What do you mean by the term “SEO Copywriting” when typing this keyword in the Google search string? I bet you’re trying to define how to write the texts in such a way to be ranked # 1 in the Google search results. But you have no idea about how these “special” texts must differ from the usual articles you used to publish in your blog.
I know that you read dozens of materials on the subject of SEO copywriting, but it’s still not so clear to you how to write such a kind of blog posts. The reason why you can’t find the answer to your questions is that it does not exist. In fact, all you need to do is to write your texts with no care about SEO.
However, as you may have guessed, there are some methods on how to make your articles SEO friendly. My goal is to reveal these secrets to you. Therefore, the first thing I want to emphasize is that SEO copywriting is very depends on your niche.
One may write boring texts and get ranked in the 1st position in the Google SERP. Meanwhile, you might create the so-called skyscraper content but get no visitors to your page. I want to simplify your task. That’s why I don’t want to blow your mind with various complicated SEO terms.
Let’s take a look at my list of instructions you need to follow to make your texts SEO-friendly:
- Create a comfortable environment and simplify your content
- Markup your article to simplify its further transformation into HTML
- Find a micro niche for your blog posts
- Undertake keyword research
- Don’t focus your attention on the keywords since your goal to be natural; use synonyms of the keywords instead
- Structurize your articles for humans and search engine
- Make your texts are easy to read (you need to adapt them to the Internet audience)
- Your blog posts must be massive to engage the target audience and reduce bounce rate
- Your content must be viral to get thousands of likes and social shares
- Study your target audience to define what keywords they use
- Create the attractive titles (or borrow them)
- Supplement your plain text with images, illustrations, infographics, etc.
- Conclusion
As you can see, my list doesn’t consist any complicated SEO terms. My goal is to make the things simpler. Some points may seem a bit weird for you, especially those in the beginning. However, I claim that all of them relate to the SEO copywriting. Are you ready to make your texts SEO-friendly? Let’s get it started.
Create a comfortable environment for writing your SEO texts
As a rule, the vast majority of bloggers and copywriters make a common mistake. They used to write their articles in Microsoft Word or directly in the WordPress visual editor. Both approaches are wrong in my opinion. Your primary goal is to clean up your workspace.
The first thing you need to realize is that the content which you see on the Internet differs from those in the books. To be closer to your target audience, you will have to plunge into their environment. Bear in mind, that a person who every day browses the web pages used to scroll them instead of reading. That’s why you need to simplify your texts.
Let me guess, once you’ve seen the vast list of items, the first thing you instinctively desired to do is to scroll down to the text. Am I wrong? You used to read fast or even scroll the text down. When you’re browsing the Internet, you don’t want to wait. You need the instant answer to your question. That’s why I try to convince you to simplify your articles.
What do I call the environment for SEO copywriting?
I want you to get rid of a habit to write your texts in Microsft Word, Apple Pages, or WordPress visual editor. When you see the interface which is filled with dozens of useless functions, you can’t focus on your content and make it easy to read.
I’d recommend you to use one of those minimalist text editors such as iA Writer, Raven, or another software, depending on your platform. I want you to see a blank sheet before your eyes, like if you wrote the text on a white paper. Such environment allows you to think easier, make your sentences shorter, and focus your attention only on your article instead of the interface.
Of course, this rule is not necessary for SEO copywriting. However, such advice is useful from the psychological point of view. Besides, such approach works in practice.
Markup of your article
Another advantage of the approach described above is that now you can make the markup your text to prepare it to be converted into the HTML format. This practice is considered to be the best one since it allows you to keep the things in order yet before the publication. In fact, your writing becomes SEO-friendly already at this stage.
You need some time to get accustomed to this technique. But you will be surprised with the results. Let me show you how it works.
To markup your text you need to use the so-called Markdown language.
This language allows you to create the HTML markup right in your text document. After your article is finished, all you need is to convert it into the HTML format, and copy-paste is in your WordPress HTML editor.
One may object that this practice has no relation to SEO copywriting. But I claim that such an approach is right since this is how the SEO magic happens. You are optimizing your texts for the search engines right during the process of writing. Isn’t it perfect?
Besides, as a rule, a webmaster or copywriter forgets all that he wrote while moving his texts from a text editor to the WordPress visual editor. On the contrary, I claim that you need to control each detail right now while you’re writing your article. Otherwise, you have a chance to lose the essential data.
Find a micro niche for your blog posts
Let’s now talk directly about SEO. The biggest secret of SEO copywriting is that you need to find out what exactly to write about. The common mistake is that you can’t focus your attention on a micro niche. Instead, you are trying to write the articles on the high competition topics.
As a result, your goal is to discover such a micro niche. I can’t explain it better without an example.
