There is no doubt about how important search engine optimization is. Thanks to the pandemic, the number of people using the internet has grown significantly. They not only use it for work but also for education and leisure time. Therefore, there is content pretty much about everything. However, uploading a piece of content over the internet is not just enough. We have to optimize it well to make sure that it reaches the right audience. So, whichever niche you are working in as a copywriter, you have to ensure that you can produce search-engine-optimized content. With that being said, we have made sure to cover everything in this SEO copywriting guide to help you understand how everything works and how you can enhance the quality of your content.
What is SEO Copywriting?
As you may already know the purpose of Search Engine Optimization is to enhance the quality of your blog posts or the website as a whole to not only get indexed by search engines but also achieve higher rankings. This is especially true for search engines like Google whose main concern is to make search results relevant to the users with every new update.
SEO copywriting aims at a similar goal. However, it rather focuses on the quality of the content and its creation process to ensure maximum readability and value for both Google and its target audience. Fortunately, if you are creating quality content for your users, you are already optimizing your website or articles for search engines.
Moreover, copywriting involves using the right keywords and persuasive writing skills to either drive traffic to your website or ensure conversion. Meanwhile, the keyword tells the target user and the search engine what is the website or article about whereas the content either informs the reader or guides them to a specific call to action. If you are lucky enough and optimize your content, you will surely rank on the first page of search engines, including Google.
Besides, here are a few common examples of SEO copywriting leading to a call to action:
- Landing page of a service or product
- Blog post discussing a problem and illustrating how your service or product can solve it
- Product description illustrating the benefits and features of your service or product
- Video showcasing your service or product where the meta description, script, and transcript are examples of good copywriting
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The Ultimate SEO Copywriting Guide in 2024
Whenever you write something on the internet, you have to ensure that you are not only writing it for your target audience but also the search engines, specifically Google. Therefore you have to optimize your copywriting piece well for both the audience and the search engines.
Otherwise, if you just focus on ranking on the first page of Google, your writing will be stiff and repetitive. Because you will insert the keyword everywhere you get an opportunity. On the other hand, if you focus on writing quality content for your audience, your content might lack a few necessary details which might fail you to draw Google’s attention to your website or article.
Therefore, it is essential to learn how to write good copywriting pieces. Hence, we have made an in-depth yet easy-to-understand SEO copywriting guide for you to understand how everything works.
Step 1. Understand Your Audience and Jot Down Topic Ideas
The first thing that you need to understand is that you can not write about anything. You have to figure out who your target audience is and what it is looking for on the internet. For that purpose, you can try asking the following questions:
- Who is my target audience?
- What do they need?
- What are their possible questions and concerns?
- How can I help them?
If you cannot answer these questions, then it is time to figure it out. You can either choose to guess what could be the possible answers to the above questions. Or you can sit down on sales and support calls, conduct customer surveys, or read call transcripts to highlight your target audience and their queries and needs.
In the meantime, figure out what are their pain points. Besides, you should also find out why your target audience is not choosing you over your competitors and how you can stand out amongst them.
Once you figure out what your audience is looking for, you can use that information to brainstorm ideas. As a content creator or a copywriter, you should be able to turn the queries of your audience into blog post ideas or titles. In addition to their queries, you can utilize tools such as BuzzSumo and Frase to generate additional ideas. These tools are designed to help copywriters generate ideas revolving around a particular idea or topic.
All in all, the first step of the SEO copywriting guide is to figure out your target audience, and 3what they are looking for, and generate content ideas based on their queries.
Step 2: Perform Keyword Research
The second step in the SEO copywriting guide is to start the keyword research but by now we assume that you have completed the above step successfully. For this purpose, you can use tools such as Ahrefs, Semrush, or Frase. These help you not only find a good keyword but they also help you find keywords that have lower competition. So that you can create high-quality content and easily rank on the first page of the search engines, such as Google.
While doing keyword research, you should make sure that you are not only looking at the numbers but also search intents. For instance, the search intent could be informational: looking for an answer, navigational: looking for a specific product, website, service, or brand, or transaction: looking to buy something.
Once you figure out why are people searching for a specific keyword or phrase, you will get a better understanding of what you need to focus on while writing your content. Moreover, a quick tip to remember is that long-tail words can easily rank on search engines. For instance, “best coffee shops near me” is a long-tail keyword. Such keywords have the potential to bring more organic traffic to your post and website. Hence, take enough time, dig deep, and select your keywords.
