Tag Archives: SEO copywriting tips

How to do SEO copywriting under the Google helpful content update guidelines?

What is SEO copywriting?

It means writing in such a manner that your content is optimized for your chosen keywords and it ranks higher on Google and other search engines.

Theoretically there is nothing wrong in trying to improve your search engine rankings if you’re looking for search engine traffic.

SEO copywriting in its true sense delivers value to humans first.

At the same time, copywriting is done in a search friendly manner.

The text is organized and formatted in such a manner that its easier to crawl and analyze it.

Yes, keywords are used strategically.

Variation of the keywords are also used.

But when I do SEO copywriting, my main purpose of using the keywords is using the language that is understood by the readers.

It is because they use the search queries in the same language they speak.

Does Google look down upon SEO copywriting?

Not exactly.

In fact, multiple times Google has made recommendations on how to write search engine friendly content – content that can be easily crawled, indexed and ranked.

Then what’s the problem?

The problem is that quite often web publishers forget that ultimately, it’s the human readers for whom content must be written and published.

They get obsessed with SEO copywriting – solely optimizing their content for search engine rankings while completely forgetting about delivering quality to human readers.

This approach is counter-productive at many levels.

Low quality content harms your interests.

Your bounce rate increases.

You don’t retain visitors.

People stop visiting your website or blog.

Your readers feel cheated and hence, they get disenchanted with your intentions.

They waste time because they come to your website or blog thinking that they have found the information they were looking for, but they don’t.

Low quality content also sullies Google’s reputation because people see that as Google’s inability to find quality content.

If a new search engine comes up with the ability to find better content, people will start using it.

Hence, Google is heavily coming down upon websites and blogs publishing low quality content.

The new helpful content algorithm update will be specially targeting websites that publish content just to improve search engine rankings.

Naturally, people who have been using SEO copywriting indiscriminately are feeling jittery.

How does Google define helpful content?

Although “helpful content” has a very literal meaning, Google advises you to ask yourself the following questions to determine whether your content is helpful to your human readers.

If people directly come to your website (not from Google search), will they find your content helpful and useful?
When you are writing about a product or a place to visit, have you personally experienced the product or visited the place to get first-hand experience?
After reading what you have published, are people satisfied or do they have to conduct further research?
Does your website or blog have a primary focus or a purpose to exist (for example, the purpose of this website is to give you information on content writing, copywriting, and content marketing).
Do you provide original information, reporting, research, or analysis?
When linking to other information sources, do you simply regurgitate existing information or add further value?

These may seem quite obvious questions but you will be surprised to know how many content publishers don’t pay attention to them.

Doing SEO copywriting under the new Google helpful content update guidelines

What all do you need to pay attention to when writing content according to the new guidelines?

Search engine optimization is always going to be one of your primary concerns.

Here are a few things to keep in mind when writing content for your own website, or for one of your clients.

Don’t write on random topics

The focus area of my blog is content writing, copywriting, sometimes SEO (because it is content related), and content marketing (which is a superset of content writing).

Although I write for websites and blogs, does it make sense to publish blogs on web design?

What about PHP programming?

JavaScript coding?

These topics may get me some traffic, but do they belong to the core focus of my website?

They don’t.

I will be writing and publishing them simply to generate search engine traffic.

I don’t have expertise in them.

I will be simply getting information from other websites and rewriting it, without adding further value.

Instead, stick to your core subject.

If you want to publish regularly, sure, sometimes it may be difficult to come up with new topics, but this is where your creativity will count.

Develop your own writing style

As a copywriter, Google or no Google, you should develop your own writing style to sound original.

Every experienced writer has their own style.

My clients often insist that I write in my style and therefore, sometimes it becomes difficult for me to collaborate with other content writers.

When you have your own manner of writing sentences and using words, even if you are getting information from other websites, you will be writing it in your own way, in your own style, and according to your own take.

Be original

This is one of the major guidelines of the latest Google helpful content algorithm update.

Don’t write and publish content that is already present – maybe in a much better form – on other websites and blogs.

Offer readers something that they cannot find elsewhere.

Develop an expertise.

As much as possible, use first-hand experience to describe products and places.

Everything that they share on this blog, I use it on everyday content writing and copywriting.

