Having high-quality copy is the key to making your website stand out above the rest. Infusing your copy with SEO techniques, will lead to your brilliant website creeping up in the search result rankings and pulling in heaps of views every day! Writing SEO copy is a skill that can be hard to master and if you get it wrong, your rankings and website views will stay insignificant despite all your hard work. Follow these essential tips for effective SEO copy.
1. Not Doing Your Research
When copywriting it’s important to get to grips with the industry you’re writing for. To achieve that, you have to do the research. Find out as much as you can on the topic you’re writing about, so that you can include phrases and information that will speak to your audience. The first skill needed for great copy, is the ability to research well. Before putting pen to paper, you should have a clear understanding of the industry, the product or service and who you’ll be speaking to.
“Becoming an expert on the topic will allow you to write expert copy” says Tiana Norman, marketing blogger at Paper Fellows and State of Writing.
2. Skipping Keyword research
Perfectly persuasive and entertaining copy will still have limited success without the use of keywords. Keywords are the tool to influence search engines and push your content to higher positions in results pages, getting more views and subsequently higher conversion rates! Comprehensive keyword analysis should be completed before writing anything. Once you have your keywords, you know what to write about to include them organically. Refrain from shoving your keywords awkwardly in sentences or using them as punctuation.
Unprofessional or unhelpful webpages will get a high bounce back rate and your ranking will drop despite the number of clicks you get. “Effective keyword research takes time and effort but if you skip this critical step, your ranking and views will suffer” says Rose Gallagher, an SEO writer at Australian Help and Boom Essays.
3. Ignoring Your Audience
Great copy puts the reader first. When reading your copy, your audience has questions they want answering. It’s up to you to tell them. In every sentence, you should be thinking about how the information you’re sharing can help your reader. Remember, everyone wants to speak about themselves. When writing, speak directly to your reader and put them as the focus.
Change sentences from prattling on about what ‘I’ like or what ‘we’ want to do and instead tell the audience why the product or service is perfect for ‘you’. Using ‘you’ language grabs the reader and keeps them engaged in what you have to say.
4. Overlooking Search Intent
What is the search intent? That’s the question you should constantly be asking when writing your copy. Search intent is the reason that people came to your website and the meaning behind your keywords. Usually people are either looking for information or they’re interested in buying something, although search intent could be anything. Your copy has to match up what people want.
If they are coming to you looking for information, don’t deliver a sales pitch as they’ll be gone in an instant with little possibility of a second chance. Think carefully about the purpose of your text and stick to it, moulding your tone, vocabulary and call to action along the way.
5. Blindly Trusting Spellcheck
So many great copywriters fall down at the last hurdle by rushing through their proofreading and editing stages. Your spellcheck and grammar software will, of course, pick up on mistakes and give you a heads up. Unfortunately, that is not enough. Language programmes can easily slip up. For example, an easy mistake to make is using the wrong spelling of a word. As long as it’s spelled correctly, your homophone error will go undetected, leaving words like to, too and two potentially mixed up.
6. Not being clear!
If you’re a writer, you are probably a lover of language and the temptation might be to infuse your copy with sophisticated vocabulary and complex sentences. While welcome in novels and poetry, in your copy it is much more important to be clear and understandable!
You want to keep your sentences short and your words impactful which can only happen if everyone understands them.
Conclusion
Practice makes perfect and that’s no different for writing copy. Finding the right words and tone can be difficult but with perseverance you will do it. Just be sure to avoid these mistakes to give your SEO copywriting a chance!
This article has been provided by our friend Molly Crockett.
Molly Crockett shares her lifestyle and nutrition passions in her writing at UK Writings and Academized. She loves to find and share new recipes while taking her audience on her diet journey. In her spare time, Molly teaches writing skills for Essayroo.
