A beginner’s guide to SEO copywriting and how to optimise your content

If your potential customers can’t find you, you don’t exist. That’s why it’s important to optimise every piece of content you create for your blog or website. This way, you’ll increase the chances of being found by that customer who’s looking for what you’re offering.

And it doesn’t matter if you’ve never done this. It’s easier than you think. With these simple and actionable tips that I’m sharing with you today, you’ll already be covering more than the basics to rank higher in Google’s search results.

But first, let’s understand how SEO copywriting can help your business.

Why is SEO copywriting important?

Increases your visibility

When you optimise your content for search engines, you make it easier for potential customers to find you online.

When they look something up, Google will know that your content will be able to provide the right answer, so it will put it in front of your audience. And the more optimised it is, the higher it will rank in the search results. This is optimisation is critical when there are thousands of articles and pages about the same topic as yours.

Increases your website traffic

When visitors land on your site looking for a particular piece of content, they will get to know your brand and what you offer. This can also help them discover more content in your website, and it will send a positive message to Google: “hey, this website has lots of traffic, must be good, let’s make it even more visible!”

Offers a better user experience that translates into more business

Good SEO copywriting also means creating engaging and high-quality content that says “hey, I’m going to give you exactly what you’re looking for”. When your audience finds your content and find it valuable, they will have a better user experience, and this can make it more likely that they’ll make business with you.

How to optimise your content for SEO

Now that you understand what SEO copywriting can do for your business, let’s dive into some tips that will help you write effective, optimised content:

Find your keywords

If you want people to find your content, first you must know what your audience is looking for. So, before you start writing, make a keyword and phrase research.

You can use Google Keyword Planner (free) or SEMrush (free and paid) are some of the tools that can help you identify the best keywords to target in your content.

For example, if you’re a leadership coach, your keywords could be: leadership, time management, performance, management, productivity, etc.

Those keywords will give you content ideas.

Use keywords strategically

Once you have identified your target keywords, use them strategically throughout your content. Place them in your headline, subheadings, meta descriptions, and body copy; but avoid overusing them or stuffing them unnaturally into your content.

Each piece of content or page you create should target one main keyword. This doesn’t mean you can’t other secondary keywords.

This is important: make sure you don’t use the same main keyword for different pieces of content. Otherwise, they will be competing among themselves and you don’t want that!

Create high-quality content

Your audience is looking for answers to their problems and needs in Google. So, make sure you create high-quality content that answers to their questions.

Make some research about the main questions people have around your topic, and create content accordingly.

And don’t be afraid to write longer content, Google loves articles with over 1000 words.

Optimise your headlines

Your headlines are the first thing readers see when they come across your content. That’s why they should be clear, attention-grabbing, and optimised for your target keywords.

Use powerful and emotive language that evokes strong feelings in the reader. Or use numbers, statistics or interesting facts to pique the reader’s interest. And, specially, make sure your headline taps into the reader’s interests and concerns by offering a solution.

Try introducing verbs

For example, which of the following headlines would you click on?

“Apple pie recipe”

or

“How to make a delicious apple pie in 30 minutes (recipe).”

“Tips for SEO copywriting”

or

“A beginner’s guide to SEO copywriting and how to optimise your content to gain visibility”

Use meta descriptions

Meta descriptions are the short snippets of text that appear below your headline in search engine results pages. Use them to entice readers to click through to your content by including your target keywords, making them curious about your content or including a compelling call to action.

Use internal linking

When you link to other pages on your website from within your content, you’re helping search engines understand the structure of your website, and this can improve the overall ranking of your site.

The best way to do this is adding a “Related posts” section in your blog (there are plenty of plugins that can help you with this), or linking keywords or phrases in your copy to other content in your site or blog.

For example, if I have a gardening blog and I write an article about how to take care of lucky bamboo, I can link it to other articles or page on my website.

Optimise your images

Images are almost as important as words, because they also contain information. Use descriptive filenames for each image, and always add ALT text that includes your target keywords.

Following the same example, if I want to upload a photo of lucky bamboo, I’ll name the file luckybamboo.jpg and then the ALT text will be Lucky Bamboo.

Pro tip: make sure they’re not very heavy, or Google will penalise you for slowing down the loading time of your page. Use tools like CompressJPEG.com to reduce the size of the files without compromising their quality.

Social media is your best friend

Social media is a great tool for promoting your content and driving traffic to your website. Share your content on social media platforms like Facebook, Twitter, and LinkedIn to let people know about it and increase visibility and reach.

Create short URLs with the target keyword

When you write the title of your content, most content managers will automatically turn that title into the URL.

For example: themarketingrobin.com/a-beginners-guide-to-seo-copywriting-and-how-to-optimise-your-content-for-search-engines

This URL is too long. So, if the target keyword is “SEO copywriting”, I can shorten it to themarketingrobin.com/seo-copywriting-guide.

Install YOAST SEO in your website to become a SEO copywriting master

And lastly, you install this free WordPress plugin and simply follow the instructions to optimise each piece of content super easily.