Even the blogging tips that I share, I use them on my own blog and also when I’m writing blog posts for my clients.

Don’t obsess over search engine optimization

Just because you’re doing SEO copywriting it doesn’t mean your primary concern should be getting your content to rank higher on Google.

SEO copywriting and content writing are more about using a format that is search engine friendly, and less about cramming your writing with keywords.

When writing, come to the main topic as fast as possible.

Therefore, when you talk about your main topic, if you have defined the topic according to your primary keywords, you will be naturally using your keywords.

Organize your content under various subheadings because larger font draws more attention.

In your subheadings, let your keywords appear naturally.

If they don’t appear, don’t force them.

Similarly, try to use your keywords and bulleted lists.

When I say you should use your keywords, it doesn’t mean splattering them randomly just so that they appear in your text.

Your keywords must always appear contextually.

They should be there because they should be there, not because of SEO.

Don’t unnecessarily stretch your web page or blog post

The Google update documentation advises that you should write highly focused web pages and blog posts.

There is conflicting data available on how long your blog posts (or web pages) must be to rank well.

Google in its new helpful content update guidelines says that it doesn’t matter how many words your blog post (or web page) has.

As long as your content is human-friendly, and relevant, nothing should stop it from ranking well.

Having said that, Hubspot found in a 2021 study that blog posts with 2100-2400 words perform much better than shorter blog posts.

What should you do?

As is the case with everything else, the length of your blog post should be need-based.

My average blog posts these days are 1100-1500 words.

Some blog posts rank well, some don’t.

I don’t bother much.

The messaging is more important to me.

I don’t like unnecessarily stretching my blog posts just so that they have more words.

If you needlessly include topics and subtopics, people lose interest.

They want to read what they were searching for.

They are not looking for 10 other facts.

Use your better judgement.

If you think certain topics are important to your readers, include them, otherwise don’t.

There are some topics that are necessary to make your blog post complete.

But if you feel that your blog post would be better without those subtopics, remove them.

Write in an accessible manner

Google prefers accessible content over inaccessible content.

Make sure your copy is easily readable.

Write simple sentences and paragraphs.

Don’t use over complicated words.

Make your writing scannable so that even someone who doesn’t want to read the whole thing, can make sense of it.

Screen readers should be able to read your text seamlessly.

Link to important topics if you have already written about them instead of rewriting them.

When doing SEO copywriting, think from the point of view of Google.

If your content doesn’t make sense, what is the point in getting it ranked higher?

Get a ton of traffic?

Make people click on advertisements?

Buy your affiliate products?

You know what?

People aren’t doing any of these because they are not even reading your content.

Anyway, 80 out of 100 people read your headline and don’t go beyond that.

So, it’s only the remaining 20 people who are going to care what you have written.

If they feel cheated, even they don’t convert.

From the perspective of Google, why should Google suffer if you don’t want to write quality content?

Why should people who use Google in good faith suffer because you just want them to come to your website without offering them helpful content?

With the help of artificial intelligence and natural language processing Google has enough computing power to know whether you are providing quality content or not.

Stick to the “helpful content” algorithm guidelines and you will be surprised to know how well your copywriting sounds.

7 Copywriting Mistakes That Can Immeasurably Harm Your SEO

1. Not having a vision for your

In my profession, content writing and copywriting are often interchanged so for the purpose of this blog post, you can assume that whatever I’m writing about SEO copywriting, I’m also writing about content writing.

Although, in terms of advertising and sales copy writing, copywriting is different from content writing, but when it comes to writing for the web, many people use this term interchangeably.

You may like to read Difference between copywriting and content writing.

With this minor detail out of the way, whenever you’re writing the copy of a web page or blog post, it is very important to have a vision.

What does “vision” mean here?

What is the purpose of writing that web page?

What do you want to achieve with this blog post?

What am I trying to achieve with this blog post?

The simplest answer would be, I’m trying to improve my search engine rankings for the phrase “SEO copywriting” and even “copywriting mistakes” and I won’t deny that.

But, better search engine rankings for these phrases will be a byproduct.

In the video below, I have explained this concept by comparing your higher search engine rankings with the money that you earn by providing a product or a service.

