Are you worried about ranking behind your competitors when people do a Google search on your industry? You're certainly not the only one! Search Engine Optimisation (SEO) is a crucial tool to put companies directly in front of their audience, first.
Optimised copy answers the search intent of your audience while remaining readable and natural. The days of simplistic Google algorithms to determine the ranking of search query pages are gone, but many old SEO myths are still going strong. The ranking system has become more intelligent and complex to display the most relevant and high-quality copy first.
If you are thinking about writing your own copy rather than using professional copywriting services, we have prepared a list of tips for creating your own content.
What is the best SEO copywriting process?
Before you begin a project, you need to decide on a primary keyword for which to optimise your content and you need to be clear on the keyword intent you are writing to satisfy.
What is a primary keyword? And how do you choose it?
Every article needs to be focused on one primary keyword. That’s because your topic should be specific to the keyword’s intent.
For example: If you were wanting to rank your cat product shop online for Cat Toys, you would start with some topic research around ALL of the keywords relevant to your ideal customer’s search journey.
In this case, these terms and monthly search volumes look like this:
- “Cat toys” Monthly Search Volume 1600
- “DIY cat toys” Monthly Search Volume 110
- “Interactive cat toys” Monthly Search Volume 110
- “Best cat toys “ Monthly Search Volume 90
- “Crinkly cat toy” Monthly Search Volume 10
So, your first task is to choose what keyword you will focus your article on for the best chance to rank for the primary keyword.
It’s obviously tempting to pick the highest volume keyword “cat toys”, but you are also competing with all the big retailers for this word. This makes the keyword very difficult to rank for, as the competition is very high.
So, another approach would be to aim to rank for the easier to gain lower volume (but high user intent) keywords. In this case, I would suggest targeting the easiest- lowest competition keyword that still has some good volume, which is “DIY cat toys”.
I would then write the most definitive guide to creating your own DIY cat toy, but it would also include some boredom buster best buys from your own product range. Or – if this store also offered other cat products – you then get a chance to pitch the rest of the product range.
The logic you need to apply to SEO copywriting
Think of it like this; the reader comes for specific information – the keyword intent – which your article provides for them. Providing valuable knowledge and helpful details wins the respect of your audience, who will see you as a good source of information and advice for other related things of interest to them, or for the service provided to them. They then decide to buy direct from you rather than DIY.
That logic also helps Google to deliver the best answer for people’s search queries. Google also requires your content to be structured in a way that Google recognises is correct, so it understands what you are attempting to rank for.
How do I understand keyword intent?
The best way to understand keyword intent is to Google the keyword using a very simple tool I recommend called Keywords Everywhere. Using this tool, you can see, while searching, what the search volume is for a keyword, what else people search for, and what content ranks. It’s a very handy and affordable tool to use when creating SEO content.
DON'T keyword-stuff your copy
Many site owners believe that creating a relevant web page for a search query requires stuffing your copy to the brim with a target keyword. Of course, your page needs to contain relevant target keywords, but sentence after sentence with the same word looks ridiculous and certainly makes for bad reading! Potential clients don't respond to poor quality writing, and neither does Google.
DON'T write unnecessary copy
It may seem that in order to cover all points of relevance to your audience, you have to write a lot of copy. Google does value in-depth copy, but you have to keep your audience in mind. Readers respond to compelling, well-thought-out text that gets to the point. If they see an overwhelming amount of copy, they might choose not to read it at all! Whether it's a blog post or a landing page, make your copy comprehensive, succinct and genuinely enjoyable to read.
DON'T include hidden blocks of text with SEO keywords
The ‘SEO trap' is a common technique, but in truth, it is a waste of time and resources. The smarter Google gets, the more it values transparency!
DO take the time to understand your audience
You can incorporate all the SEO techniques you like, but if your copy isn’t relevant and your keywords are not targeted to intent, you will not generate the traffic or leads you are hoping for.