All in all, the purpose of step 2 in our SEO copywriting guide is to create a list of potential keywords that you will write an article or blog post about.
Step 3: Find and Analyze Your Competitors
Once you find out the exact keyword that you are going to write about, type it into any of the search engines, preferably Google. This step is essential to find out whether or not you are writing about something that Google wants. Besides that, it also lets you know whether or not there is content on the internet about the same topic.
If there is no content already on the internet about it, it will be easy for your content to rank on the first page. However, if there is content present on the internet about the same topic, make sure to analyze it thoroughly. Skim through the content and analyze their headings to see what they have covered. Make sure to check out at least the first 10 to 12 results.
You can use tools like Frase to speed up this process. It pulls out the first 20 search results and lays out their h2s. Otherwise, you can also choose to manually open each result, skim through it, and analyze each heading. In a nutshell, you should analyze the following elements:
- Content type: Is it a blog post, landing page, sales page, video, PDF, or what?
- Content Format: Is it a how-to, news article, review, listicle, opinion piece, or what? Does it contain any images or a video clip?
- Content Angle: Does it address a beginner, intermediate, or an expert? Or is it positive, negative, or neutral?
The goal is to see the content they have covered, what they are missing, and their format and structure. Moreover, you can check the “People Also Ask” section where actual gems are hidden from sight. You can get ideas from these questions and include them in your content. Make sure to answer each question thoroughly so that Google or your audience finds it valuable to share it further.
In addition, you can gather more data using the following resources:
- YouTube
- Social Media
- Research Reports
- SEO Tools
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Step 4: Outline Your Article and Create Your First Draft
At this point, we assume that you have figured out your audience and their pain points, selected keyword research, and analyzed your competition. So, it is time to start outlining your SEO copy. It is one of the most essential steps of an SEO copywriting guide. Using all the information that you have collected so far, start creating the outline.
Meanwhile, use the h2s to cover any sub-topics that your competitor has already covered and the questions that you picked from the “People Also Ask” section. Essentially, mention details that they have missed.
Once you have created the outline of your copy, you can start adding information. Write down every detail and answer each question that you have collected so far. Remember the goal at this stage of the writing process is to add information. You can take time later to optimize it further for search engines. After all, the first draft of your copy is not for the search engines but for the audience.
Step 5: Review and Make the Final Draft
As I have mentioned before, the purpose of the first draft is to put information onto the paper. It does not have to be perfect. But once you are done with the first draft, you should review it a couple of times at least. While reviewing, make sure that you check your first draft for everything, including the grammar and punctuation. Find out areas where you can improve. Also, check if the figures are correct.
Then, make the final draft. So, fill in the areas that might leave your audience unsatisfied, correct the figures, and rectify the grammar and punctuation mistakes. Moreover, to make the final draft more digestible and easy to understand, include the following elements.
- Add related images, charts, and/or graphs.
- Add relevant quotes to improve the credibility of your content.
- Try breaking up paragraphs to improve the readability of your content. Two to three sentences per paragraph is adequate.
- Add sub-headings (h2s and h3s) to improve Skimmability.
- Avoid unnecessary information or jargon to improve clarity.
- Try using bullet points and number lists wherever it is appropriate.
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Step 6: Optimize the Final Draft
Up until this step of the SEO copywriting guide, you must have completed the final draft of your copy. Then, you are good to start optimizing it for Google and other search engines. Firstly, make sure that the keyword that you selected in step 2 is in the introduction, h2 (at least in one of them), and a few times in the body of your copy. However, make sure that you do not overdo it. Otherwise, it will appear spammy to search engines.
Most SEO experts believe that the keyword density should not be more than 2% to 3%. So, you can use tools such as Suffer SEO to find out whether or not you have overoptimized it. So that you can cut down on keywords. Moreover, we suggest you find variations of your keywords to improve the readability, SEO, and depth of your copy.
To check the readability, you can use tools such as ProWritingAid, Hemingway, and Grammarly. We recommend that your copy should be 8th grade or even less. Moreover, these tools not only check the readability of your copy but they can also detect other issues that you might otherwise miss. These include passive voice, run-on sentences, and redundancies.
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