Let’s imagine that your niche is jewelry. You strive thereby to promote your website by a keyword “engagement rings.” It’s almost unreal to compete with Brilliant Earth, Blue Nile, Kay Jewelers, ZALES, Tiffany & Co., etc. Am I wrong?
The only way to surpass your competitors is to discover a micro niche. You don’t know how doing that. But I’ll teach you. Moreover, my method is totally free. All we need is the tool called “Searches related to.”
Let’s now follow these steps:
- Go to Google and type “engagement rings” into the search string
- Scroll down to the bottom of the page
- Pay your attention to a block of links called “Searches related to engagement rings”
- Click on “engagement rings cheap”
- Next, go to the bottom of the page once again
- Click on “affordable engagement rings under $500”
- Scroll down to the bottom one more time
- Click on “affordable diamond engagement rings under $500”
You can repeat these steps more and more until you discover the so-called long-tail keyword
Let’s take a closer look at on the page which is on the 10th place in the Google SERP by the keyword “affordable diamond engagement rings under $500.” The website shireeodiz.com has only 2,760 pages in the Google index; it is in the 1,391,806th place in the world, according to ALEXA; the page we are looking at was made especially for this keyword.
Now you see an excellent example how the SEO copywriting works in practice. However, I claim that this page has no chance to be in the TOP 10 by the search query “engagement rings.” Do you understand now, what micro niche is?
Perform keyword research
Now you know how to find a micro niche for your SEO texts. But what about your competitors? It’s time to undertake keyword research. Your goal at this stage is to define which keywords your competitor uses to promote his goods. However, as I have mentioned above, your primary mission is to detect the long-tail keywords of your rival.
To do that you need a toolkit. Fortunately, I will assist you to choose necessary tools. In fact, there are only two web instruments you will have to use to get access to the statistics of your competitor.
Each tool was made for particular needs. However, the primary intention of both instruments is to collect the data about your rival to then present it to you in a convenient form.
I want to repeat one more time, if we are talking about the SEO copywriting, the only thing that we care about is the long-tail keywords. As a rule, these keywords start from 4-5 words.
Of course, you want to surpass your competitors by the keyword “engagement rings.” But this is not your primary goal if we are talking about the SEO copywriting. On the contrary, you need to forget about the high competitive keywords.
Let’s take a look a the SEMRush report first.
bluenile.com is a serious rival. This website is on the 7th place by a keyword “engagement rings.” The keyword generates about 823,000 unique visitors per month, according to SEMRush. And each click costs $8.63. As a result, this key phrase is not a target for SEO copywriting.
Let’s now better take a look at shireeodiz.com.
Do you see such an incredible jump in their organic traffic? Isn’t it your purpose to see the same picture in the SEO report of your website?
I will explain to you how they did it. Look at the keyword list.
You see here the following items:
- ring size chart
- ring size
- ring size chart for women
- ring sizes for women
- promising rings for her
As you may have guessed, the desired keyword was “ring size.” But how did they cope with such a task? The answer is simpler than it may have seemed. The guys who stand behind shireeodiz.com created a page which is targeted to a long-tail keyword “ring size chart for women.” Such a tactic allowed them to climb onto the 2nd place by this keyword.
Thanks to the SEO copywriting, they managed to adapt the page for four search queries:
- ring size chart for women (long-tail)
- ring sizes for women (middle competition)
- ring size chart (high competition)
- ring size (extra top competition)
As for the keyword “promising rings for her,” they don’t receive any traffic right now; but this is their next goal.
Ahrefs is the tool which is more targeted to the backlinks. Thanks to this web instrument, you might discover how your competitor promoted their landing pages. But I don’t want to cover this topic within the current article. It’s worth noting that this web service has an excellent keyword research functionality as well.
Summing up, your goal at this stage of keyword research is to define what keywords used your competitor to receive the organic traffic, and write SEO optimized articles using the similar key phrases.
Don’t focus your attention on the keywords while writing
Your goal is to be natural. Don’t listen to anyone who advises you to use a keyword each time you think about it. Such strategy is wrong. Once upon a time in the 90th, you could write a list of keywords at the bottom of your page. Today, in 2018, this method is harmful. The best way to avoid any penalties from Google is to be natural.
Of course, you need to use keywords inside your texts. However, this is not necessary. The search engines are smarter today. They understand the synonyms and even idioms. In other words, there must be nothing specifically in your articles made for SEO, especially if we are talking about the long-tail keywords.
Ask yourself, is it natural if you see the key phrase affordable diamond engagement rings under $500 thirty-five times while reading an article on the subject? I don’t want you to get rid of the keyword at all. I only wish you to be accurate and natural while using the keywords.
