To optimize a website in accordance with the requirements of search engines, you must first optimize the texts it contains. There is no other way, since search engine optimization is based on keywords which are placed primarily in the text of the page.
Such work is carried out with the help of SEO-copywriting, which performs three very important tasks:
- Improvement of the relevancy of pages with certain keywords;
- Improvement of text recognition by search engines;
- Attraction of users to the website via organic search.
There are still controversies about SEO copywriting on the web. Some argue that this is exclusively content for search robots, others say that it is exclusively for people. Let’s talk about what SEO copywriting is and what you need to know about it.
What is SEO copywriting?
SEO copywriting is about creating useful and interesting content based on keywords. A few years earlier content was indeed written exclusively for search engines. It was enough to optimize the texts with the maximum number of keywords – and the site easily entered the TOP of search results. But with the advent of new search engine algorithms, the requirements for texts began to change. Now the main goal of SEO copywriting is to target people. That is, the texts should be informative and useful for users. Of course, you can’t forget about keywords either, but you need to use them wisely. It is recommended to use no more than 3% keys in a text. If the text is spammed, then there is a high probability that the site will fall under the filters of search engines and disappear from the search results.
SEO Copywriting VS Copywriting
The main difference between SEO copywriting and copywriting is that in order to write SEO texts not only do you need to write unique content, but also:
- study the subject area;
- familiarize yourself with the list of keywords that the SEO optimizer composes;
- write simple and readable text with necessary keywords;
- use heading tags, since search engines take into account the words used in them when ranking;
The position of keywords on the page, the correct use of synonyms and word forms play an important role in SEO copywriting.
When creating a regular text, you need to simply present the material in a proper way. The text should be readable and interesting. But when writing SEO text, you should also take into account a certain number of keywords, uniqueness and nausea.
Besides improving the website visibility, optimization is also aimed at making the text as useful for the user as possible. To understand what SEO copywriting is, let’s take a closer look at its goals and requirements for SEO texts.
SEO copywriting goals
SEO texts are placed on promoted sites. Accordingly, the goals of SEO copywriting are the following.
- Website promotion in search engines for queries based on specific keywords. Well-chosen keywords, their optimal density in the text, correctly placed tags are the key to success. The grammatical and stylistic components of the text should be also kept in mind.
- Increase in the conversion of website users to real buyers. The effect will be achieved only in the case of complete and detailed reporting of information.
- High-quality communication of information and ease of perception. Users often do not read the information in full, but only slide their eyes over what is written, so the task of the copywriter is to draw the reader’s attention to the most important information. To do this, key phrases and abstracts are highlighted using headings and lists.
To put it simply, content is the point of contact with the audience. If the website contains useless, uninformative, unreadable texts, people will not linger on such websites. And vice versa: if the text on the website works with the objections of the user, answers questions, helps to make a choice in favor of the company, then this will lead to conversion actions. That is, people will trust the website, the company, make a purchase and become customers.
Example of SEO copywriting
It would be appropriate to give a small example of SEO copywriting to make it clearer. That is, if you are writing an article about a certain model line of multicookers aimed at attracting potential buyers of such cooking equipment, then to adapt such a text to the rules of SEO-copywriting, you need to do the following:
- collect the semantic core, i.e. the list of queries for this model;
- mention the necessary keywords in the title, meta tags Title and Description;
- use these queries in page text, headings, image descriptions, etc.
It may seem that this is fairly simple to implement this list of actions. However, it’s not as easy as it may look if done in a proper way. You can’t just take and repeat a keyword 50 times per page and expect the article to rank well in the search the reasons being the following:
- search engines want to show users balanced texts in which SEO-optimization does not interfere with the readability and informativeness of the material;
- excessive use of keywords in the text is perceived as spam and is punishable by imposing sanctions on the website or page;
- the readability of such an article is minimized, and the users are very likely to simply close the tab after the first two paragraphs.
If you want your website to rank well in search engines for the keywords you need, the text should be properly written, the article should be informative and useful to readers, and the phrases from the semantic core should be competently inscribed in it.
Requirements for SEO copywriting
1. Uniqueness
The content posted on your website should be exclusive, since the first thing that search engines pay attention to is the uniqueness of the text. Search engines index and remember pages with unique content. And if it duplicates the content of another website, there is a high probability that your website will fall under the filter. There are many computer programs and online services for determining uniqueness. Copywriting exchanges usually accept only those texts that have a uniqueness of no less than 90%. Users also avoid duplicate content, preferring original and useful information.
