overview of what it takes, on average, in terms of backlinks and domain score, to reach the first page of Google for the keyword. This is located above a chart displaying the keyword search volume over the past 12 month period. Pay close attention to any dips in traffic. For this particular keyword, it’s natural for volume to drop off during the fall and winter months.

As you scroll down the page, you’ll find a list of long-tail keywords that we can optimize our content for:

screen shot 2020 04 15 at 10.44.14 am 1

From this list, “best waterproof digital cameras” is a good choice, as the search volume is still high enough to move the needle.

Optimizing content for search robots: Search engine robots or web robots (e.g. crawlers, spiders and so on) are programs that constantly scour the web.

When a Google spider crawls your web page, it’s looking for fresh content. Some people even say that spiders/crawlers feed on fresh content and will reward you for freshly updating your site regularly.

However, understand that when Google spiders index (add your fresh content to their search database), they’re only interested in the meta tags (title tag and meta description).

More importantly, they want to know the keywords that you’re targeting. This helps Google determine the industry your content will benefit, e.g., health, business, small business, internet marketing, etc.

For best results, you should optimize for search robots like this:

  • add the primary keyword in your title tag and meta description
  • add alternative keywords in your introduction and make sure that it flows well; if the keyword doesn’t flow well, ignore it and just write naturally.

Keywords like “best seo web design NY” won’t work in the title tag, description and content. The best approach is to use the keyword naturally, like this:

How To Find The Best SEO Firm and Web Design In NY

On-Page SEO Copywriting

On-page SEO doesn’t have to be tedious or complicated. A lot of posts have been written to address this topic.

Elements that add value to your site, such as internal links, are very important.

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You control 98% of what happens within your site.

That’s why Google pays attention to your web pages and measures the engagement, bounce rate, retention rate, and social shares.

The foundation of an effective SEO campaign is what happens in-house (on your site). In other words, pay attention to how you target your keywords, which anchor is used to link internal pages, meta tags, etc.

This on-page optimization infographic from Backlinko will show you what matters when it comes to creating SEO-friendly content pages.

on-page seo infographic - seo copywriting

Off-page Optimization

In today’s digital marketing, the public determines how relevant and useful your content is. And, Google uses off-page factors to gauge the authority and value of your content pages.

Generally, you can’t control what happens outside your site. For example, you don’t control who links to you and you don’t control the quality of sites that choose to reference your work.

If you’re smart, you can use off-page SEO techniques to build a solid brand online and increase organic traffic.

According to Chris Ainsworth, the 5 proven off-page SEO strategies that work well are:

  1. Build and engage a raving community through social media
  2. Expose your business and take advantage of local SEO
  3. Instill brand confidence through business reviews
  4. Promote local citation and Name/Address/Phone (NAP) consistency
  5. Link building through blogging, guest posting, competitor link analysis, blog outreach, networking, and dofollow blog commenting.

Getting People to Act Through SEO Copywriting

The final piece of the puzzle in this in-depth article 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. Before you write blog posts or articles, Vivian Giang recommends you list 3 or 4 strong benefits that you will cover. This is very important, as it also helps you create powerful headlines and paragraphs.

Derek Halpern, founder of Social Triggers, a giant SEO firm, combines the power of psychology and copywriting to produce compelling content. He also employs the same strategy on his landing page.

landing page - seo copywriting

Create Irresistible and Valuable Headlines

Columbia University recognized headlines as the most important element of copy. They advise that you think like a reader and write the headline first. The headline should target a keyword and also look attractive.

Let’s craft more clickable headlines, using some of the results in Google. When I search for “diet plans,” here are the results I get:

clickable headlines - seo copywriting

The screenshot above shows the headlines showing up at #1 and #2 in Google for the keyword “diet plans.”

Original headline: Weight Loss & Diet Plans – Find Healthy Diet Plans And…

Here’s a much better headline: The Best Diet Plans To Help You Stay Fit

Original headline: 28-Day Fat-Burning Diet and Meal Plan | Muscle & Fitness

Let’s make the headline more compelling and useful: 28-Day Diet Plans That Will Help You Burn Fat

BodyBuilding.com has compelling, catchy headlines that are the right length (50 – 60 characters) and target a particular keyword.

example headlines - seo copywriting

Have Clarity of Purpose

Getting clear with your copy, blog post and message is very important. Wider Funnel increased their 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.

According to Success Consciousness, here are some of the ways that you can achieve clarity of purpose as you write your content:

  1. Know exactly what you want, before you write it — e.g., How to Save $100 in the Grocery Store.
  2. Use the word “you,” when writing for B2C customers and “we,” when your recipients are mostly business organizations.
  3. Research accurate data that are relevant to your topic. This study by Conversion XL shows that using a data-driven approach and creating infographics that have accurate data points will improve social shares.
shares by content type - seo copywriting
  1. Target 2 – 5 keywords in a blog post and ensure they read naturally. See an example below. If you read it aloud, you will notice how the keywords flow smoothly with the rest of the content.
acqure traffic. -seo copywriting

Conclusion

I’ve used these SEO strategies to increase my blog’s traffic by 206%. Even if you don’t achieve the same growth rate, 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.

