9 min read
What is SEO Copywriting and Should You Consider It?
SEO Copywriting enables businesses to create optimized persuasive content for the search engine. When you do it correctly, you’ll rise in the search engine rankings, and you’ll convert more of those visitors. It is very difficult to do correctly, but it is worth it when you finally achieve a perfectly written webpage. As a website owner, this is a must-have skill to secure your place in your market.
FACTS: 70% of marketers are actively investing in content marketing. In fact, 78% of companies have a team of one-to-three content specialists. (hubspot)
What Is Copywriting?
Before we get into SEO Copywriting, we need to know what copywriting is. Copywriting forms the backbone of most advertising. It is the words and media that are used to persuade the reader to take action. For example, those billboards you see in Times Square are an example of copywriting. There is a lot of research that goes into writing those simple words that can be embedded in the psyche of the person looking at the billboard. There are many forms of copywriting, but the most potent and useful is the long-form sales letter. The long-form sales letter is the most useful on the Internet, but it is only used for a select few product launches. For regular website owners, SEO copywriting makes a lot more sense.
Compare SEO Copywriting to Traditional Copywriting
Traditional copywriting is done most common in newspapers and magazines. This is the full-page advertising you see in newspapers like the New York Times. When a business is looking to sell a specific product, they hire a copywriter to create a compelling message to persuade people to take action. Traditional copywriting is 100% about creating a compelling sales page to persuade the reader. The main difference between this and SEO copywriting is the search engine optimization that you need to do on your content. SEO writing is a completely different field that focuses purely on writing for search engines. SEO copywriting combines both things into one field. As a writer, you have to create a persuasive message that is also optimized for search engines.
SEO Copywriting Examples
What is SEO writing? The people who ask that question usually want to see examples of it afterward. You can easily find examples of what SEO copywriting is by searching for your favorite digital products. The ones that come up on Google and other search engines are optimized for rankings. You can see the keywords they are optimized for, or you can alternatively use a research tool that most SEO practitioners use. For example, a tool like AHREFS can show you the content and website ranking for a particular term. You can see that it is SEO copywriting if it sounds like a sales letter that has keywords added in for search engine optimization. That is all it is; you will see hundreds or even thousands of examples across the Internet. You also see it on a lot of blogs that try to promote products as affiliates. It is one of the easiest ways to earn a living without carrying a product of your own. Here is an example of AHREFS tool:
(Image Credit: Ahrefs)
The Process of SEO Copywriting
Once people learn what SEO copywriting is, they often wonder how you can do it. Many people even try to find SEO copywriting tips all over the Internet. You can find SEO copywriting training quite easily, but it is important for you to know where you are looking. The process of SEO copywriting is actually quite simple. The most complicated thing is to understand that you are combining two different fields into one. Both SEO and copywriting have distinctive steps you need to take before you can be successful in your project. You have to combine both of these things together to get the best results possible when doing SEO copywriting. However, once you can follow simple instructions, you will be very successful in this endeavor.
Starting with Your End Goal
Every plan and project needs an end goal. The nature of this type of writing means that you are trying to achieve two goals concurrently. You have to mix the strategies together to achieve these two goals effectively. The first goal of SEO is ranking your website for the keywords you are currently targeting. The goal of copywriting is getting the reader to take the action you want. This means you have to create a goal that allows you to write copy persuasively while optimizing your content for the best SEO rankings.
Researching to Create a Plan
Research is a critical component in figuring out how you will get to your end goal. The research involves finding information about the people you are targeting and the keywords you want to rank for. This involves looking at your business to see what you are offering to the reader. Every business must have a defined purpose, which will be able to attract people to take some action. For example, the goal of a content website is to get the reader to click on advertisements. A website around this topic would involve optimizing every page for the best click-through rate possible. If you were offering an SEO copywriting PDF, you would write about the benefits and features of it to the person reading.
Understanding Your Audience
Another thing you should do as a website owner is to understand your potential audience. It means researching them to the point that you know what motivates them to take action. You should know their hopes, dreams, and even their greatest fears. You should be able to get into the mind of your potential reader to understand the emotional triggers you can use to get them to take certain actions. Once you have understood your audience, you will be able to create a webpage that drives them to take the action you want. After you have understood your audience, you can start the search engine part of the process. Every copywriting campaign starts with audience research, but since you are doing search engine optimization as well, you need to do the first step corresponding to that field.
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Researching and Optimizing Keywords
Every search engine optimization campaign involves researching the keywords you want to target. It is not enough to find a list of keywords, but you should narrow them down and prioritize those that make the most sense. A significant portion of website owners simply look at the number of keyword searches before deciding to target it. However, many keywords might have thousands of searches, but they don’t make any sense for your website. If you are trying to sell something, you should only focus on optimizing for buying keywords. These are keywords where it is clear that the person searching intends to buy something. Once you have found and built your keyword list, you can start with the next phase of your project. There are many keyword tools out there to help you with your research. We already discussed AHREFS keyword tool, here is another example of a keyword tool by WordStream you can use for SEO copywriting:
(Image Credit: WordStream)
Writing the Copy for Your Page
This step involves using copywriting principles to achieve your goals. You can learn these principles from an SEO copywriting course, or you can find one of the many free SEO copywriting PDF documents circling around on the Internet. The most important thing you need to remember is that you are writing to persuade people to do something. That means the most important part of your document will be the headline. You will have to combine search engine optimization principles along with copywriting principles. Your headline needs to be short and persuasive, yet somehow you need to also include the main keyword you are targeting. It takes a very skilled search engine expert and copywriter to pull something like this off. Throughout your copy, you need to also sprinkle in the other keywords into your document. Finally, you have to wrap things up and create a call to action that is both persuasive and well-written for the search engines. For example:
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SEO Copywriting Tips
There are a few tips for people who know so little that they have to ask, “what is SEO writing?” The first tip is that the most important part of your document is the headline. There have been times when a copywriter has doubled conversions by just changing the headline. The majority of people on the Internet don’t actually read everything you write. They scan to the document, and you need to have well-written headlines to draw them in.