My primary aim is to provide you the best possible content on this subject.

After reading this blog post, you should have a list of copywriting mistakes that you can avoid to improve your search engine rankings.

Instead of just talking about this copywriting mistakes and listing them, I’m also suggesting improvements.

Similarly, for every web page and for every blog post, you must have a clear vision, a clear purpose, of what you’re trying to achieve, not just in terms of improving your SEO, but also in terms of providing the best possible value to your readers.

2. Ignoring search intent when copywriting

This is one of the most important SEO copywriting mistakes to avoid.

Search intent is gaining importance with every passing day.

What intention do people have when they search for your content?

Here is a small video I created to explain what is search intent.

For example, what intent would there be, when people are looking for this blog post?

They want to improve their search engine rankings.

They want to avoid content writing and copywriting mistakes so that they don’t inadvertently harm their search engine rankings instead of improving them.

They want to learn from the mistakes of the others.

Knowing the search intent helps you take the right direction.

Your copywriting must always be focused on a particular search intent.

Do you simply want to educate and inform (like this blog post)?

Do you want people to buy from you after reading your web page or blog post?

Do you want them to download your e-book or white paper or case study?

Do you want them to subscribe to your newsletter?

Search intent is also known as “buyer intent”.

3. Not doing proper keyword research

All said and done, keywords are still matter.

Google, when analyzing your text, looks for patterns to make sense of what you’re trying to say or convey to the reader.

It analyzes every possible combination.

For example, for me, what matters is the keyword “copywriting mistakes”, but to Google, in the above paragraph, even “when analyzing your text” is as important as “copywriting mistakes”.

The Google algorithm is least bothered with what you think is your important keyword.

It goes through every single word and every single phrase and does its computations.

Hence, the words that you use when you are writing your copy are very important.

It is an age-old advice: choose your words carefully.

The same applies to selecting your keywords when copywriting.

Not making a list of the right keywords may send you on a tangent and you may end up optimizing your copy for all the wrong keywords.

Wondering why your traffic is increasing but your business is not?

It is because you are attracting traffic for all the wrong reasons.

You may be optimizing your content for the wrong keywords.

4. Not using simple sentences when preparing your copy

A few years ago, I read that the processing power of a supercomputer is less than the processing power of the brain of an earthworm.

No matter how smart machine learning becomes, it gets confused when you use compound sentences.

I often come across webpages and blog posts containing complex sentences.

People use lots of ands, alsos and buts.

Compound and complex sentences may make you sound smarter and intelligent, to the search engine algorithm, they are confounding.

For better SEO, it is always advisable to use simple sentences.

Don’t use multiple sentences in a paragraph.

Try to limit your sentences to 5-10 words and not more.

Of course, it is not possible all the time, but whenever you are talking about the central theme, for example, the biggest benefit of doing business with you, use single, simple sentences in every paragraph.

5. Ignoring to use synonyms and LSI keywords

Instead of saying “I want to improve my SEO” every time you need to use this expression, sometimes you can also use “I want to improve my search engine rankings”, or even, “I want to improve my Google rankings”, or even, “I want higher rankings for my web pages”.

You need to dominate your copy with the central theme, and this may require you to use your keywords repeatedly.

Hence, instead of “harm your SEO”, I can also use “hurt your SEO” or “adversely affect your rankings”.

This is because if you keep on using your main keywords Google may take it as keyword stuffing, which it actually is.

If you repeatedly use your keywords without alternating between LSI keywords and actual keywords, it will harm your SEO instead of improving it.

LSI stands for “Latent Semantic Indexing”.

It is a natural language processing technology that helps Google understand the context of your content rather than merely analyzing keywords.

For example, when you search for “what are the benefits of having an apple everyday” through LSI Google knows that you’re talking about the fruit and not the company.

There is another benefit of using LSI as well as synonym keywords.

Not everyone uses the same search term when looking for information.

For example, instead of someone searching for “copywriting mistakes”, he or she can also search for “bad copywriting” or “copywriting blunders” or “what makes my copywriting harm my SEO?” or “what makes my copywriting suck?”

Hence, accommodating different keywords and search terms increases the scope of your content being rank for different keywords without diluting the central topic.