If you want experts to help you with SEO for your website, we’re here to help.

What’s your take on SEO copywriting? Do you think it’s a major factor for online content marketing success?

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Google To Curb Microtargeting In Consumer Finance Ads

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Google To Curb Microtargeting In Consumer Finance Ads

Google is updating its policy limiting personalized advertising to include more restrictions on ads related to consumer financial products and services.

Google’s personalized ads policy prohibits targeting users based on sensitive categories like race, religion, or sexual orientation.

Over the years, Google has continued updating the policy to introduce new limitations. The latest update to restrict consumer finance ads is part of Google’s ongoing efforts to refine its ad targeting practices.

What’s Changing?

Google will update its personalized ads policy in February 2024 to prevent advertisers from targeting audiences for credit and banking ads based on sensitive factors like gender, age, parental status, marital status, or zip code.

Google’s current policy prohibiting “Credit in personalized ads” will be renamed “Consumer finance in personalized ads” under the changes.

Google’s new policy will state:

“In the United States and Canada, the following sensitive interest categories cannot be targeted to audiences based on gender, age, parental status, marital status, or ZIP code.

Offers relating to credit or products or services related to credit lending, banking products and services, or certain financial planning and management services.”

Google provided examples, including “credit cards and loans including home loans, car loans, appliance loans, short-term loans,” as well as “banking and checking accounts” and “debt management products.”

When Does The New Policy Take Effect?

The updated limitations on personalized advertising will take effect on February 28, 2024, with full enforcement expected within six weeks.

Google said advertisers in violation will receive a warning at least seven days before any account suspension.

According to Google, the policy change aims to protect users’ privacy better and prevent discrimination in financial services advertising.

However, the company will still allow generalized ads for credit and banking products that do not use sensitive personal data for targeting.

What Do Advertisers Need To Do?

Google will begin enforcing the updated restrictions in late February 2024 but advises advertisers to review their campaigns for compliance issues sooner.

Advertisers should carefully check their ad targeting settings, remove improper personalization based on sensitive categories, and adhere to the revised policy requirements.

Failure to follow the rules could lead to account suspension after an initial warning. Google will work with advertisers to ensure a smooth transition during the ramp-up period over the next six months.


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Google Discusses Fixing 404 Errors From Inbound Links

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Google Discusses Fixing 404 Errors From Inbound Links

Google’s John Mueller responded to a thread in Reddit about finding and fixing inbound broken links, offering a nuanced insight that some broken links are worth finding and fixing and others are not.

Reddit Question About Inbound Broken Links

Someone asked on Reddit if there’s a way to find broken links for free.

This is the question:

“Is it possible to locate broken links in a similar manner to identifying expired domain names?”

The person asking the question clarified if this was a question about an inbound broken link from an external site.

John Mueller Explains How To Find 404 Errors To Fix

John Mueller responded:

“If you want to see which links to your website are broken & “relevant”, you can look at the analytics of your 404 page and check the referrers there, filtering out your domain.

This brings up those which actually get traffic, which is probably a good proxy.

If you have access to your server logs, you could get it in a bit more detail + see which ones search engine bots crawl.

It’s a bit of technical work, but no external tools needed, and likely a better estimation of what’s useful to fix/redirect.”

In his response, John Mueller answers the question on how to find 404 responses caused by broken inbound links and identify what’s “useful to fix” or to “redirect.”

Mueller Advises On When Not To “Fix” 404 Pages

John Mueller next offered advice on when it doesn’t make sense to not fix a 404 page.

Mueller explained:

“Keep in mind that you don’t have to fix 404 pages, having things go away is normal & fine.

The SEO ‘value’ of bringing a 404 back is probably less than the work you put into it.”

Some 404s Should Be Fixed And Some Don’t Need Fixing

John Mueller said that there are situations where a 404 error generated from an inbound link is easy to fix and suggested ways to find those errors and fix them.

Mueller also said that there are some cases where it’s basically a waste of time.

What wasn’t mentioned was what the difference was between the two and this may have caused some confusion.

Inbound Broken Links To Existing Webpages

There are times when another sites links into your site but uses the wrong URL. Traffic from the broken link on the outside site will generate a 404 response code on your site.

These kinds of links are easy to find and useful to fix.

There are other situations when an outside site will link to the correct webpage but the webpage URL changed and the 301 redirect is missing.

Those kinds of inbound broken links are also easy to find and useful to fix. If in doubt, read our guide on when to redirect URLs.

