How to Write SEO Copy That Works in 6 Steps!!

There’s a lot more to writing SEO copy than keywords. If you want your SEO copywriting to work–to attract more natural traffic AND convert visitors to subscribers and leads–you’ve got to do more than stuff blog posts with keywords.

Follow these 6 steps to write SEO copy that works.

Research the best keywords.

Although the best SEO strategies focus on great content and user experience, optimization still requires keywords.

Start by listing the words of the products or services you offer and brainstorming the words your prospects use to search for them. Use a keyword research tool like the Google Keyword Tool to find out how much traffic these words get and how competitive they are. Branch out from there by researching similar keywords.

If you’re just getting started, use mainly low competition keywords with decent traffic. You can use high competition keywords in your content, of course, but you won’t rank for them until you gain some authority.

If your website has been around for awhile and built up authority, you can aim for more competitive keywords.

Write compelling meta data.

The first step in a searcher’s journey to your website is what they see on a search results page: thepage’s title and meta description.

Include your most important keywords in the title and description without stuffing. Meta descriptions should natural and fluent. Titles should make sense and accurately convey the content of the page.

Then make sure the title grabs readers’ attention and the description makes them hungry for more. Use verbs and active voice, and promise a benefit, such as what they’ll learn from reading your content.

Meta titles and descriptions also show up when the content is shared on social media, where users tend to have even shorter attention spans than searchers. So keep your meta data short, sweet, and powerful.

Craft an attention-grabbing headline.

Headlines and meta titles are often the same thing or very similar. As long as your headline includes the main keywords, it works very well as a title to entice searchers to click through to your website.

The most important thing about a headline, though, isn’t the keywords in it. It’s how compelling the copywriter can make the headline that makes people want to keep reading.

Copyblogger.com has many excellent resources about crafting compelling headlines. Check these out if you need help writing headlines that pull readers in like a magnet:

• How to Write Magnetic Headlines
• How to Write Headlines That Work
• Headlines category
• The Cheater’s Guide to Writing Great Headlines

Write valuable content.

SEO doesn’t do you an ounce of good unless you have epic content that your audience loves and wants. Focus on creating high-quality, valuable content that answers their biggest questions, solves their most pressing problems, and gives them what they want.

Then you can revise to make sure the content uses the best keywords in the right places. What are the right places to use keywords, you ask?

• meta titles and descriptions
• headlines and sub-headings
• image names, alt tags, and captions
• occasionally throughout the content
• links

A Word about Keywords

Old-school SEO dictated that you choose your three to five most important keywords for a page and focus only on them. Today search engines like to see more than that.

In addition to your main keywords, try to to include words and phrases related to your product or topic. Called latent semantic keywords, rounding out a page or post with related words makes your content seem more trustworthy and helpful. And you can rank for a lot more keywords depending on how competitive the related phrases are.

Include an aligned call to action.

SEO copywriting is more than just optimized content. To get any benefit from it, you need to persuade visitors to read more content, subscribe, share the article, or any number of other actions.

To convert visitors into subscribers and leads, you need a call to action. And not just any call to action–you need to use the invitation that is most likely to get a visitor to act.

Sounds tricky, but it’s actually not too hard. There are two ways to make your call to action more likely to be effective:

1. Choose an invitation that is closely aligned with the content
2. Use dynamic calls to action

Aligned calls to action match the content and the part of the buying cycle your audience is most likely to be in when they read your article. So if the content is highly technical and your audience is interested in buying, the call to action might be for a purchase or product demo. If the content is more basic to help customers learn more or compare products, the call to action could invite them to download a free report or attend a free webinar.

Dynamic calls to action change based on the user’s previous behavior and other data. That way the never see a call to action they’ve already responded to twice.

Link and get links.

There are three types of links you need to worry about:

• getting links
• linking out to great resources
• linking internally

Others are more likely to link to you when you focus on creating high-quality valuable content. And to search engines, what others say about you is more important than what you say about yourself.

You can also encourage others to link to you by linking to them. In addition to building up goodwill with other website owners and bloggers, linking out to other great resources also helps your audience find great information and shows search engines that you are “connected” online.

Linking to pages and posts inside your own website helps search engines index every page of your site and helps visitors get around and find what they’re looking for.

What do you think? What tips have you used in the past to increase your relevance in search?

The original post, “How to Write SEO Copy That Works” by Christina Walker was originally published on ChristinaWalker.net

Original Article

Used image is in the public domain because its copyright has expired.

Thanks to Christina Walker for her article. You can follow her on twitter.com at @chwwalker

Stevie Wilson,
LA-Story.com

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