6. Not writing from user’s perspective

Again, one of the most common SEO mistakes to avoid.

This is important for your rankings as well as conversion rate.

Why does your content exist, after all?

It exists to serve your readers.

Why do search engines like Google exist?

They are there to help you find the information you’re looking for.

From every angle, it is a human angle.

If you ignore the human angle and write your copy only to cater to the algorithms, the entire purpose of SEO is defeated.

The Google search algorithm depends a lot on how people perceive the quality of your content or copywriting.

For more clarity, you may like to read Relationship between quality content writing, bounce rate and SEO.

In the above post I have also used a small video to explain the concept with animation.

So, whether you use your keywords or not is secondary, the most important thing to keep in mind when copywriting is writing for your audience.

If you ignore your audience, nothing else matters.

7. Using your main keywords in hyperlink text

Actually, this is something that I have learned recently.

You should not use your keywords as anchor text for internal links.

When writing copy for your web pages and blog posts, you’re often encouraged to link to other inner pages of your website and even external pages when you want to link to the source of your information.

Google sees this as an act of manipulation.

Since you cannot control how people link to your website, Google doesn’t penalize you if your main keywords are used as anchor text from other websites, but for interlinking (linking to your own web pages and blog posts within your domain), instead of using something like SEO copywriting as anchor text, use a long phrase.

Until a few years ago, I remember this was a prevalent advice that you should use your primary keywords as anchor text when linking to different parts of your website or blog, but it remains no longer kosher.

You can read in the above link, you can get penalized for this.

Concluding remarks the most common SEO copywriting mistakes to avoid

Whenever you are copywriting there is a 99% chance that you are doing it to improve your search engine rankings.

There is nothing wrong in that.

The biggest mistake I have come across is that when clients approach me for my copywriting services, they are less concerned about providing value to the readers and more concerned about “the keyword density must be around 3-5%”.

It rarely happens that a client says that I should first focus on quality and then, if possible, I should include the main keywords.

Anyway, the purpose of writing this blog post was to throw some light on the issues that can negatively impact your search engine rankings while in the sincerity of your heart, you are trying to improve it with certain copywriting practices.

Ummm… yes, I know, the above sentence is not good for SEO.

15 SEO copywriting tips that will certainly improve your search engine rankings

What is SEO copywriting and why is it important?

Writing for a website or a blog to improve search engine rankings is called SEO copywriting.

The reason it is called “copywriting” is because when you’re writing for the main website, aside from writing general content which is there to inform the visitors, selling the product or the service being represented through that website, is also often the job of your writing, and hence, whether you know it or not, any writing on the main website is also sales copy.

But selling isn’t the only thing you need to achieve as a professional web writer; your writing must also be able to improve the search engine rankings of the website or the blog you are writing for.

Hence, SEO copywriting.

You may like to read Why is SEO copywriting important?

SEO copywriting brings search engine traffic, makes people buy from you

SEO copywriting is important because it boosts your rankings for the right keywords and search terms and at the same time, when people are at your website, it prompts them to take an appropriate action (buy your product or download your e-book).

SEO copywriting is also important because it can help you bring down your search marketing cost.

If your rankings improve organically (on the strength of your content), you don’t have to spend money on programs like Google AdWords.

When you advertise on Google AdWords, you pay for every click.

Which means, if you are getting 1000 clicks from Google, you are paying for those 1000 clicks.

On the other hand, if you improve your SEO through copywriting, once you have attained good search engine ranking, whether you get 1000 clicks or 1 million clicks, the only money you have spent is on getting the SEO copy written.

You must know how to write search engine friendly copy.

For that, you must know how search engine crawlers crawl your content, how they access the information on your website and then how that information is processed.

You already know it isn’t just the copy on your website that decides your search engine rankings although, it is the most important aspect because how your website must rank depends on the relevance of the information that exists on your website.

Unless your copy is search engine optimized, nothing much is going to happen that can improve your search engine rankings.

Listed below are 15 SEO copywriting tips that can help you improve your search engine rankings. —-

1. Understand that every piece of writing has an objective

Every piece of writing must have an objective

Take it this way: when people are searching for information on Google, in most of the cases they are asking questions.

More so when an increasing number of people are using voice search.