In both of those cases the inbound broken links to the existing webpages will generate a 404 response and this will show up in server logs, Google Search Console and in plugins like the Redirection WordPress plugin.

If the site is on WordPress and it’s using the Redirection plugin, identifying the problem is easy because the Redirection plugin offers a report of all 404 responses with all the necessary information for diagnosing and fixing the problem.

In the case where the Redirection plugin isn’t used one can also hand code an .htaccess rule for handling the redirect.

Lastly, one can contact the other website that’s generating the broken link and ask them to fix it. There’s always a small chance that the other site might decide to remove the link altogether. So it might be easier and faster to just fix it on your side.

Whichever approach is taken to fix the external inbound broken link, finding and fixing these issues is relatively simple.

Inbound Broken Links To Removed Pages

There are other situations where an old webpage was removed for a legitimate reason, like an event passed or a service is no longer offered.

In that case it makes sense to just show a 404 response code because that’s one of the reasons why a 404 response should be shown. It’s not a bad thing to show a 404 response.

Some people might want to get some value from the inbound link and create a new webpage to stand in for the missing page.

But that might not be useful because the link is for something that is irrelevant and of no use because the reason for the page no longer exists.

Even if you create a new reason, it’s possible that some of that link equity might flow to the page but it’s useless because the topic of that inbound link is totally irrelevant to anyting but the expired reason.

Redirecting the missing page to the home page is a strategy that some people use to benefit from the link to a page that no longer exists. But Google treats those links as Soft 404s, which then passes no benefit.

These are the cases that John Mueller was probably referring to when he said:

“…you don’t have to fix 404 pages, having things go away is normal & fine.

The SEO ‘value’ of bringing a 404 back is probably less than the work you put into it.”

Mueller is right, there are some pages that should be gone and totally removed from a website and the proper server response for those pages should be a 404 error response.

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Site Quality Is Simpler Than People Think

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Site Quality Is Simpler Than People Think

Google’s John Mueller, Martin Splitt and Gary Illyes discussed site quality in a recent podcast, explaining the different ways of thinking about site quality and at one point saying it’s not rocket science. The discussion suggests that site quality could be simpler than most people know.

Site Quality Is Not Rocket Science

The first point they touched on is to recommend reading site quality documentation, insisting that site quality is not especially difficult to understand.

Gary Illyes said:

“So I would go to a search engine’s documentation.

Most of them have some documentation about how they function and just try to figure out where your content might be failing or where your page might be failing because honestly, okay, this is patronizing, but it’s not rocket science.”

No Tools For Site Quality – What To Do?

Gary acknowledged that there’s no tool for diagnosing site quality, not in the same way there are tools for objectively detecting technical issues.

The traffic metrics that show a downward movement don’t explain why, they just show that something changed.

Gary Illyes:

“I found the up-down metric completely useless because you still have to figure out what’s wrong with it or why people didn’t like it.

And then you’re like, “This is a perfectly good page. I wrote it, I know that it’s perfect.”

And then people, or I don’t know, like 99.7% of people are downvoting it. And you’re like, ‘Why?’”

Martin Splitt

“And I think that’s another thing.

How do I spot, I wrote the page, so clearly it is perfect and helpful and useful and amazing, but then people disagree, as you say.

How do you think about that? What do you do then?

How can I make my content more helpful, better, more useful? I don’t know.

…There’s all these tools that I can just look at and I see that something’s good or something’s bad.

But for quality, how do I go about that?”

Gary Illyes

“What if quality is actually simpler than at least most people think?

…What if it’s about writing the thing that will help people achieve whatever they need to achieve when they come to the page? And that’s it.”

Martin Splitt asked if Gary was talking about reviewing the page from the perspective of the user.

Illyes answered:

“No, we are reframing.”

Reframing generally means to think about the problem differently.

Gary’s example is to reframe the problem as whether the page delivers what it says it’s going to deliver (like helping users achieve X,Y,Z).

Something I see a lot with content is that the topic being targeted (for example, queries about how to catch a trout) isn’t matched by the content (which might actually be about tools for catching trout) which is not what the site visitor wants to achieve.

Quality In Terms Of Adding Value

There are different kinds of things that relate to site and page quality and in the next part of the podcast John Mueller and Gary Illyes discuss the issue about adding something of value.

Adding something of value came up in the context of where the SERPs offer good answers from websites that people not only enjoy but they expect to see those sites as answers for those queries.

You can tell when users expect specific sites for individual search queries when Google Suggests shows the brand name and the keyword.

That’s a clue that probably a lot of people are turning keywords into branded searches, which signals to Google what people want to see.

So, the problem of quality in those situations isn’t about being relevant for a query with the perfect answer.

For these situations, like for competitive queries, it’s not enough to be relevant or have the perfect answer.

John Mueller explains:

“The one thing I sometimes run into when talking with people is that they’ll be like, “Well, I feel I need to make this page.”

