Effective SEO copy is more than just the requisite percentage of carefully chosen keywords. The keywords boost the search engine rankings, but that is all they do.
To actually get the people who find the site to read it and make the leap to purchase, join or sign up for something, a website needs interesting and informative content.
To create compelling content that ranks well, it is important to understand the basics of great SEO copywriting.
How Copy Functions
To the search engines the content on the page is just a bunch of words. Without making this too complex, the engines analyse the words in an attempt to determine what each page is about.
If the web page covers too many different topics then it makes it difficult for the engines to determine which topic is prominent and deserves ranking. It creates a dilution of focus.
The search engines are just that – engines. They are not real people.
They analyse the page to see what it is about and determine its ranking within that topic. So the copy must be focused on a single topic or the search engine won’t be able to tell what it is about and how to rank it.
Keyword stuffing – the practice of simply putting a keyword or phrase into the text as much as possible with no regard for the quality of the content – will be detected by the search engines, and this will hurt the ranking.
But if the keyword or phrase isn’t used enough it won’t be picked up by the analytics, which is also bad news for the ranking.
Great Copywriting Is Good Writing
It is easy to lose sight of the basics when preoccupied with SEO analytics, but the basics of great copywriting are the same as they are for good writing in general.
Great SEO copywriting grabs the reader’s attention and holds it. It provides useful information in an engaging way. To sell, copywriting must point out a need the reader has and detail how the product or service will meet the need.
This holds true for any form of copywriting, whether it is for a blog, a website homepage, an article or a product listing.
Powerful copywriting should do four things.
Capture Attention
Getting millions of page views means nothing if people click away immediately.
Understand the Reader’s Needs
People purchase things to meet their needs, and content is what explains how a product or service will meet a need.
The key is to demonstrate that the business understands and appreciates the specific need.
Pose a Question
Don’t just provide the answer – pose the question.
Asking a question about the need engages readers and gets them thinking.
Provide Useful Information
Make it worth the readers’ while to read the content by giving them information they can use whether or not they go on to make a purchase.
Explain how the product or service will meet the need, but also offer information that demonstrates some expertise in the area.
Four Tips for Great SEO Content
Striking the right balance between ranking high on the search engines and appealing to actual humans is not always easy.
These four tips will help.
1. People come first
The search engines are trying to meet the needs of real people, so content that appeals to people will generally appeal to search engines.
The reverse is not true!
2. Use key phrases, not just keywords
Again, think about the people.
People search with phrases, not single words, so the content should use the right key phrases.
3. Quality outranks key phrases
If a phrase is awkward, try using it as a subhead.
The writing should be natural and flow well.
4. Rely on words, not graphics
Everyone likes a page that looks good, everyone but the search engines that is. They don’t care, but they will be confused by text in graphics.
Keep them separate to rank higher.
Remember, too, that more and more people are looking at websites on smart phones and other small devices.
Focus on the quality of the copywriting, and the search engines will follow.
I would love to hear your thoughts on this, please let me know what you think in the comments below or if there is any techniques that have worked for you in the past.
Hi Erik,
Wonderful post indeed 🙂
You are absolutely right in all that you mentioned – people ALWAYS come first – so write for them 🙂
Often we find posts stuffed with keywords, and perhaps that was the old trend where the SEO experts suggested it. But with Google changing, it’s the long tail keywords or phrases that work.
Makes more sense to write in a natural flow of words, and in most of the cases, the keywords are also formed naturally, if your content is a little long. Some people even write their posts and later add the keyword phrases, which makes it all the more better – as you are just lightly tweaking good and useful content, which your readers will love. Anything for them, and then the search engines (we cannot ignore them either!)
Thanks for sharing. Have a nice week ahead 🙂
Hey Erik,
Just getting a bit relaxed now. BlogExpose.com now has some meat so please try to eat. I’m making an effort to get some few valid offers on it 😉
Back to this content …
Keyword stuffing used to work in the past. Google was still young with little skills to detect it. If one tries that out today, it will be bad news 😉
A great ranking factor is LSI keywords. I found something interesting from GWT I’m writing about on my blog in more details.
Google is now putting in bold LSI keywords in the title and description of entries on SERP This is rather interesting.
Thanks for another important SEO content buddy. Hope you are having a great week
Hi Erik
Excellent post bro and you are so right, You have solved the dilemma of writing a post for search engines or people.
It is great to be able to do the two and you have listed cool tricks to acheive this goal. Google is becoming smart everyday so it is best to focus on people and target phrases that people use.
Thanks for sharing.
Great post indeed. But I recently found and good seo copywriting skill from Halbertology. Check it out!
Very informative post, well I’m not an expert in copy writing stuff and I guess these tips are very helpful to follow the same.
Thanks
Hi Erik,
a great post. Many people try to write for search engines and forget that there are actually people reading. it. There’s no use in having the #1 spot in the search engines when the content is written in a way that it turns people off and makes them leave the page.
The same for content length. We just recently had the discussion in one of the Facebook groups where someone chipped in that each post has to be 2,000+ words for better ranking. Now I believe that it is counterproductive, if the post is only filled up with fluff to make it lenghty, as it will get people bored and leave the page.
It’s always good to think about your audience and how they will feel with your content.
Thanks for sharing and have a great day,
Torsten
In my point of view, knowing SEO is great and so with copywriting.
Great Copywriting Is Good Writing reminds of Udemy that is a great help to make your content 2-3x more compelling. I believe that the STRUCTURE of your content is just as important as the writing itself.
Rely on words, not graphics – your insight here is true. People are looking after benefits and value in reading your post. They are not there to watch your websites design. However, you need to balance your website design and the value of your content.
Great SEO copywriting can make difference for online success. It becomes important for marketers to access this function to improve their business. I agree with the tips shared here, especially on the creating contents that appeals to people!
This comment was left in kingged.com as well
Hi there, excellent start of the post. Make it for the human not robots. I think (at least) here on small slovenian market where everyone knows everybody this is specially important, because if you make it for robot, not only people on the web, but also offline market recognize you as a spammer. Regards, Matija, Slovenia
Hi,
“Providing Useful Information” is the main thing for producing great seo copy writing and we should also focus on user friendly content.
Hi Erik,
Thanks for your interesting post! About the dilemma of online copywriting. We all know that you should write your intro as clearly as possible, letting the reader know in a few sentences what he can expect of the article. Like a news article in a news paper.
But as a blogger or copywriter, you can also start with a surprising /puzzling/literary intro and title. You know, the magazine way. This is a perfect way to make a blog post stand out and attract readers. But it is killing for SEO, I suppose.
Of course there’s always your meta description and title. Do you think you can compensate a badly written (seen from an SEO perspective) article by creating a smart meta title and description? Would that be enough?
Maybe your poetic, literary superior, surprising, wonderfully written blog post gets lots of social likes and shares. Would this compensate for the bad SEO score?
It would be nice to see bloggers and online copywriters loosen up, free themselves of the SEO bodice and let their creativity flow. But I don’t think they dare yet.
I look forward to hearing your thoughts on this.
Hi Erik,
Nice write up; I believe one of the difficulties writers have in understanding SEO copywriting is seperating the two from each other. They assume SEO and good writing skills can’t be merged together.
Most beginners find SEO too complex to understand, so they ignore its importance and concludes to seperates the two.
SEO, when married to great copywriting skills can produce massive significant results backed by well executed strategic content marketing.
Thanks for sharing, Erik.