Copywriting Strategies for Search Engine Optimization

The modern SEO is all about crafting content so compelling that other people want to promote it by linking to it or sharing it, which increases your trust and authority and helps the pages you want to rank well for certain keywords.

SEO copywriting has traditionally been about optimizing web pages by targeting keyword phrases in certain frequencies and densities. However, search engine research shows that 85 percent of the total factors that determine how a web page is ranked in a search engine is based on things that happen off the page itself.

While keyword research is still crucial, search engine algorithms have evolved. Google treats the trust and authority of your domain, what others think about your content, and the words they use to describe it in links as an important indication of quality and relevance.

Thanks to blogging and social media platforms, more people than ever are able to cast their vote on what’s relevant by linking to it, bookmarking it, and tweeting it.

Write for Humans - Optimize for Robots

Humans and search engine's robots browse the internet. Both prefer naturally written content rather than obvious SEO types. And for that, there is no point of using SEO if your content doesn't convert. Copywriting must focus on human visitors rather than search engines. Write for humans, but help robots to easily find your contents.

Variation of Words

Google and other search engines use Latent Semantic Indexing (LSI) to match search results to the intentions of the person performing the search. Using synonyms, related keywords and grammatical variations is the easy way to make a content more relevant to search engines without stuffing the actual keyword into the copy.

Write Freely

Before writing anything, see your writing space as your blank canvas and vision your content as an image in your mind. When it's time to update your website/blog with new content, write contents that are engaging, because without engaging contents, optimization won't mean anything. Simply writing about the topic should tell the search engines what the post is about and give you a decent keyword density. After you finish writing, you can always go back and add keywords where they naturally fit within the copy. It's easy to make your content more SEO friendly after your first draft, but it's almost impossible to make it more creative.

Planning Ahead

The internet is loaded with competition. But according to a research, less than 5 percent of organizations have a written content strategy. So by simply creating a strategy and planning your content, you're already ahead of most competitors. When you establish a strategy and plan ahead, you can decide which topics you want to address and let them marinate for a while to give yourself more time to research, and the appropriate time to publish it.

Think as a Salesperson

As a writer, you rarely sell anything in your posts, but you absolutely need to sell the reader on your content. And like sales copy, you only get one chance to make the sale. Think of your headline as an advertisement for your content. Your first sentence is an advertisement for your second sentence. Your first paragraph is an advertisement for the next. All the way down to your call to action. When researching topics, keep your eyes open for a hook you can use to pull readers into your content.

Long Quality Content

Research points that in-depth article that is well written are more likely to be shared than their short counterpart. Aim to write content that dives deep into the subject matter and provide real insight. Quality in-depth content is usually long, but don't write lengthy content just to please search engines - do it because you have the knowledge to share with your audience.

Contents Noticed and Shared

Sharing your contents will provide you more shares, links and traffic. And the more share your content gets, the more relevant and popular it will seem to search engines. Get your content out to be shared via relevant forums, blogs, influencers, newsletters and social media networks. And don't underestimate the power of guest blogging.

Title and Snippets

Your title is what people see first. Your title tag is also the first thing Google and other search engines look when categorizing the individual page. Moreover, the combination of title tag and "snippets", or meta description is what your audience are going to see in search engines' result page (SERP). Include your keywords - but make sure that your title and snippets sound natural and focus on motivating your prospects to click.