And I made this page for users in air quotes…

But then when I look at the search results, it’s like 9,000 other people also made this page.

It’s like, is this really adding value to the Internet?

And that’s sometimes kind of a weird discussion to have.

It’s like, ‘Well, it’s a good page, but who needs it?’

There are so many other versions of this page already, and people are happy with those.”

This is the type of situation where competitive analysis to “reverse engineer” the SERPs  works against the SEO.

It’s stale because using what’s in the SERPs as a template for what to do rank is feeding Google what it already has.

It’s like, as an example, let’s represent the site ranked in Google with a baseline of the number zero.

Let’s imagine everything in the SERPs has a baseline of zero. Less than zero is poor quality. Higher than zero is higher quality.

Zero is not better than zero, it’s just zero.

The SEOs who think they’re reverse engineering Google by copying entities, copying topics, they’re really just achieving an imperfect score of zero.

So, according to Mueller, Google responds with, “it’s a good page, but who needs it?”

What Google is looking for in this situation is not the baseline of what’s already in the SERPs, zero.

According to Mueller, they’re looking for something that’s not the same as the baseline.

So in my analogy, Google is looking for something above the baseline of what is already in the SERPs, a number greater than zero, which is a one.

You can’t add value by feeding Google back what’s already there. And you can’t add value by doing the same thing ten times bigger. It’s still the same thing.

Breaking Into The SERPs By The Side Door

Gary Illyes next discusses a way to break into a tough SERP, saying the way to do it is indirectly.

This is an old strategy but a good one that still works today.

So, rather than bringing a knife to a gunfight, Gary Illyes suggests choosing more realistic battles to compete in.

Gary continued the conversation about competing in tough SERPs.

He said:

“…this also is kind of related to the age-old topic that if you are a new site, then how can you break into your niche?

I think on today’s Internet, like back when I was doing ‘SEO’, it was already hard.

For certain topics or niches, it was absolutely a nightmare, like ….mesothelioma….

That was just impossible to break into. Legal topics, it was impossible to break into.

And I think by now, we have so much content on the Internet that there’s a very large number of topics where it is like 15 years ago or 20 years ago, that mesothelioma topic, where it was impossible to break into.

…I remember Matt Cutts, former head of Web Spam, …he was doing these videos.

And in one of the videos, he said try to offer something unique or your own perspective to the thing that you are writing about.

Then the number of perspective or available perspectives, free perspectives, is probably already gone.

But if you find a niche where people are not talking too much about, then suddenly, it’s much easier to break into.

So basically, this is me saying that you can break into most niches if you know what you are doing and if you are actually trying to help people.”

What Illyes is suggesting as a direction is to “know what you are doing and if you are actually trying to help people.

That’s one of my secrets to staying one step ahead in SEO.

For example, before the reviews update, before Google added Experience to E-A-T, I was telling clients privately to do that for their review pages and I told them to keep it a secret, because I knew I had it dialed in.

I’m not psychic, I was just looking at what Google wants to rank and I figured it out several years before the reviews update that you need to have original photos, you need to have hands-on experience with the reviewed product, etc.

Gary’s right when he advises to look at the problem from the perspective of “trying to help people.”

He next followed up with this idea about choosing which battles to fight.

He said:

“…and I think the other big motivator is, as always, money. People are trying to break into niches that make the most money. I mean, duh, I would do the same thing probably.

But if you write about these topics that most people don’t write about, let’s say just three people wrote about it on the Internet, then maybe you can capture some traffic.

And then if you have many of those, then maybe you can even outdo those high-traffic niches.”

Barriers To Entry

What Gary is talking about is how to get around the barrier to entry, which are the established sites. His suggestion is to stay away from offering what everyone else is offering (which is a quality thing).

Creating content that the bigger sites can’t or don’t know to create is an approach I’ve used with a new site.

Weaknesses can be things that the big site does poorly, like their inability to resonate with a younger or older audience and so on.

Those are examples of offering something different that makes the site stand out from a quality perspective.

Gary is talking about picking the battles that can be won, planting a flag, then moving on to the next hill.

That’s a far better strategies than walking up toe to toe with the bigger opponent.

Analyzing For Quality Issues

It’s a lot easier to analyze a site for technical issues than it is for quality issues.

But a few of the takeaways are:

  • Be aware that the people closest to the content are not always the best judges of content is quality.
  • Read Google’s search documentation (for on-page factors, content, and quality guidelines).
  • Content quality is simpler than it seems. Just think about knowing the topic well and being helpful to people.
  • Being original is about looking at the SERPs for things that you can do differently, not about copying what the competitors are doing.

In my experience, it’s super important to keep an open mind, to not get locked into one way of thinking, especially when it comes to site quality. This will help one keep from getting locked into a point of view that can keep one from seeing the true cause of ranking issues.

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