To craft your content to reach your ideal customer, consider what they want from your product or service. What tone are they expecting? What problems are they looking to solve? What information do they need to see on your web page in order to make contact or click the purchase button? The more you understand your consumer, the better you can create copy that satisfies the search queries they make, and therefore rank your website highly.
DO incorporate Latent Semantic Indexing (LSI)
LSI keywords are semantically related to your main keyword. A lot of people think LSI keywords are synonyms. Synonyms are useful LSI keywords, but LSI incorporates all keywords frequently found together because they share the same context.
For example, ‘Apple' and ‘iPhone' and ‘smartphone' are LSI keywords. However, ‘apple', ‘juicy' and ‘orchard' are also LSI keywords. LSI ensures that the search query display shows pages relevant to the industry and topic your audience is looking for. Incorporating LSI, therefore, helps you better serve your user’s search intent.
Overtly stuffing your content with LSI keywords will, again, have you penalised by Google. Use them to help you rank, but do not let them interfere with the quality of your content. The idea of LSI is that you would naturally include the keywords as you write. You still need to create high-quality, well-written copy, but definitely with LSI keywords in mind.
Incorporating SEO into copy can take a lot of research and time – it's completely normal to not know where to start! SEO research is particularly complex when it comes to small, niche (and therefore low search volume) businesses and products. To get it right first time and ensure the best results possible, you can bring in SEO and copy experts to optimise your site. At Creative Content, we use in-depth processes and advanced keyword research techniques to make your site as ‘optimal' as can be!
Why use an SEO copywriter?
The Creative Content process: as a professional copywriting agency, we make it our priority to create informative and inspiring copy for our clients. We share our exact process for creating SEO copy so you can understand what is needed to complete a comprehensive plan for your business web content writing.
First, we need to understand your business, including the services, the people and the company ethos. To do this we have developed a web copy questionnaire. Our goal is to understand what is unique about your business and the priorities of your potential clients. This helps us map your customer journey. We want to know how well-informed your customers are about your product or service before they visit your site, and what types of keywords you can think of that they would search to find you.
For particularly niche businesses, we have developed an even more in-depth questionnaire to help web content writers create SEO content specific to your very narrow audience. At this stage, we also do an analysis into the customer state of awareness about your product or service. For example, are your customers problem aware, but not solution aware? If so, we need to spend time explaining how your products solve their problem.
As part of our copywriting services, we use the questionnaires and work further alongside you to create the value proposition for your business. In essence, we identify why and how your customers would say ‘yes' to your offer, and craft a succinct key message that often appears as a major heading on your home page, so readers are clear on the value of your business from the outset.
Armed with new knowledge about your business, we then utilise SEO software tools to generate target keywords and LSI keywords for you.
We follow proven structure elements that make your site easy to navigate and optimise it for search.
The ideal copywriting structure for SEO
- Headings that name the product in a way your target readers will understand
- Sub-headings briefly describing the benefit of the product to your market.
- Summaries providing all essential information about your product. These have to be extremely well-crafted, as often people won't read beyond summaries! The text needs to address the problem your product solves and why yours is the best solution.
- Quotes from you showing the human side of your company and the ethos behind your service.
- Customer quotes describing how they experienced the benefits of your product – we help collect these testimonials.
- Calls-to-action that encourage and provide avenues for readers to take the next step. In order to get more conversions, you need to get more potential customers to carry out a specific decision on your website. Usually, that action revolves around accepting an offer or contacting you.
We discuss our SEO copywriting strategy further here.
How we can help you to create great SEO content
SEO copywriting is crucial to making your small business site as visible to your potential customers as possible. Correctly implemented techniques generate a surprising amount of traffic and leads for your website. You'll be quickly convinced by the results of your new SEO strategy!
If you’d like to discuss SEO copywriting with us further, or find out how our professional copywriters can help you, get in touch with us.
Check out our other tips for small business marketing here.