Read Copywriting services for voice search

When someone is searching for an SEO copywriter, for example, she is going to use an expression such as, “looking for an SEO copywriter for my ad agency”, or “need an SEO copywriter for my tech start-up”, or something like “find and SEO copywriter for my accounting business website”.

These are very precise searches and people have gained enough experience to not to throw random terms into the search engine.

Everybody knows that simply searching for “SEO copywriter” or “SEO copywriting” is going to bring up millions of unnecessary results.

Hence, if I want to offer my SEO copywriting services to and accounting business, I must create a dedicated web page to attract those visitors.

Similarly, if I want an ad agency that is looking for an SEO copywriting service, I should mention that too in my copy.

The point is, you must know, you must understand what the web page or the blog post you are currently writing aims to achieve, and then aim every word, every sentence, at achieving that objective.

2. Use the title to express precisely what you are offering

The importance of web page title in SEO copywriting.

Take for example this blog post. It offers you 15 SEO copywriting tips that can help you improve your search engine rankings.

Whether you come across this title on search results or on one of the social media websites, you will immediately know what to expect.

Your title also tells Google and other search engines what your piece of content to be ranked for.

If the Google ranking algorithm decides to rank this blog post higher, it knows that it offers SEO copywriting tips that can help search engine users improve your search engine rankings. …

3. Use your main keywords in the title

Main keywords in the title

Here, the three main keywords for me are “SEO copywriting”, “tips” and “search engine rankings”.

You don’t necessarily have to include all your keywords but it can certainly help you improve your SEO if you can incorporate all your major keywords within the title.

Your web page or blog post title has a big impact on the rankings of that particular link.

Spend lots of time making sure that

The title captures the central theme or the main offering of your web page or blog post.
It contains your domain or primary keywords or search phrase.

4. Aim towards creating a holistic experience

Convey that you understand the user’s problem

Yes, focusing on your primary, secondary and longtail keywords is important, but use them as tools, not as a central points.

The central point is the value that you provide.

Write with passion.

Write with sincerity.

Write for humans while focusing on machines.

Give the readers what you have promised in the title or the headline.

Remember that how people react to your copy is as important as the SEO aspect of your writing.

If people find your writing useful, they’re going to spend more time on your web page or blog post.

When they spend more time it tells Google that they find your content useful and hence, it deserves to be ranked even higher.

If your web copy holds no value, people leave immediately, and when they leave immediately, Google assumes that it does not have the information people are looking for and hence, lowers its rankings.

Hence, focus on value and relevance first, and then think of how you can present the value and the relevance through your primary, secondary and longtail keywords.

5. Make a list of all the keywords and search phrases you want to cover through the current web page or blog post

Since we are writing about SEO copywriting and we acknowledge that keywords are important for improving your search engine rankings, we should definitely have a list of keywords we want to focus on.

Making a list of keywords and search phrases isn’t just good for SEO, it is also good for keeping you on your path.

What are keywords after all?

Keywords are the words and expressions used by your target audience to look up information on Google.

They are the leitmotif of your entire message.

Your keywords are the focal points.

When you jot down all the keywords you want to concentrate on, you know what to write about and what to ignore.

6. Write an attention grabbing headline

Write attention-grabbing headlines

Headline can turn “eh, whatever” into “wow, this is awesome!”

Although, many a time, the title of your web page or blog post is same as your headline, you can have a different title and a different headline.

The title comes under the title HTML tag, something like <title>This is my title</title>

The main headline, in your source code, looks like this: <h1>Main headline</h1>.

Compared to the rest of the body on your web page or blog post, the font type of the headline is bigger and more prominent.

Anyway, if the purpose of your title is to bring people to your website from search engines and social media websites, the purpose of your headline is to hook the reader into reading the rest of your copy.

If your headline is not attention grabbing, people are going to leave faster.

This is what David Ogilvy said about the importance of your headline:

On the average, five times as many people read the headline as read the body copy. When you have written your headline, you have spent $ 0.80 out of your dollar.

I mostly keep the title and the headline more or less the same but sometimes if the entire essence of my web page or blog post cannot be captured within the title (the title shouldn’t be beyond 60 characters, including spaces), I use a different headline so that I’m not constrained.

