What Does Good SEO Copywriting Look Like?

There’s a lot written around the web about good SEO copywriting, and how it can benefit your company. Businesses interested in this type of writing often overthink the topic or favor some of the popular misconceptions about what it means. When it comes down to it, the concept is fairly straightforward.

Below are some simple descriptions of what SEO copywriting does that can help you understand.

Good SEO copywriting:

• Uses targeted keywords or phrases (at a natural rate) to boost the visibility of your page and target specific types of readers.
• Boosts the rank of your pages within Google and other search engines.
• Leads to more qualified prospects looking at the pages on your website.

These benefits help with:

• Websites
• Blogs
• Landing pages
• Any other digital marketing content

When done right, all of this should lead to more conversions and more sales. So why is doing this correctly so hard? It’s natural that companies want to rank higher in the search engines, with the above-stated results. Somewhere along the line obnoxiously overusing the word became a strategy to game the system. But here’s the thing. Google caught up years ago and it’s a strategy that drives readers away. In other words, this idea to game the system results in a lose-lose strategy.

It’s basically the grown-up marketing version of your toddler tapping you on the shoulder and saying “Hey dad! Hey dad! Hey dad! Hey dad!!!!” over and over and over until you turn around and shout “WHAAAAAT!!!???!!” at the top of your voice, startling everyone in the room.

You are not putting the reader in the best frame of mind for a favorable response. They’re agitated and disturbed by your content, and the last thing they feel like doing is actually buying the product or service you’re trying to sell.

The reason is that we’ve all grown accustomed to the use of pronouns. They exist as part of the English language for a reason. So, when you use the name of your product over and over, it has taken on a spammy feel and the strategy becomes transparent.

Web Traffic Won’t Pay the Bills

If someone offers you a strategy to draw thousands or millions of views to your site, you’d take it, right? It seems like the smart thing to do. But not so fast.

What if those thousands of people walked into your brick and mortar location at one time, but the only condition is you had to sit there in the corner with the dunce cap on? That’s a scenario that’s not so good for your branding. In fact, this influx of traffic may just decide that they’ll take their money elsewhere. Well, consider poorly written web content, or spammy content your dunce cap. These tactics may be causing you to leave money on the table. It turns out the ability to recognize bad writing is universal — and poor quality reflects poorly on your brand image.

When given the choice between thousands of people viewing your website and nobody buying, or hundreds of people seeing it with dozens buying, the second choice is where the smart money is. It’s not a sexy choice, but it’s the money-making choice. Until the mortgage company accepts high amounts of web traffic as a form of payment, we’re stuck with the money-making choice.

So, you don’t have to write in some robotic fashion without the use of pronouns in order to seek favor inside every business’s favorite algorithm. Google became smarter than that many years ago.

In fact, they use more than 200 factors to rank your website. While targeted keywords are important, 30 uses in a 300-word document is not necessary, and it flags your copy for all the wrong reasons. Simply put, there is more to SEO copywriting than overusing your keyword phrase.

So, what are Some of those Ranking Factors, Anyway?

I won’t list all 200 here, but there are a few important ones that apply to copy. These are some important factors when it comes to good SEO copywriting.

• Your keyword appearing in your domain name, title tags, descriptions, and H1 tags all make a difference.
• Keyword density can be used to determine the subject matter of a page, while oversaturation can result in penalties.
• Syndicated content may not rank as well.
• Extended-length content tends to rank better (average 1st-page result is 1,890 words).
• Content with more than one image tends to rank higher.
• Content that is more difficult to read doesn’t rank as well either.

These are just a few of the SEO ranking factors that fall within the parameters of copywriting. There are also factors that have more to do with the site structure and design.

Any Business Can Benefit from SEO Done Right

Good SEO copywriting is really just good writing. Quality writing is an excellent way to differentiate your business and grab your prospects’ attention.

Below are some qualities to strive for:

• Consider the search engines while presenting a marketing message that attracts new readers and persuades them to buy.
• It shouldn’t rely too heavily on industry terms. If you have to use complicated industry concepts, make sure you define them in a way that’s easy to understand.
• It should be focused on the goal of conversions. You can have thousands of readers through optimized traffic, but if the copy is bad, no one will want to buy.

These are universally attractive qualities that any business can benefit from. As you sit down to consider your marketing strategy, make sure you are taking the bigger picture approach to what good SEO copywriting looks like.

If you’d like to talk about your marketing content, contact me today!

Matthew Brennan is a Chicago-area marketing copywriter and copy editor. He is also the author of Write Right-Sell Now.