How Clever Copywriting Can Improve Your SEO
December 19th, 2019 by
In the digital world, your marketing team can’t afford to lose track of SEO best practices. Google is smarter, attention spans are shorter, and the competition is fierce. To drive more traffic to your website, avoid copy that falls flat. In an online world full of skimmers and scanners, the best way to grab attention is by committing to an SEO copywriting strategy that’ll make you a VIP on the search engine results page. To do so, you’ll need to learn what sets quality SEO writing apart from copy that serves other promotional purposes.
Specialized Copywriting Techniques
Although colorful descriptions and flowery language can land you on The New York Times Best Sellers list, it’s unlikely that they’ll help you earn repeat customers. SEO copywriting serves to support sales and marketing goals, and the strategies used to do so make this writing technique a key player in marketing efforts. You want to effectively target prospects, drive them to your website, and earn plenty of conversions—in a perfect world, this would be a seamless process. Unfortunately, this isn’t the case for every buyer’s journey. If you’re keen on ramping up conversions in a world of digital hopscotch, the recipe for successful SEO copy includes these crucial ingredients:
- Keywords and keyphrases
- Clear calls to action (CTAs)
- A skimmable format: H2s, we’re lookin’ at you!
- Strong internal links
SEO Copywriting in Action
Now that you have the recipe, it’s time to get cooking.
Keywords and Keyphrases
So, what makes keywords “key” words? You want to identify words and phrases that are being used in search queries. For instance, if you’re a clothing retailer trying to promote and sell a product that you’ve listed on your website as a “winter long-sleeved top,” you’re likely to have better luck optimizing your content by using a more relevant search term or keyphrase: “checkered wool sweater.” If you’re still drawing blanks, there are tools on your side to boost your confidence in the keywords you choose. SEMrush allows you to research keywords and phrases and analyze various metrics, including search volume, competitive density, cost per click (the average price in USD that advertisers pay for keywords that trigger their ads), and much more! Be careful not to overdo it though, because stuffing too many keywords in your copy can run your readers away (and can bore Google, too.)
CTAs
Delicious copy is useless if you leave your leads hanging. You’ve got cute sweaters, so what? You have to direct your site’s visitors to the next step after they’ve read your blog post, browsed your service pages, or scrolled through your list of products. When it comes to calls to action that convert, let’s be clear about this: you need to provide easy-to-follow next steps. After reading your content, do you want users to sign up for a mailing list or purchase a ticket to an event? Nothing’s clunkier than “To learn more, contact us by filling out our form or calling 555-555 and register for our webinar!” Nail down one specific purpose for each piece of content and identify the clear next step for the site visitor. The last thing you want to do is conclude your beautifully written piece of content with a jumble of desperate pleas followed by a mess of tracking to sort through.
H2s
You have a very short time window to attract and delight your website’s visitors—in fact, you only have about 15 seconds. To beat the buzzer, you’ll have to ensure that the user can easily get the gist of your copy before deciding to read further. Wondering how to make the magic happen? Relevant, clever H2s. People are naturally drawn to lists and numbers, and you need to work these into your business’s SEO formula so that your content is not only pleasant to Google’s bots, but human readers as well.
Internal Links
Think about how you search for products or services online. If you click on something that isn’t helpful…adios! You wouldn’t waste your time digging deeper into a website that doesn’t seem relevant to your search from the start. Keep this in mind when you link to other pages within your copy. When writing user-facing anchor text, you should always make sure that it reads as a “sneak peek” of the landing page it leads to.
A Breakdown of the Do’s and Don’ts
Do:
- Sprinkle relevant keywords throughout the copy
- Provide a clear call to action
- Break up your copy with H2s
- Include internal links
Don’t:
- Clutter your content with filler and fluffy language
- Overwhelm the reader with never-ending, chunky paragraphs
- Include links that aren’t related to the on-page content
Ready to start writing? Great copy is just a piece of the puzzle when it comes to effective SEO strategies, and Search Influence knows how to bring it all together. We help businesses grow online by developing tailored SEO and digital marketing gameplans for each of our clients. Tell us what your business needs and let’s make it happen today.
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