Different copywriters suggest different ways of creating compelling headlines.

Some suggest that you use emotional triggers.

Every buying decision after all, is emotional.

Why do you want to improve your SEO?

You want your business to succeed.

Why do you want your business to succeed?

You want to make more money (let’s assume this reason for the time being).

Why do you want to make more money?

It’s the answer to this question for which you want to improve your SEO.

This, is emotional.

Your headline can trigger emotions, curiosity, fear, inspiration, a sense of controversy, a sense of kinship, a sense of reaching out to something forbidden, or something like that.

7. Keep your writing scannable

Scannable writing for better SEO copywriting

Scannable writing is convenient both for your human readers and search engine ranking algorithms.

What does scannable writing mean in the context of writing for the web?

Here are a few things to keep in mind:

Write smaller sentences.
Keep your paragraphs short (normally, not more than one sentence).
Avoid using very complicated words unless they are essential to your copy.
Maintain a conversational style.
Express a single idea in a sentence and hence, don’t use many “and”, “or”, or “but” unless absolutely necessary.
Organize different topics under headings and subheadings (make ample use of <h2> and <h3> tags.
Use bullet points.
Highlight your main keywords with bold and italics types, but don’t overdo.

The main idea is, make it easier for people to quickly browse through your copy and get your message without having to read every sentence and every paragraph.

8. Use interlinking during SEO copywriting

Interlinking helps SEO copywriting

A good thing about writing for a website or a blog is it’s easier to link to other sections.

This helps you avoid creating lots of duplicate content.

If a bit of information already exists somewhere on your website or blog, why not link to it instead of rewriting it?

It also makes it easier for search engine crawlers to access content that hasn’t yet been crawled.

Google is constantly crawling websites from one link to another.

The crawler may come to your website through any link and then it tries to crawl every link present on that link and all other links that are present on those links.

When crawling, it also works out the relationship between your various web pages and blog posts and decides overall what your website represents.

For example, no matter through which link or blog post the Google bot enters my website, I want it to understand that I provide content writing and copywriting services and everything else surrounding these two services, including SEO content writing and SEO copywriting.

Make sure when you are linking to other sections of your website or blog, use your keyword in the hypertext.

9. Write a compelling intro

Your main headline is the intro that hooks the reader.

After that it is your first paragraph.

The reaction to your first paragraph decides whether someone is going to read your rest of the copy or not.

You can write the first paragraph to achieve any of the two things:

Make the readers agree with what you’re saying – we usually like to read things we are agree with.
Pique the interest by asking relevant questions or writing some hard-hitting sentences that force the reader to read further.

The point is, use every trick in the toolkit to make the reader read the first paragraph, without misleading.

10. Use the inverted pyramid approach

The inverted pyramid approach in copywriting

In the traditional copy, you often build the suspense and then reveal what you have to offer in the end.

Nobody has that much patience on the web.

Spill the beans in the beginning.

Tell your readers whatever you have to offer in the beginning itself.

Remember the purpose of your copy, ultimately, is not to make the reader read the whole thing, but to act, to convert.

If I want to tell you how I can help you improve your search engine rankings it’s better that I tell you in the beginning itself because you are desperate to improve your search engine rankings and if I dillydally, you may go somewhere you can quickly find the solution you’re looking for.

Does it mean your copy must be around 100-200 words?

What about search engine rankings then?

What about all those SEO experts and content marketing experts who are constantly telling you that longform content is better for your search engine rankings and thin content is of no value?

My suggestion is, it depends.

You can keep your entire web page or blog post interesting so that people read it through and through.

You can tell the important stuff in the beginning and then deal with nitty-gritty that helps you write more afterwards.

The thing is, don’t keep people waiting.

They will get bored.

Even if they don’t get bored, something else will distract them and they will leave your website or blog without reading the important stuff.

11. Use your keywords within the first 100 words of your copy

You don’t have to force-use them, but if it is possible, use your keywords and main phrases within the first 100 words of what you’re writing.

This is easier to achieve if you cut to the chase and start talking about the important stuff from the very beginning.

As long as people are using search terms and keywords to look for information, they are important.

