3 Tips for Effective SEO Copywriting

Website content has two kinds of audiences: people and search engines. The text must be readable to website visitors. It should also target specific search terms so that sites like Google and Bing will rank it highly. Internet copywriters should know that good writing comes first (and that they need a solid grounding in commercial writing) but they should also know that SEO knowledge comes a close second. They should be aware of keywords and how to use them.

It would be wrong to produce lyrical but irrelevant articles, the same way it would be a mistake to produce optimized pieces that don’t say much. All things considered, people and search engines want the same thing: quality content. They want copy that signals its usefulness and flows naturally.

1.  Do keyword research
Every writer should use keywords. You can’t communicate with people without using their language, and what is language if not vocabulary? What are keywords if not vocabulary? You can’t talk about a subject without some common ground. That means using the same words and phrases. In a way, every writer already does keyword research—SEO only makes it more systematic.

Once you have your list of keywords, it’s time to choose. Is a particular keyword overused to the point that it sets off spam filters? Is there a lot of duplicate content out there? Unless you’re ready to come up with some truly exceptional stuff, it might be better to focus on words or phrases with a more local appeal.

2.  Put keywords in prominent places
Putting keywords in their place is a big part of SEO. They need to be in certain spots to allow search engines to analyse your pages. Readers should also be able to tell which the important terms are. Keywords should appear in the first paragraph and each page should be structured so it’s clear how everything connects. To know if you’re doing it properly, use the keyword search tool to identify keywords that perform well. Keyword rank, which measures how optimized a keyword is within a page, is another good indicator.

Keyword optimization is basically using keywords or phrases so that search engines can tell that the web page is relevant to the subject. The trick is placing them so they don’t look like they were tossed in at the last minute. Thanks to latent semantic indexing, search engines are more than smart enough to detect that. Repeating the same words mindlessly no longer helps your ranking. In fact, keyword stuffing will harm it. Don’t spout catchwords. Create content that engages and communicates.

3.  Have relevant content
The main goal of SEO copywriting is to continue to provide content that people want to see and share. That means it doesn’t just have to be good, it also has to be what they’re looking for. Powerful keywords can’t transform poor copy. Even the most carefully-chosen keywords aren’t going to help if the rest of the article has nothing to do with them. Relevant content relates both to what your company offers and what your clients like.

Keywords should appear in the body text as naturally as possible. If the words you’re using have popular synonyms they ought to be used to make the article flow better. Key phrases can still be effective even if the words are used separately and in a different order. Search engines will look for any page that contains the words that make up a phrase, whether or not the words are arranged the same.