5 Tips for Better SEO Copywriting
Copywriting is one of the most under-appreciated yet ever-essential tasks in the organic SEO profession. Although link popularity and anchor text relevancy are the main drivers to better search engine rankings, the content of a webpage ultimately establishes its keyword relevancy. And from a user standpoint, quality and unique copy is what helps a webpage sell.
SEO copywriting is balancing act of writing quality content that speaks value to the target audience while including the right blend of keywords and keyphrases.
In this article I will share with you five SEO copywriting tips to better optimize the content of your website, while still respecting the read-ability for your users.
Keyword Alignment is King
Keyword alignment is making sure that the same exact phrase match of your primary keyword target (PTK) appears early in the Page Title, Meta Description, and page copy. This includes mentioning the PTK in the header 1 (whenever possible) as well as within the first couple sentences of the body copy. Keyword alignment will help search engine spiders crawl and index your webpage with optimum keyword relevancy.
Make Logical Use of Headers
Break up ideas in the body copy with header 2’s and header 3’s. One of the best analogies is pretending your webpage is a chapter or section of a book (with the book being the entire site).
The header 1 is main idea or title of the chapter (so use the PTK). Headers 2’s support the main idea, so use a variation of your PTK, or perhaps a secondary keyword target (SKT). Blend different headers throughout the body copy, and use variations of your keyword targets in each.
Utilize Strong Tags Strategically
In HTML, strong tags simply make the copy bold in the text. However unlike a typical bold tag, a strong tag has greater SEO value, especially when wrapped around a keyword target.
Apply the keyword alignment concept, and try to use the keyword phrase that is referenced in the header by including it in the body copy that follows. Wrap the keyword phrase with a strong tag, and you’ll have a nice logical flow that both users and search engine spiders will appreciate.
Know What LSI Is
LSI stands for latent semantic indexing. What this means from an SEO copywriting standpoint is that many search engines will find different words with similar meaning as the same. So “company” will have similar value as “companies.” Even more so, words like “organic” may have similar value as “natural”. Other good industry examples are “attorney” and “lawyer,” and “doctor” and “physician.”
Use the concept of LSI to mix up the keywords used in your copy. If you find yourself writing “business lawyer” over and over, try using “commercial attorney” or something similar.
Consider Keyword Proximity
Referencing keywords in the copy is typically best when the keywords are used in the form of exact phrase matching. However, this can make your copy sound very redundant. Don’t be afraid to break up your keyword targets a bit.
A solid strategy for this is spreading out your keyword targets in a sentence. So if our keyword target is “Chicago SEO companies” we might be able to break up that keyword to make a sentence sound better, while still retaining keyword proximity. For example:
From a local perspective, many small to medium sized companies in Chicago are realizing the need for SEO.
Notice how each keyword was used in the sentence, but not in any sort of phrase match. This will still make an impact on the keyword relevancy of your webpage, which is what SEO copywriting is all about.
SEO copywriting is not an easy task for many web professionals, and some web marketing companies outsource their SEO copywriting needs. At WPG, we recommend keeping your SEO copywriting services as local or as in-house as possible.
If you do decide to outsource SEO copywriting from overseas, be sure give copywriting tests or view samples of the writer’s work before hand. And when working with a copywriting from abroad, be very specific and detailed with your instructions, and don’t be afraid to ask for revisions.
This article written by Tyler Tafelsky, one of our SEO & Website Optimization Specialists here at Web Presence Group.
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