Good SEO copy is crucial for ranking a website well in search engines. The SEO battle covers a broad front, but SEO-friendly copy is right on the front lines. Some say that SEO writing is more art than science, but you’ll be happy to know that you can significantly improve your SEO copy by following a specific process.
Let’s start with the most fundamental factor. Why do marketing gurus treat SEO copy with such reverence? When we understand the “Why,” the “How” becomes far easier. Soon, you’ll write a copy that fascinates your audience and consistently ranks well.
What Is Seo-Friendly Copy, and Why Is It Important?
Search engines like Google use crawler bots to scour and index the internet. They aim to understand what we write on our websites so they can classify and index the content. They use complex algorithms to grade the most relevant answers to Googler’s queries by zeroing in on relevant content.
SEO is all about understanding what the Google bots are seeking. The art of SEO copywriting is to help Google to:
- Understand what question you’re aiming to answer
- Providing an answer or solution to the question
The Underlying Principle of Good SEO Copy
You need to write your content to help, not hinder, those crawler bots. The easier you make it for Google, the faster you’ll be on your way to winning the organic search results jackpot.
First, you have to find the correct keywords for your target audience. The next step is to write SEO-friendly copy around those specific target keywords.
There are many keyword tools available to help you get a keyword list. Google, Yahoo, and Bing all offer keyword research tools. There are also several premium and AI-assisted keyword research tools on the market, such as Moz, Ahrefs, or Backlinko. Most even provide limited free assistance. All of them will help you achieve these goals:
- Find out what questions your audience is asking. Make a list of the search terms your proposed audience uses. You could use an SEO tool that allows you to view location-specific keywords. Nevertheless, you’ll get more accurate results if you use a VPN to fool your browser into thinking you’ve changed your location. A VPN allows you to Google like a local, so the answers will be far more relevant than using your actual location. The VPN meaning is a virtual private network that defines what it does. A VPN creates a tunnel that isolates and masks your identity while you do competitor research. As a bonus, it adds a layer of security against malicious actors you may encounter during your research.
- Formulate the problem or question you want to address using your keyword research.
- Answer your audience’s questions and offer a solution or fix.
Three Steps to an SEO-Optimized Website
While great SEO is never just a simple box-ticking exercise, there is an underlying “recipe” that you can use to gradually push your website to the top of the SERP (search engine results page). Tackle it systematically. You’ll soon get in the groove.
Step 1: Write for Your Target Audience
Identify your ideal reader by asking: who are you writing for? What are their interests? What are their pain points? What are they searching for online? Creating the content they like to see becomes easier if you know them. For example, you can alternate content between graphs to illustrate cost differences, photos to showcase options, or articles to give in-depth information.
Step 2: Create Evergreen Content
The better the content, the longer people stay. When you start, writing slightly more generic articles about your subject makes sense. These can become your “evergreen content,” which stays relevant for years after publication and forms the backbone of your website’s copy.
Step 3: Start Zooming in on Details
After publishing the basic content, you should start on more in-depth articles. Move from generic “How to decorate your home” content to articles like “How to choose a paint color for every room” and “Five must-have items for your bedroom” or even “Carpets or tiles: how to choose your flooring.” For example, you can discuss the benefits (or cons) of each floor type and the effect each might have on your readers’ lifestyle.
Ten Tips to Improve the Impact of Your SEO Copy
It’s easy to underestimate the amount of work and fall behind schedule. Create a detailed content calendar to help you stick to your keyword strategy. List the focus keywords for each campaign, week, or month, and make sure you get the supporting photos and other media in time.
- Strategic keyword placement: Place keywords in the title, introduction, subheading, and conclusion. Also, mention the keyword periodically throughout the text, but don’t overdo it. Keyword stuffing might have a negative impact on your ranking.
- Leverage long-tail keywords: Long-tail keywords contain at least three keywords and ask more specific questions than generic “short-tail” keywords. It’s far easier to rank for long-tail keywords, and they will bring dedicated users to your website. You might even earn a snippet from Google.
- Spend extra time on your titles and headings: Headings are meant to grab the reader’s attention. However, they must include your keywords so that search engines immediately understand the article’s topic. Write a few versions until you can balance sensationalism and fact. No matter how funny or newsworthy, pushing the article to the top of the SERPs will be hard if Google can’t instantly understand what you’re writing about.
- Google loves numbers: Don’t fade out with titles like “Tile floor safety.” Use numbers with your keyword, for example, “8 Safety Facts About Tile Floors.”
- Emphasize answers with additional formatting: Google loves lists. Bullet points and numbered lists reach the point faster than long, winding paragraphs. Where you provide information in paragraph form, make it short and sweet.
- Google loves descriptive headings and subheadings: Use H1 for title and H2 and H3 tags to help Google identify key points. Apart from headings, you can also use bold or italic formatting to indicate critical concepts. Another option is to highlight a quotation from your copy.
- Keep an eye on content length: In-depth guides and evergreen content tend to be longer. Aim for 1500 to 2000 words. Articles highlighting specific aspects of a topic should never be shorter than 700 words. Generally, aim for 800-1200 words.
- Use SEO optimization tools: For content optimization, try SEO tools like Yoast, RankMath, Jasper, or Surfer SEO. Each has its own SEO guidelines and scoring system, but they will generally help improve your content’s readability, keyword placement, and density.
- Offer additional content: Consider writing a downloadable calendar for home decorating and maintenance tasks or short guides to complement your articles. Remember to collect email addresses for your newsletter.
- Don’t Force It: It’s essential to position keywords naturally throughout your content and headings. Long-tail keywords can be particularly awkward when forced into headings. It’s better to move such wayward keywords to the first sentence of an early paragraph.
Use Your Common Sense
Finally, we should reflect on the use and usefulness of specialized AI SEO tools. Some tools are particularly insistent when it comes to keyword counts. Some can’t judge the value of your article. They merely count how many keywords you’ve squashed in. They could withhold a “Good SEO Score” until you use the tool’s optimum keyword density, which could be between 10 and up to 20 times in each article.
Don’t slavishly follow the dictates of AI SEO tools. The Google algorithm changes constantly, so SEO is a dynamic process. Print your article, read it carefully, and remove anything that sounds forced or excessive. Google’s algorithm will soon catch on, update, and relegate articles with excessive AI-forced keyword instances to a lower SERP rank.