How to add uniqueness to the text?
- Validation services highlight phrases that match phrases from other resources. Replace these words with synonyms, dilute word combinations.
- Swap sentences or paragraphs.
- If there are many terms, excerpts from the law or formulas in the article, add this text as images or screenshots. The search engine will not be able to recognize it and the uniqueness will increase.
2. Keywords and phrases (keys)
Keys are the requests of the target audience you are interested in. That is, these are the words that they enter into the search engine and by which they find your website in the search results. The task of a copywriter is to write unique and interesting texts using keywords with the necessary frequency.
The frequency of using keywords and phrases in the text is called nausea. The rate of nausea varies within 3-7% of the total volume of the text. The customer can specify the frequency of repetition and the number of keys in percentage terms or in the form of a specific number.
The specified keys should be evenly distributed, match the content of the text and look natural.
There are 2 types of key entry:
- direct – keys do not change and do not break with other words;
- indirect – you can slightly change the keys, dilute with some punctuation marks and in other words, change the place of the key words, inflect by cases.
If all keys are used in direct convergence, the text will look unnatural. This is done only by inexperienced copywriters. All keys should look organic in the text.
3. Tagging and text styling
The content you create should be clearly structured and logical. A very small percentage of people read the entire article from beginning to end. Therefore, the text must contain headings and subheadings, which will help the users quickly find the answer to their questions. Html markup tags are one of the main indicators of the professionalism of a SEO copywriter. Tags are symbols that are used for hypertext markup of website pages. They turn the text into the website content. A tag is a letter or word between the brackets “<” and “>”. The start tag is located at the beginning of the selected text segment. The closing tag is at the end of the snippet.
If you are writing a long article, the text should contain images related to the topic of your article. This will make it easier for the user to read it till the end. For easier perception, it is necessary to divide the text into paragraphs, make headings and subheadings, bulleted and numbered lists, etc.
Proper optimization of H1 headers as well as the Title and Description meta tags serves as the foundation. The title, which is displayed on the page using the H1 tag, is intended primarily for readers of the article, whereas the content of the Title meta tag is for the search engines being part of the snippet. Since it doesn’t appear directly on the page, you can make it a little more optimized, that is, add additional keywords.
If there are relevant keywords in the title, the page is more likely to be shown to users when searching for a relevant query.
Another tool for improving the visibility of a page in the search is the content of the Description meta tag displayed in its snippet as text under the title.
Another important point is that the content of meta tags should be composed so as not only to contain keywords, but also to attract attention, to make a person want to go to the page.
4. Texts aimed at people.
As mentioned above, the texts should be useful and understandable to the user. Write in the language of your target audience and try to give them as much useful information as possible.
5. Quality content.
Any article should provide answers to all user questions. Before writing, it is very important to analyze what needs your potential customers might have. If a person enters a query into the search box, this means they have questions to which they want to get answers. It’s very important that your content delivers them. The more detailed the answers are, the better.
6. Text volume.
Many experts argue about the volume of the text. Some people think that the larger the article, the better. Their opponents are betting on short texts. In fact, the volume is not important. The main thing is that the article does not contain water and only contains information useful for the audience.
Water is unnecessary information in the text, which the author includes in order to type the required number of characters or when he does not know what to write about. These are introductory constructions and unnecessary words that are meaningless. When the text is full of such words and phrases, it becomes watery. Search engines are able to determine the amount of water content in the text. Therefore, before posting it on the website, check the article for this parameter. If the text contains more than 30% of water content, the search engine will lower it in the search results. To reduce the water content, remove introductory words and phrases, unnecessary repetitions.
The optimal text volume is 2500-5000 characters. But if you have something interesting and useful to add, feel free to do so. Before writing texts, analyse the competitors from the TOP results of search engines for certain queries and look at the volume of their materials.
7. Literacy.
Always check the text for grammatical and punctuation errors. Any misspelled word or missing comma can turn a prospect away from you. Errors in articles can ruin your brand’s attitude and reputation.
Advantages of SEO copywriting
SEO copywriting works for the future and its benefits will be long lasting.
Website promotion in search results
SEO-optimized texts increase your site’s position in search engines. This is not a quick process, but so far this method of promotion remains optimal in terms of cost-benefit ratio. Of course, SEO is not only about copywriting. Well-written content is an important part of it.
