Connect with Customers with Strong SEO Copywriting
Search engine optimization (SEO) copywriting blurs the lines between art and science.
How can I get my website to increase in rank on Google? How many times do I need to have keywords in the copy? What is a meta description?
At the Kinetic Marketing & Creative, we’ve answered and addressed all these questions with our clients. SEO copywriting is strategic and creative, and there are several factors to consider when writing website copy and keywords.
IDENTIFY YOUR IDEAL CUSTOMER
SEO copywriting begins with identifying your ideal customer and creating content to address your customer’s needs. For example, what does my company do that addresses the top three struggles that my customer has? From there you can develop your keyword intent:
- Informational: searches that are seeking to educate or answer a question
- Navigational: searching for a specific website
- Commercial: individuals are seeking a product or service
The keyword intent will help you narrow what prospects would be searching for and how your website will address those searches. This is when you get to play detective and replay the scene in your head to come up with what someone would type into the search bar.
Is your website informational, navigational or commercial? It can be all three, but what is the most likely way someone would find your website? This involves a little bit of research. Why does someone seek your business and what kind of words would they be searching? This will give you the keywords you are looking for.
Never just put keywords into your copy because that is what you want to be searched. Be strategic and really get into the mindset of your customers.
WRITING SEO COPY
When you begin writing content for your website, skip the fluff and get down to the information. We were taught to have a powerful opening statement in an introductory paragraph. At the end, we make our thesis statement. Put the thesis statement in the beginning. Remember: if a person has to dig to find the information they were looking for on your website, a search engine crawler will not even bother.
The SEO community consensus is that a keyword should appear once within every 200 words of text. This leads to the next point of avoiding keyword stuffing. The Google algorithm will not be fooled by copy that loads up on keywords. In fact, it will do the exact opposite of what is intended. The website will rank lower because of keyword stuffing.
The rest of the copy should address a customer’s pain points. Become the expert on the subject matter and answer all of the questions that a customer may search for. It’s also important to speak to the audience at their level and impress them with the information, not confuse them with industry jargon.
Usually, it’s a good idea to come up with a headline after you write your content depending on what the page is, website navigation title or blog. Make sure the headline is dynamic, informative and INCLUDES THE KEYWORDS.
INCLUDE VISUALS
Photographs/imagery are one of the most important factors in making your web page dynamic and engaging. Since Google images account for 21% of searches, it is vital to include image descriptions. Entering captions on images within the pages and descriptors of feature images will increase SEO of your web page and optimize the image for Google image searches.
SUMMARIZE THE WEB PAGE
The meta description is 160 characters that describe what the web page is. The description presents the user with a snapshot of how that website addresses customers’ pain point, so it is important to craft the perfect copy. The copy will determine whether or not someone will click on the link. It should contain your keyword. This also encourages Google to determine worthiness of the page’s rank on the site.
The snippet is the complete, short summary of a website page that appears on the Google search results. This includes your headline and meta description.
Always shoot for the featured snippet. It’s the one at the top spot on a search engine that in just 160 to 230 characters addresses a search. This copy should also be included on your page in some way, shape or form, and as always includes your keyword.
KEEP CREATING CONTENT
A website that is regularly updated translates well to search engines. A blog is a great way to regularly update and keep websites relevant and timely. Each factor that we described above must be taken into consideration when writing a blog. Keyword, headline and SEO copywriting should all be factors in writing the perfect blog.
Blogs grant the ability to keep up with trending topics, provide new content and expand on web-page topics without inundating users with copy on them. It also is a great way to develop cross-links and possibly get featured on other websites in your industry.
TRACK YOUR RESULTS
Why would you put effort into something and not track your progress? Monitor results! There are several reporting tools you can use that will not only show you how well your website is performing it can also guide you on what terms people are using to find your website. That can give you a blog topic or two.
Also, be patient. SEO does not happen overnight. Monitoring results and creating space for improvements and revisions are necessary to increase ranking.
SEO is how users click on your website and end up buying your product or service. Optimal copywriting and optimization initiatives are the driving force behind ROI on websites. Contact us if you need help with getting your website ranked higher.
