SEO Copywriting: How to Write Better Copy That Your Audience (+ Google) will love
When you read the words SEO Copywriting do you:
a) quickly close this tab and hide under your desk
b) read it begrudgingly, after all, you you’ve heard it’s important
c) get a little bit excited, but also immediately overwhelmed
If you answered a,b,or c you’re not alone! SEO + copywriting on their own can be overwhelming, but I’m hoping to de-mystify them (at least slightly) for you. As with anything, you’ll need a certain level of knowledge and experience to become an expert, but keeping a few key factors in mind can help you fill any blank page in front of you without all the suffering!
Why SEO?
I’ve always been kind of fascinated with SEO and have studied it to various degrees throughout my career in marketing. But it wasn’t until I built my copywriting business that I knew I needed to go deeper to understand the ins and outs of search engines to write better copy for my health, wellness, and nutrition clients.
That’s when I met Kate Toon…
It was Spring in NYC and we were both at a conference for copywriters called “The Copywriter Club IRL.” (Yes, it’s as nerdy as it sounds). Kate was speaking about SEO + had agreed to lead a group dinner. I was lucky enough to be included in that group. I also volunteered to pick dinner since I had lived in the same neighborhood in Brooklyn and chose pizza (which I found out later that Kate doesn’t eat... oops). She was a great sport though, and we got a lovely table by the window to settle in to a great conversation.
Kate is an Aussie who tells it like it is. She’s hilarious, real, and very fun to drink with! She co-hosts an amazing podcast — Hot Copy Podcast — which I’d been listening to for some time, so meeting her in person was like a copy geek dream come true.
I was so impressed with her and her personality and knowledge that I decided to take her course, The Recipe for SEO Success which she launches a few times per year and is so value packed I still use the resources constantly (ps.this post isn’t endorsed in any way).
Seriously, it’s probably the best education investment I’ve made in my business so far — and I’ve invested a lot in education!
While I can’t fit every take away from her course into this post, I will say that by implementing only a small fraction of what Kate taught into my own web copy I saw 5x the leads coming through my site (maybe that’s why you’re here) along with more qualified traffic (aka the right clients for me). While I’ve also worked to gain visibility in other ways, I really credit most of this new non-referral traffic to SEO work. I also found what I learned from Kate to be invaluable to the work I do with my clients, giving them copy that truly drives sales and increases their visibility on the web.
5 tips to get you started with SEO Copywriting:
1) Copywriting and SEO go hand in hand
First things first, it’s important to understand that excellent copy includes SEO. I don’t believe you can write great sales and website copy — that truly drives conversions — if you’re not taking into account search engines and searchers. Starting from this foundational perspective will help you hire the right copywriter for your brand, or write your own copy with SEO principles in mind.
2) Write for your people — not a search engine
Algorithms continue to get smarter and smarter when it comes to knowing what content is useful and relevant to what searchers are looking for. As a copywriter, my focus is always to create very readable copy that drives readers through each page naturally and inspires them to go deeper than the homepage, explore products, and then ideally make a purchase, or take an action given on the page.
3) Don’t drive yourself keyword crazy
There is so much to learn about keywords (we could talk about it all day), but here are a few key basics to get you started.
A good copywriting process should always begin with keyword research. I like to brainstorm focus keywords (the ones you know you want to show up for) + phrases (long-tailed keywords) and do customer research to better understand what words my clients' audience is really using in search engines. Having this deeper understanding will help craft the copy that goes on each key page of a site and lead to more organic search results.
You can use a free keyword tool to see how much traffic your chosen keywords are getting and what the difficulty is of ranking with those keywords. Ideally you want to choose keywords with low competition but a good amount of searches. This usually means choosing longer-tailed keyword like “crystals for healing trauma” vs. “crystals” which may be more specific to your customers' needs and result in more clicks that fit intent (see #5).
4) Never stuff your keywords!
In the early days of the internet a myth surfaced that choosing keywords and then ‘stuffing’ them into your copy and content over and over was the way to rank higher on Google. Fortunately for readers everywhere the internet has evolved and Google can now penalize you for overusing keywords in your copy. Why? Because Google prioritizes high-quality content that is engaging and provides actual value to the person searching.
Choose a focus keyword for each page and use that keywords throughout the page,
including in your page title, headline, within the content itself, meta description, and title tags.
5) Understand search intent
Different types of copy and different pages of your site will focus on different search intent. When a customer or client types in a search, they generally have a specific goal in mind. Understanding what this goal is is important because traffic is more likely to end up on your site, reading a page if you match their intent.
Search intent is generally focused around 4 key areas (source):
Informational intent: looking for information on a specific topic. Common for blog content. (ie.
Navigational intent: to access a specific website by entering the term in a search engine.
Commercial intent: research with the intent to buy
Transactional intent: ready to buy something after completing commercial intent searches.
There is a lot to know and understand about both copywriting and SEO, and if you’re interested in exploring it in more depth, I highly recommend Kate Toon’s course and free resources.
Hopefully, these tips will help you feel more confident as you dive into your own sales copywriting or look to hire on an experienced SEO copywriter to support you. Have other specific questions around SEO copywriting? Let me know in the comments below! If you’re an industry-disrupting healthy food + wellness brand looking for SEO copywriting, reach out, I’d love to hear what you’re working on!