Writing copy for SEO (search engine optimization) is a good, cheap way to attract visitors to your website. Â However, just writing a post is not enough. Your post will be competing with potentially millions of others for space on Google’s search algorithm. Google is of course the main search engine to rank for. Ask, Bing and Yahoo all have a share and shouldn’t be written off, but Google has the large market share of searches. So what is the best way to write and get found on Google’s first page?
Writing Copy For SEO – Getting Found On Google
Of course getting found on Google shouldn’t be your only objective. But it’s a nice way to get free visitors for potentially a good long time. You should also be sharing your content after you have published it. Even if it does get found on Google’s searches, it will be a while after you have written it.
Google can take months to rank your articles, depending on the authority of your site. It may not even rank them at all for your chosen keywords. Either way, sharing your content is a must. By sharing you are showing Google it is share worthy and a good social media presence can give it the social signals which Google look for when ranking some content highly. Sharing may also put your content in front of people who will naturally share it – adding more to its social presence.
Writing Copy For SEO – Write Content Which Is Share-Worthy
Don’t just write for writings sake. Write content that blasts your competition out of the water! Write content which gives your audience something no-one else does. Write larger articles than your competition. Write better articles than your competition. If you don’t have the knowledge, read and learn more. Use other articles on the subject to add to your own knowledge. Don’t copy buy use content to make you articles the best they can be!
Writing Copy For SEO – Keyword Research
Of course the all important keyword research! Keyword research is useful in finding untapped niches within your niche. You may have a great article but still never get found for your articles title. The reason? Competition. There is so much competition now for so many keywords that unless you have an authoritative blog you are unlikely to rank for it. An authority site might rank quickly for a competitive keyword. However, a small site won’t rank nearly as well. As a small site you need to choose your keywords carefully in order to give yourself the best chance of getting a ranking on Google. Two things to target:
- Buyer keywords
- low competition
Writing Copy For SEO – Buyer Keywords
Buyer keywords are keywords which potential buyers of your product or service might be typing into Google. By focusing your articles on keywords which display an intent related to your offering, you give yourself more chance of attracting the right people to your site. Choose articles with no focused intent, or off topic at your peril. You may get lots of visitors but they won’t be the right kind of visitors. For example let’s say you own a wedding cake shop. A great keyword would be “buy wedding cake near me”. It shows an intent to buy. Whereas a keyword like “wedding cake recipes” indicates an intent to make a cake yourself. Think carefully before you write a piece of content. What is the intent of the title? Does it attract the right target audience? See why target audience is important.
Writing Copy For SEO – Low Competition
I write more about this in my ebook. Get a copy by signing up to my free video series. Finding the ‘low hanging fruit’ in terms of keywords available in your niche, is a great way to attract traffic to your site for free. Many online marketers see the large amount of traffic coming from the big keywords in their niche: two and three word combinations which are very competitive and also offer a lot of traffic. Unfortunately they also offer the most amount of competition. This of course will depend on what business you are in. However, in all cases, finding the low hanging fruit of keyword combinations will reap greater rewards in terms of your potential ranking on Google. Ranking on the first page for some occasionally searched for keywords is much better than ranking on page 10 for the best ones. No-one is searching on page 10 of Google. Don’t go for the harder keywords, go for the long tail keywords which have much less competition.
Writing Copy For SEO – Finding The Diamonds In The Rough
To find these little gems does take some time. However, the more you search through for good keywords in your niche, the better you will get at it. Find keywords which have a good focused intent within them. Choose ones which offer less than 1 million search results. It may not always be possible to find the best ‘buyer intent’ keywords. However, if you think outside the box a little you should definitely find some to capitalize on. The more you dig the more keywords you will find.
Writing Copy For SEO – What should I Write About?
Write to answer all your customers questions. When you have done that, write some more! The more content you can put out there for your customers, the more likely you are to find potential customers through the search engines. Think about what your customers want to know. What are their most common questions? Find ways to answer these questions in as many ways as possible.
Writing Copy For SEO – Once You Have Found A Keyword
Once you have found a good keyword with the Google Keyword Planner you can do a Google search for articles which have already been written about the subject. Find the top result on Google and write a much better article than the one ranking. Write more words and give more value that the article you will be competing with.
Use An SEO Plugin On Your Site
I use Yoast SEO for WordPress. This helps you get the right amount of keywords in your copy and it also shows you how an algorithm rates your writing style. The more you write the better, providing you are offing real value and not just ‘stuffing’. Use other keywords in your headings which relate to your chosen keyword.
Social Sharing For SEO
As already mentioned social sharing will help get the word out about your content and is also a big signal to Google as to whether your content is being organically spread throughout the social networks. If your content is good, people will naturally share it.
Deep Linking For SEO
Use deep linking naturally and when appropriate to link back to other articles which you have written. A deep link is a link from your site which tell Google exactly what the content is via the anchor text you are using in the link. By doing this on your own site you can control which anchor text is linking to your content. As other people link to your content they may use a variety of anchor text but on your site you can specify the keywords you would like your article to rank for. As an example here is a recent article on my site discussing legit affiliate marketing.
Back Linking To Your Content For SEO
Back links can help to boost your rankings on Google but be careful. Too much of this will show Google you are trying to manipulate rankings and they can remove you completely. Ideally back links should show a natural and organic link profile back to your content with a variety of anchor texts to your content. This should happen over time as would happen naturally, not all at once. However, you can link back to your own content from other related sites to help speed the process. Ideally you could guest blog for someone in a similar niche to you in exchange for a back link. You can also use sites like Fiver.com to build your link profile or get keyword targeted back links to your content.
Writing Copy For SEO
I hope you have enjoyed this article on writing copy for SEO. If you have anything to add please reply in the comments section below. You can also sign up to my email video series and get my ebook straight to your inbox. Get access here.