You need to know how to do technical SEO, which is an underutilized strategy for achieving success in the industry. Technical SEO doesn’t require anything extra on your part, and it will help you rank your document a lot faster. It will also improve the user experience, which will have a great effect on whether someone likes your copywriting or not.
Should You Try an SEO Copywriting Course?
If you need to ask, “what is copywriting?” A course might be the right choice for you. There are many professionally made SEO copywriting courses. They might even be required if you are looking to get a job as an SEO copywriter. Depending on where you live, a starting SEO copywriter salary can be enough for you to live. It will depend on your skills and the area you live in. However, this is an essential industry that will continue to grow in the next few years. More businesses are moving online, and it is more important than ever for them to be able to compete for search engine terms. As the industry moves in that direction, training and support will get even more important. You might be required to take a course in the future, so it makes a lot of sense for you to take those courses now and learn the fundamentals.
Places to Get Free SEO Copywriting Training
No matter how much training you do, the best place for you to learn is on forums and other communities. For example, many Facebook communities will help you improve your SEO copywriting skills. However, no matter how much you train, you will have to start practicing a lot to improve. The biggest difference between those at the top of the industry, and those that aren’t, is that the people at the top spend their entire waking moment testing and practicing. You have to be willing to put in that work along with the free training to get results. There are many SEO copywriting examples for you to look at and learn from. Here are just a few example of Facebook groups dedicated to SEO copywriting:
Information About the SEO Copywriting Industry
There is a huge demand for great copywriters in the industry. The majority of businesses are upset because they are stuck with writers who don’t do a great job. The average SEO copywriter salary isn’t that high because there are so many pretenders in the industry. Almost anyone can say that they are an SEO copywriter, so you have to be careful. As a business owner, it might be difficult for you to hire someone to do a great job for you. It will all depend on how much you are willing to pay; there are many people out there who can do a good job, but they will charge sky-high rates. You can usually tell the real experts from the pretenders by how many clients they have and how much those clients are willing to pay for their services.
Things to Consider with SEO Copywriting
If you are looking to do the writing yourself for your website, there are certain things you need to consider before you get started. There are certain principles of copywriting that will become essential to you doing a good job. Optimizing things for search engines is a lot easier than actually doing the copywriting. Copywriting might seem simple at first, but it takes a lot of studying and nuanced analysis for you to be successful. The biggest thing is going into the deep psychological motivators that human beings have. You also need to recognize the importance of good storytelling that all great copy has.
Telling a Great Story
The most important thing about copywriting is your storytelling ability. One of the most peculiar things about human beings is that we are drawn to stories. A lot of our most powerful lessons from childhood are learned through storytelling. The same storytelling is vital to the way we persuade others to act. We can embed those same lessons in what we write on the page. Being able to tell a thrilling and exciting story is what separates the best copywriters from the worst. You need to have exceptional storytelling ability, but you also need to be able to teach while you are telling that story.
FACT: Text will always be the foundation of search so making sure the text around your website’s assets is descriptive will help them rank well in search. (HubSpot)
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Understand Human Psychology
You need to understand some of the most important psychological drivers of human beings. For example, you need to know that people are more motivated to find solutions to problems than they are to avoid problems in the first place. For example, someone whose house is burning down will most likely think about the product that was offered during that time. They will be more likely to buy that product after their house has burned down. It is important you understand psychological principles so that you can persuade people effectively. There are many psychology books for you to read to truly get inside the mind of the people you are trying to sell to. It is going to be one of the most critical factors for your success.
Optimize the Offer
It is not just about your selling and persuasion abilities, but you also need something worth offering to people. Whatever you are writing about on your webpage, it needs to be something that many people want. If you don’t have that, you will need to figure out how to change your offer around, so people will want to buy it. This is what many beginner SEO copywriters don’t understand.
Improve Your Skills
As an SEO copywriter, you need to spend a lot of your time and effort on improving your skills. That means networking with people and getting new ideas from them. This will help you stay sharp, and it will also introduce you to new markets and how others are performing in them. You can also spend a lot of time reading psychology books about human nature. Finally, you can improve your skill by talking to people in real life and seeing what drives them to take certain actions.
Finding Communities Online
If you want longevity, you will need to build a reputation. That means finding like-minded communities to help you learn and grow your copywriting and SEO skills. These two fields are guaranteed to grow in the future, so it is something you can learn and teach to others. You can even offer your own services along with whatever you are doing with your website. One way you can find other SEO copywriting communities is to search that exact phrase, for example:
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FAQ’s
A SEO copywriter writes content using search engine optimization techniques that helps a website”s ranking on the search engine results page. A SEO copywriter must consider keyword density, the tone of voice, readability and other crucial details that can boost a website’s ranking.
Many copywriters will put that they know SEO on their resume but many do not. It is up to you to make sure they have the knowledge and techniques needed to effectively boost your website rank while hiring them.
When discussing SEO, keywords are the words or questions that an internet user will type into a search engine. This is also known as a “search query”. Keywords are also the main ideas that are discussed in your content.
Demand for web and SEO copywriters has never been higher. Many websites are in need of a copywriter to help create their landing pages, blogs, newsletters, e-mails and much more. If you have experience in search engine optimization now is the time to act.
If you know how to write clear and persuasive content, copywriting isn’t any harder than other careers. However, very few people will be able to succeed if they cannot write content.
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