Now that I think of it, people no longer use keywords, they use search phrases, but we still call them keywords.

Anyway, sometimes, something or the other happens and the search engine crawler leaves your web page or your blog post without going through the whole content.

When this happens, though, it has crawled your web page or blog post, it hasn’t understood what it represents.

This is why, whatever words and expressions it encounters in the beginning, it makes sense of your web page or blog post accordingly.

Hence it is better that

You cover your main topic in the beginning.
You use your keywords and search expressions in the beginning.

This way, even if the crawler does not completely go through your web page or blog post, it will have at least some idea of what you’re trying to say.

12. Understand the intent of your search engine users

Pay attention to search intent when writing copy

This is something that I have already touched upon above, but now I am describing it in detail.

Primarily, 4 intentions have been recognized when people use a search engine, namely

Informational intent – Looking for information to learn something, to know something or to reconfirm something.
Navigational intent – Instead of typing the exact URL you want to go to, you search for the name of the website (especially when you don’t know the URL).
Transactional intent – You want to buy something.
Commercial intent – You want to buy something but before that you want to read reviews or you want to compare different products or services.

Targeted content can be created for all the intents.

When writing copy for a website or for a blog, if you know people of what intent you are targeting, you can write better copy and you will also get better results.

Is one intent more important than the other?

It depends.

You need brand presence, you want people to come to your website even when right now they don’t intend to purchase from you.

When people know about your business, when they have the need, they will come to you.

For example, you’re reading these tips on SEO copywriting; you may not be looking for a professional SEO copywriter, but when you need one, you may remember my website and then contact me if you like what I have written.

13. Make it as comprehensive as possible

This is longform content.

Longform content may not be user-friendly (try going through 3000+ words on a mobile phone) but search engines like Google certainly like it.

One reason why Google likes longform, comprehensive content is that it covers pretty much everything that a search engine user is looking for.

For example, if you are looking for SEO copywriting tips, it’s good if you get all the information you need to improve your search engine rankings in one single blog post rather than having to visit different links and then compile the information to make it into something worth using.

The ranking algorithm also favors longform content.

When you create a comprehensive web page or blog post, it makes people – as long as your content is interesting and useful – spend more time on your link.

When they spend more time on your link, Google assumes that it has useful information and hence, it deserves to be ranked higher for the search term being used.

Also, people share longform content more than they share short web pages or blog posts.

This again helps your SEO because you get more incoming links from social media websites as well as other websites and blogs.

14. Better SEO copywriting means writing in the language of your readers

Write in the language of your readers

Writing in the language of your readers has many benefits.

One of the biggest benefits is you will be using keywords and search terms that people actually use rather than making your own guesses and floundering in the process.

This also increases your conversion rate because people can relate to what you are writing.

Writing in the language of your readers doesn’t mean dumbifying your writing.

If I’m writing for a programming company targeting tech start-ups then I will be using lots of jargon that is commonplace in the industry not because I want to show off, but because people are comfortable with that language.

If I write for a boutique shop, I will use language that is used by an average customer of that boutique shop.

15. Use data backed up by sources

People love data, especially in the B2B sector.

Hence, if I say this tip improves your SEO by 20% rather than simply “improves your SEO”, you will feel more reassured, especially if I can link to an authoritative blog post or an article that makes this claim along with a real-world example.

Data is convincing.

It makes you learned.

Ideally, data should come from your organization (something like, “our research shows that “41% respondents reported an improvement after applying our SEO tips”), but even if you’re not in a position to use your own data, it is all right to use data from other trusted sources.

Conclusion

You cannot rush your way into SEO.

There is a reason businesses have an “SEO strategy”.

You have to work at many aspects including

SEO copywriting
Increasing content density
Publishing lots of authoritative content
Interlinking
Getting quality back links
Generating engagement

But everything boils down to having quality content.

SEO copywriting is all about quality content

It is your content, after all, your copywriting, that people share with each other, recommend, engage with, find on Google and other search engines, and generally, talk about.

If there is no quality content, nobody has anything to talk about your business.

Hence, one of the most important SEO copywriting tips, give the copy of your web pages and blog posts the respect and importance it deserves.

You will automatically start improving your search engine rankings once you acknowledge the importance of good quality content.