SEO copywriting should be a part of your content marketing strategy. But what exactly does that mean?
Let’s take the answer to this in two parts. What is SEO? What is copywriting?
SEO
The acronym stands for search engine optimization. SEO refers to the marketing practice of infusing a website, its text copy, and its metatags with accurate and relevant keywords that attract search engines to the page to index it. These search engines use algorithms to rank websites based on their keywords and the information provided.
The search engines can tell if a website provides inaccurate keywords or attempts to trick it into ranking highly a website with low-quality information. These search engines rank sites higher that provide mapping information and street address information that matches their Google My Business page. Called local SEO, optimizing for your local area and using the location in conjunction with your SEO keywords provides a better rank on the search engine results page (SERP).
Copywriting
Copywriting refers to the advertising and marketing practice of writing text to sell a product or service to individuals within a target audience. The term “ad copy” refers to advertising copywriting, while the term “web copy” refers to webpage copywriting.
People best respond to accurate, factual information that entertains them while educating them and solves a problem that they have. The copy in an ad explains succinctly why the individual should purchase the product or service described.
SEO Copywriting
SEO copywriting merges the best of both types of writing by targeting search engines and humans. The strategy behind SEO copywriting is to rank highly on the SERP page and get in front of the individuals within your target audience. Your audience won’t see your content if you do not rank highly, so your content must be relevant and accurate and provide good quality information that helps the user solve a problem.
Copywriting for SEO includes relevant keywords within pithy, educational text copy that solves a reader problem. Its keywords cater to the machines – the computer program reading the web copy, called a web crawler or spider. Its writing style also caters to machines. SEO copywriting divides the information up into short paragraphs of four lines or less.
Your website needs SEO copywriting for its text, titles, metadata, cutlines, alt text, plus your GMB and GM pages. This specialty area of writing in web development provides the text for your web pages that appeals to both the search engine spiders or robots and people. While the search engine indexes and ranks your website, humans ultimately read it, so long as it loads well and provides easy navigation.
Using SEO copywriting on your website ensures that it will rank well on the SERP and that it provides engaging, actionable information to the reader. Without using keywords on your website, you have no method of getting indexed and ranking highly in modern search engines.
Choosing Keywords
Many ways exist to find the keywords you need. Try reading your competition’s websites. What words or phrases repeat throughout these pages? When you spot a repeated phrase, like “SEO copywriting,” “web copy,” or “ad copy,” you spotted a keyword. Since your competition uses these phrases, you should, too. You aren’t copycatting; you’re trying to beat out your competitor. It’s important to also keep an eye out for long-tail keywords you can rank for.
You can also use Google AdWords to suss out keywords your competition does not use. This lets you nab some phrases that they haven’t already topped the ranks using. These phrases still need relevancy in your field, but if you can find one that they have yet to use, you can help raise your results in the SERP.
Local SEO and Why It Matters
A local address also counts as a keyword. It hasn’t always been this way, but Google began prioritizing local because they realized users would search for a business while shopping or look up product information in-store. That let Google know that it needed to offer local results first, so it started giving the top spot search to the business with the most relevant information, the best on-page SEO, and complete address information that exactly matched their Google Maps and Google My Business page address information.
Using local SEO makes sense because you provide blogs on your website that help website visitors know when they need to phone someone just like you. Your blogs help you rank better overall, meaning you do get visitors to your website from all over the world. Your address information though, coupled with your GMB and GM information puts you at the top of the SERP when some individual in DeLand searches for something like “plumber near me” in Google. Your plumbing business tops the charts because you ranked highest locally. Local matters. It matters especially when you run a service-based business that requires an in-person visit.
Contact Us
Contact our Bake More Pies team for help with SEO Copywriting services today!