Increase in organic traffic
When a site hits the top, you have a steady stream of organic traffic. Due to the fact that the site is shown on the first pages of search results for the necessary queries, users find it more often.
Reduction in the cost of contextual advertising
Competent optimization sometimes eliminates the need to pay for advertising. Let’s imagine that you are selling drones. Most likely, customers will look for you according to the words “buy drones”. We enter the request and see that the first places are taken by well-optimized websites.
Disadvantages of SEO copywriting
Writing SEO texts is harder than writing articles without keywords. If you do it wrong, you can scare away readers with clumsy texts. Most of the disadvantages of SEO texts are related to cases when the copywriter did not cope with the work, and the customer received a low-quality text.
Grungy text
Not only should a SEO copywriter clearly state the idea, but also place keywords and phrases correctly in the text. This is best done while writing. When an author enters keywords into an already prepared text, it is difficult to read.
When the text is clearly written for a search engine robot, it does not make the best impression of the company, to the extent that the users go to another resource. To prevent this from happening, carefully check the work of the SEO copywriter and do not require to enter all the keys in the exact entry.
Overspam
This is a situation when there are too many keywords in the text or they are all concentrated in one place. For this, the search engine can lower the site in the search results. Special services help to remove overspam.
5 tips on how to make your SEO texts better
No matter how search engine algorithms change, the main goal of a copywriter remains the same, i.e. to create exciting content that people would enjoy reading. Therefore, SEO-copywriting requires enough professionalism and a very careful approach since the text should be optimized for keywords without compromising its readability. Here are some tips to help achieve this:
- Write interesting headlines. Not only should they contain keywords, but also attract the reader’s attention. For example, “5 tips on how to choose a land for the house.”
- Structure the material. Subheadings, lists and other formatting elements improve the perception of the content of the page and allow you to organically enter the desired keywords in its text.
- Use calls to action. Who said SEO text shouldn’t sell? That’s right, no one said that. Therefore, it will not be superfluous either.
- Do not focus on the technical side. These include keyword density, direct phrase occurrences and other similar things. Remember that you are not a robot and you are not writing for robots either. It is hardly possible to create outstanding content based on the principles of technical compliance.
- Metatags are important. In addition to being important to search engines, the information they contain is the first thing a user sees when a page is displayed on their search query.
These tips will help you create really high-quality SEO-copywriting to increase site traffic, while keeping the content interesting and useful for readers.
Who in the company should you entrust SEO copywriting?
In most cases, SEO copywriting is done by a copywriter in a team with a SEO optimizer.
A SEO copywriter is a specialist who writes texts, understands the work of search engines and knows how to correctly enter keywords into the text.
Required SEO copywriting skills:
- Write competently and interestingly.
- Create compelling headlines and write keywords in them.
- Insert keys into an article to make them look natural.
- Make simple HTML markup for text.
- Use services to check for water content, nausea and uniqueness.
Conclusions
- SEO copywriting will help to reduce the costs of contextual advertising, since it increases the website in search results. The effect does not appear quickly, but you end up with a steady stream of organic traffic.
- SEO copywriting in a company can be done by both a SEO copywriter and a regular copywriter, but the knowledge of SEO and the help of an optimizer is required. You can find SEO copywriters on exchanges and job search sites.
- Important parameters of SEO text are uniqueness, nausea, wateriness and the keywords. Each of them can be checked on special services.
- The uniqueness indicator should not be lower than 70-90%.
- The water content of the text depends on the presence in the text of words that do not carry a semantic load. Try to keep it no higher than 30%.
- Nausea indicates the number of repetitions of words in the text. The maximum recommended value is 3-5%.
Vocabulary
Conversion is the percentage of website visitors who perform the actions you need (for example, buying or ordering a service) relative to the total number of visitors. Conversion can be calculated not only for the site, but also for its specific page.
Keywords are words by which a search engine user finds your text. The relevance of the website is regulated by keywords.
SEO stands for website improvement methods that allow to take an advantageous position in the user’s search engine.
Copywriting stands for writing various advertising texts.
Penguin is an example of updating the principles of interaction between search engines and websites.
Ranking stands for sorting according to a specific criteria (authority, rank, respectability).
Site indexing stands for adding a website to the search engine database allowing the search engine to recognize your website.
Relevance stands for the adequacy of the website to the query in the search engine.
Panda is the name given to one of the Google algorithms, which leaves the most useful websites in the search results.
Rewrite stands for changing the text to increase its uniqueness.
