In our last blog (Top 3 digital marketing trends for small businesses in 2023), our number one trend that we recommended for small businesses to focus on was publishing valuable content (content that your audience cares about or is helpful to them in some way), and this included valuable search engine optimisation (SEO) content. We said we would write another blog on what valuable content for SEO means and how to create it, so here it is. If you want your business to stand out online, especially during these tough times with the cost of living soaring, doing SEO right is so important and we recommend it’s something you put time and effort into in 2023 and beyond.
What is SEO copywriting?
SEO copywriting is the practice of creating keyword optimised content that’s designed to appeal to both website visitors (humans) and the algorithms of search engines. So quality copywriting for SEO purposes is vital to the success of your website, not only in terms of getting your pages visible in search results above your competitors, but it’s how you get your audience to stay on the page once they land on it and to take calls to action on your website, which is ultimately what you want them to do. There is definitely an art to it, but it’s also very simple. The task for businesses owners is to move away from salesy content and to put yourself in your audiences’ shoes, to figure out their needs and how you can help them through your content. This applies to each page of your website. You need to show them you know what they need and how your business can help them.
Here’s our top tips on how to successfully create quality SEO content that your audience and search engines will love:
- Quality website content for your visitors
Let’s ignore the SEO part for now. The most important foundation of SEO copywriting is to create content that will interest your audience. This relates to every page of your website, not just writing helpful blogs (which of course is a fantastic opportunity to create quality content). Before you start writing your website copy, do some research, what is your ideal audience searching for online? What questions are they asking? Then write each page with your audiences’ search intent in mind. From your research you can make a list of keywords or short phrases to include within your copy – more info on this below.
2. The SEO part of copywriting for websites
Once you know what type of content you are going to write, here are some simple, yet powerful SEO actions that you can easily implement to help your pages appear high up in search results.
- Do your keyword research and add these throughout your copy (but please make it seamless), not only will Google know and penalise you if you are ‘keyword stuffing’, but your visitors will notice too and they will easily be put off by this
- The title of your page should entice people to read, but also tell them exactly what the content is about – search engines love websites that give people exactly what they asked for
- If your business is location specific, make sure to include this throughout your website copy, again being as seamless as possible
- If you don’t have an SEO feature in the back end of your website, download a free plugin and take the time to create well thought out focus keyphrases, SEO titles and meta descriptions for your pages and posts. Giving the best summary you can of each one – including all the important information about what the page is about, so that when someone clicks on it they are getting exactly what they were looking for
- Make sure you have quality links on your pages, to other reputable websites, as well as internal links to other relevant parts of your own website
- Structure your content well. People (and search engines) want information that makes sense and is easy to read. You want your pages to be skimmable – headlines, sub headings, numbers and bullet points work well for readers to pick out what they need quickly.
All of this will help search engines to rank your content. If people leave quickly then your pages will rank poorly, but if people stick around and read your content and move about your site then search engines will give it a ranking boost. Here is something important to remember when writing content and carrying out SEO on your website: Google encourages us to remember EAT, which stands for Expertise, Authoritativeness, and Trustworthiness, and that’s really what it comes down to – to rank highly, your content and SEO tactics must be authentic.
Providing people with what they need in a way that is well written, well-structured and incorporates high quality SEO practices is the way to achieve a featured snippet in Google search results, which is known as position zero and is displayed in a helpful list format, above the highest ranked organic results, and even above paid adverts. If you would like to see an example of a featured snippet, here’s one that we achieved for a client, for a very important search term for their business.
3. Keeping your website content up to date and user friendly
This is very important when it comes to writing quality SEO content, as just like your audience will be put off by content that’s salesy, they will get frustrated and likely leave if your content is out of date. Of course some content will be very specific to the time that it was written, but if you are planning on using evergreen content, or old content is no longer valid then you will need to make sure it stays up to date if someone were to land on the page now. Also search engines rank pages highly when they are kept up to date with fresh information.
One final tip to complement your SEO copy
Don’t stop at publishing well written, audience centred copy, please take time to check that once they’ve read your content that your visitors can then take action. Make sure that your contact details are easy to find, that your contact forms work, or that your email address and phone number is clickable. Ensure your price list, menu or other important pages are easy to find and read and so on, and very importantly that every part of your website is mobile friendly, has clear images and videos and that it loads quickly. You want to make the user journey from landing on the correct page based on a search query, to reading your content and getting in contact as smooth and easy as possible.
Hopefully you found some great tips to help you with your SEO copywriting. Now, we understand that not everyone is a writer, and many business owners will not have time to write great copy for their website and keep it fresh as it can be very time consuming. So please get in touch with us at Q Social Media if you need any expert help with SEO copywriting or SEO in the back end of your website.
