So, you've launched a website. You've put a fair deal of work into the many SEO strategies
required to get traffic coming your way. Your meta tags, meta descriptions, and title tags are
excellent. The overall look and feel of your website are great. It’s user friendly, has all the right
things a good website should have. Well, that is, except for good quality copywriting. Believe it
or not, the way the words are written and how they flow off of each of your web pages will have
an impact on your website’s success.
How To Write SEO Copy
There is a fair deal of science involved in SEO copywriting. But don’t worry if science was not
your best subject as we will break it down for you into small, easy-to-understand pieces. Let’s
focus on…
Keywords.
Keywords are like gold to a website. That is if you use ‘em right. The science part of the SEO
equation comes from keywords. Here is a look at some of the many ways you can use them to
tweak your SEO.
Tip #1 – Page Titles
The page title is of the web page that Google sees first and your website visitors are going to
discover first. It tells both the AI and humans what the web page is all about. So, here are a
couple of examples for you to consider.
If your website is about growing vegetables, your page title on your home page should be
something like: “Vegetables – How To Grow Them At Home.”
Don’t Use a page title like this:
“Welcome To Growing Vegetables At Home.”
We say this simply because the word “welcome” is not going to help your home page stand out because it is
likely a keyword used in far too many home page titles.
Tip #2 – The First Sentence
You know how when you meet someone face-to-face for the first time that you introduce
yourself by telling that person your name and maybe what you do for a living? Search engines
understand that kind of language. Only, it has to be with your primary keywords used early in the
first sentence on your target page. Then, to make sure Google got it, repeat those primary
keywords a few more times on that page.
So, as an example, the first sentence in the target page of our fictitious Growing Vegetables
website would be something like this:
“Growing vegetables takes a great deal of dedication, time and effort.” Elsewhere on the same
page, we’d say something that would allow the words “growing vegetables” to fit in organically
(ha-ha, gardening joke there for you).
What you don’t want your first sentence to be is like this:
“Welcome to our website about gardening. We’ll show you ways to grow vegetables here.”
Tip #3 – Use Common Alternatives
Here’s a fun tip that’ll get you some additional search engine mileage. When researching your
keywords, be sure to keep a list of what we like to call “common alternatives” to your primary
keywords. For example, if our primary keywords are “growing vegetables” and some of the
common alternatives were “vegetable gardening,” “grow veggies at home,” “growing veggies”
and so on, you can help your individual web pages and complete website by slipping in some of
these alternatives into your web page content.
Tip #4 – Get Geographic
If you are a small business, never underestimate the power of geography attached to your
primary keywords. You could even create geo-targeted splash pages that would “personalize” the
visit for users who found your website in this manner. But how do you use it? Here’s what we
would do if our business was located in Miami , Florida .
We would use phrases like:
“Growing vegetables in Miami ,Florida”
“Miami , Florida gardening supply store” and things like that. To hit another nearby target, you take out the
Miami , Florida part and substitute with “Tampa , Florida” or whatever geographic target
you are seeking traffic from specifically.
Tip #5 – Internal Links
This is almost an “old school” SEO tactic but it still works which means you should be doing the
same within your website. What you are trying to create is a spiderweb of information that
causes a user to move deeper and deeper into your website. It’s a good thing provided that the
internal links you use are for items that are relevant to the content on the page the link is posted
to. Your goal is to send a visitor to your website to more info but within your website.
Tip #6 – Write For Humans
Considering that the content you are putting on your web pages is aimed at human readers, it
should read like something of interest or informative. If your copywriting for SEO ends up using
random words in strings of sentences so that you can get your keywords in, we get it. The search
engines need to be fed as well. But you don't want something like this:
“Growing vegetables is a lot of fun. In fact, it is easy to grow veggies at home. All you need is a
good understanding of vegetable gardening. That’s because vegetable gardening is the key to
growing vegetables.”
Um, sort of dull, right? At least the keywords got used.
Tip #7 – Don’t Cheat Your Copy
Yes, you need to be able to keep an eye on your competitors online. It’s the same in any kind of
business but with the internet, you have to use your efforts to be better than competitors and you
do this by not cheating. If you have a competitor that publishes incredible content every week,
you may want to attempt the same strategy. Only don’t copy ‘n’ paste what they are posting.
This can result in Google penalties . Ifyou want to outrank them, work on the other parts of your SEO first.
Then when you get around to improving your copywriting, hire someone to do that part for you.
In Conclusion
Keywords are the main part of good copywriting for SEO. Well, that and grammar. To attract
both search engines and human visitors to your website, there has to be copywriting there that
will keep both busy as long as they stay on your site. It is keyword usage that can make a
difference. By following the tips noted above, you can easily get an edge over your competitors.
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