SEO Copywriting
Creating content for your website? You’ll want to tell a compelling story that proudly represents your brand and persuades visitors to consider doing business with you.
But first, you’ll need to get prospects to your website. That’s where SEO copywriting comes in. SEO stands for search engine optimization, which is the process of getting traffic from the free search results on search engines.
The best copy serves a dual purpose. It meets the needs of your prospective customers and appeals to search engines.
Pulling Rank
Search engines like Google and Bing use complicated algorithms to determine how to rank pages in their indexes. Unfortunately, they don’t publish those algorithms, as they’re part of their “secret sauce.”
We can, however, get some inkling of what works by considering the mission of search engines, which is to display search results for websites that best match a searcher’s query. Identifying terms people are using to find businesses like yours at Google and Bing enables us to write copy that will please your potential customers and the search engines.
High Quality, Focused Content
At the heart of SEO copywriting is quality information. If you provide professionally-written, well-organized, focused copy on each page of your website, the search engines will take notice. They especially like content that is insightful, informative and in depth.
Consider this example. You type a search request into Google seeking a recipe for apple pie made with Granny Smith apples. While Google could show you thousands of website pages with apple pie recipes, the ones that are most likely to rank high in the organic search results are those that feature apple pie recipes made with Granny Smith apples, just what you’re looking for!
Some of those pages might even include additional relevant information such as ways to modify the recipe, nutrition facts, or the history of Granny Smith apple pies.
Keywords Are the Key
For Google and other search engines to know what your page is about, you need to include keywords in your copy. Keywords are essentially the topic of your page.
Using the prior example, if you want your page to be ranked for apple pie recipes using Granny Smith apples, then you need to use those exact words in your copy. The more specific your keywords, the more likely they are to help your ranking and drive traffic to your site. A narrow focus often nets the best results.
Avoid the temptation to keyword stuff, which is over-using the keywords for the purpose of manipulating search engine ranking. You don’t want to game the system. While fooling the search engines may provide short-term gain, you risk long-term penalties once they catch on. And they will.
The use of the keywords must appear natural in your copy. Otherwise, you’ll not only potentially hurt your site’s standing on search engines, you could also alienate your visitors. If they find the writing on your site to be of poor quality, they’re unlikely to be persuaded or inspired to do business with you.
Meta Tags Help Google to Index Your Page
Because every page of your website is unique, so should be its meta-data. Meta elements are included in the programming of the page and help search engines determine the subject of the page. They’re also displayed in the search engine results so you’ll want to make them compelling not only to search engines but also to searchers so they choose to click through to your site.
Your meta data includes a title tag that could be considered your page’s headline; and a description tag that offers a brief, accurate snippet of the page’s content. Include a few keywords in your meta tags that are most relevant to the topic of that page.
Write for Humans, Optimize for Search Engines
Don’t make the mistake of prioritizing search engines over people. Your website copy shouldn’t sound like it was written for a robot. It should flow naturally and be interesting and informative.
When properly done, optimizing your meta tags and content for search engines does not sound forced. Write for your audience without forgetting the search engines. That’s what it’s all about!
Need Professional SEO Copywriting?
The right content can help your website gain visibility on search engines. Visibility drives traffic. More traffic means more potential leads and sales. If that sounds appealing to you, we should talk.
Charlottesville SEO Web Development has professional SEO copywriters ready to help you create web pages that get results. Contact us today for website copy that appeals to customers and search engines.