If you want that your SEO copywriting was natural, don’t think about the keywords. Your goal is to write the article for the human not for Google. However, even here there is a notable detail. You must be a bit unnatural to meet the Google’s demand.
You can’t avoid usage of keywords while writing since it’s your goal as a professional SEO copywriter. Therefore, the truth is in-between natural and unnatural writing, if I may say so. Unfortunately, this aspect of SEO copywriting is very depended on your experience.
You may have noticed that I was trying to use the keyword “SEO copywriting” numerous times in this subheading. That was my attempt to pay your attention what you don’t need to do. Please bear these data in mind.
Structurize your articles for humans and search engine
Google, as well as any other search engine, wants that you to structure your data. It doesn’t only relate to the title, subheads, and a description of your article; it’s also about the internal structure of your text.
There are many ways how you might structure your data. For instance, at the beginning of my article, you may see the table of contents. This part is not necessary to be in your article. However, such list of items helps both Google and visitors to realize what is your blog post about.
To be honest, there is a small secret in such an approach. If you try to click on any subject in the list, you’ll instantly move to the text which relates to the topic. We call this structured data, and Google can see this hidden markup.
Such a tactic directly relates to the SEO copywriting since it is useful for both your visitors and search engines.
The best example of the structured text it’s a study or dissertation. If you are young, you frequently face these requirements in the university. Frankly, I also claim that it’s the best strategy to work with your data online.
The same relates to your references, mainly if you write an article on the subject of medicine of such exact science as math or physics. You need to explain to a search engine that you gathered your data from the reliable sources. As a result, the outbound links are also the part of your text structure.
Summing up, if you want to be in the TOP 10 SERP, you need to write your articles according to a plan. However, the idea must be not only in your head but also to be clear as well as visible for your readers and search engine.
Make your texts easy to read
Now it’s time to gaze at your manner of writing. As mentioned above, the Internet audience used to read light and simple texts. Otherwise, your target visitors will scroll down your articles or even leave them right after reading the first paragraph.
Fortunately, I can suggest you a tool, which could assist you with this task. This tool allows you to make on-page optimization correctly. If you were lucky to use WordPress as your platform, I have exciting news for you. There is a plugin called the Yoast SEO plugin which might sufficiently improve your SEO copywriting.
How does the plugin work?
Yoast SEO plugin analyzes the readability of your texts thanks to the following parameters:
- Flesch Reading Ease test
- The number of transition word in your sentences
- The length of your paragraphs
- How often you use passive voice if you write in English
- How many words each sentence contains
- The number of keywords your subheading includes
- The length of the title
- The range of the description
- and more useful stuff
In addition to the analysis of your slug, this plugin allows you to define any possible SEO mistakes such as:
- The keyword density
- Meta description
- How many links you have to other pages with the focus keyword
- Does the focus keyword appear in the first paragraph
- The length of your SEO title
- How many stop words you use
- How many times the focus keyword appears in the subheadings
- Did you optimize the images using the ALT tags
- How many total words your article contains
- The number of DoFollow and NoFollow outbound links
- Do you have a keyword in your URL
- How many times you used the keyword
In other word, thanks to the Yoast SEO Plugin you may estimate the score of your SEO copywriting.
Your articles must be huge
I don’t attempt to convince you to write a lot of boring text. However, one thing you must bear in mind that if your article contains less than 750-1000 words, it’s almost useless for Google. This rule does not apply to the media outlets since they spread the news. But such a kind of website, as a rule, is included in the Google News and thereby is indexed by the GoogleNewsBot.
No matter that Google recommends to write articles that contain more than 350 words, in fact, the search engine considers these data the thin content. Ask yourself, how much time you need to read a 350-word article? How strong a chance that you’ll close the page after several seconds?
From the side of SEO copywriting, it’s necessary to convince a visitor to be on your website for at least one minute and to browse at least two pages.
As a rule, Goole pays attention to the three indicators to evaluate the behavior factors of your audience:
- Bounce rate
- Session duration
- Number of Sessions per User
Therefore, your goal is to reduce the bounce rate and increase the rest indicators. The only thing to do that is to engage the target audience.
In my opinion, it’s clear that the more words contain your text, the more time a visitor spends while reading your articles. Am I wrong? But please bear in mind, your content must be informative. Otherwise, the visitor will consider it useless.
There is no standard how many words or symbols your article must contain. However, it’s easy to calculate how much time a visitor needs in order to read it out.
Summing up, in my experience, your article must contain not less than 750 words to be appropriate for Google.
Look at the statistics of the current article. You need over 17 minutes to read it out.
Your content must be viral
What’s the viral content? This term implies that your data must be so exciting that the visitors decide to share it with their friends. Honestly, Google spokesmen stated that the search engine doesn’t take these data into account. However, in practice, the social traffic facilitates the organic one.
There is no golden rule how to create the viral content. The only clear thing is that your article must be not only informative. In addition, your text must cause emotions. Unfortunately, this SEO copywriting trick is not available for any niche. But I bet you know how to excite your target audience.
If you can’t create the text content of such kind, you might try to make it thanks to the video. I’ll give you an excellent example of viral content if you have no idea what am I talking about.
The video called ‘Do You Hear “Yanny” or “Laurel”?’ managed to garner over 40 million views on YouTube. It’s useless from the SEO point of view. However, let’s imagine you are lucky to create the similar viral content. You might post a link to your website at the bottom of the video or implement it inside it.
In such a case, you might attract a lot of visitors to your project. I want to be clear, the viral content does not always fit the theme of your website, but it could attract the attention to your brand.
Nonetheless, I convince you to add some viral details to your texts. You know that reading about SEO is boring. As a result, I can’t give you the excellent example in my niche. Nevertheless, I want to pay your attention to the fact that your content must contain something unusual.
Summing up, even if you don’t know how to make your content viral, it’s better to make it a bit fun or exciting for your readers.
Research your target audience
Since you work with keywords to improve your SEO copywriting, it would be great to learn how your target audience call your product or service. It’s not always evident what keywords use the potential consumers of your product or service while typing it in the Google search string.
If you sell a product, it’s better to investigate some forums and reviews on the subject of your keywords.
Let’s imagine that you sell used iPhones. I bet you want to be in the first place by the search query “buy used iPhones.” But you can’t even imagine how tricky could be the search queries of your potential buyers.
Let’s take a look at this blog post. Its author used a lot of unique keywords that you might use for SEO copywriting.
For instance, you can entitle your blog post as:
- Save Big Money By Buying A Used iPhone
- Which Model Of A Used iPhone Is The Perfect Fit For You
- How To Avoid Buying A Blacklisted iPhone
As you could see, you may borrow keywords from blog posts, forums, reviews, etc. of your product.
Create the attractive titles (or borrow them)
A title is the essential part of your article if we are talking about the SEO copywriting. Like the viral content, your title must be attractive, or as I call it, sexy. The only part of your text content which must contain the keyword for sure is your title since it’s the first factor Google pay attention to.
There are a lot of techniques how to invent the attractive headlines. But if you can’t cope with this task by yourself, I’d recommend you to borrow the ideas.
Let’s imagine that your niche is travel and you don’t have an idea for your another blog post. You need to relax a little bit. I suggest you visit one of your favorite websites. Let it be the Huffington Post. Go the menu and find your niche.
You can find here a lot of ideas for your niche. It doesn’t mean that you need to borrow the entire title of a particular article. But you might use it as a template for your new blog post.
For instance:
- __ Ways To Make Family Road Trips __, From __ Who’ve Been There
- __ Wonderful Islands In __ That Most Travelers Don’t Know About
- The Top __ Destinations To Celebrate __ Day
Such headlines look attractive. If the HuffPost flourishes while using these titles, why don’t you do the same things?
Supplement your plain text with images, illustrations, infographics, etc.
SEO copywriting is not only about the text. Your content must contain some things that attract the attention of your visitors. In my case, I use screenshots to illustrate the actions. In your case, it could be some diagrams or tables. Some people use infographics which gather a lot of social shares by the way.
All this supplemental content reduces the bounce rate and increases other behavioral factors. You can append various YouTube videos and quote the Twitter page of famous persons. By the way, in some niches, such quotes allow GoogleBot to realize that your information is reliable.
If we are talking about news, it’s essential to append your data to the quote from the official Twitter page belonging to a person or brand.
I can give you a hint how to discover a lot of unique visual content. Have you ever heard about the project called StumbleUpon? This website might serve as the idea generator. Each time you push the button “Stumble,” the site shows you some exciting little known viral content. As a rule, you might stumble upon the visual content which has become a viral, depending on your interest. So use this tool to gather some ideas about the media content.
Conclusion
Now you know how the SEO copywriting works. As you may see, this term is comprehensive on the one hand. On the other, all you need is to create quality content but being concerned about the details. Creating the content is the primary rule of SEO. Even if you have a lot of backlinks, you can’t engage your target audience without the informative articles, quality pictures, or exciting videos.
As a result, the more quality content you have, the more organic traffic your website receives. All you need is to take search engines into account. However, you need to avoid over-optimization. In such a case, Google can penalize your site. I will repeat it one more time; your primary goal is to be natural. Search engines have become smarter. The algorithm can detect the automatically generated or borrowed content.
Summing up, to succeed in the SEO copywriting you need to apply your skills in practice. I wish you good luck and hope that my recommendations were useful to you.
