Copywriting has long been associated with the field of advertising. If you watched Mad Men, Peggy, one of the main characters, was a copywriter.
The job usually means conceiving of and developing words for product descriptions, advertising copy, posts/captions for social media and more.
SEO copywriting is specialized within the general copywriting category. SEO copywriters come up with language geared towards both real people and search engines that crawl the internet for content. Writing tailored for SEO results in websites ranking higher in search engine results pages (SERP) or affecting which ad appears first on a results page.
Table of Contents
SEO Copywriting Defined
SEO copywriting is the strategic art of creating digital content that appeals to both real humans and search engine algorithms. The primary goal is to achieve higher rankings in search engine results pages. Secondary objectives include driving organic traffic to a website, increasing brand awareness and encouraging sales. Unlike traditional copywriting, SEO copywriting involves the incorporation of specific keywords and phrases that can be found through databases like Google’s Keyword Planner, Moz Keyword Tools and Ahrefs Keyword Explorer.
The Goals of SEO Copywriting Explored
Enhanced Visibility and Rankings
Pages that are written with SEO in mind can significantly improve a website’s visibility on search engines, leading to higher rankings. Pages that are optimized include keywords in the title and headers. They also include hyperlinks to internal and external sites. Any images in the page have keywords embedded into the alt tags.
Higher rankings in SERO usually mean increased exposure to potential customers, as users are more likely to click on results appearing on the first page of SERPs. They certainly notice those first, and are less likely to scroll to the bottom of a SERP.
Targeted Traffic Generation
SEO copywriting can start with databases that show how many people are searching for specific words relevant to your industry, and what phrases they type into Google. SEO copywriters also think like users. They don’t think, “What would the owner of a business use to find a web page from their own website?” They ask, “What would a regular person in x demographic groups enter into a search bar?”
This mindset enables businesses to attract a more targeted audience by incorporating relevant keywords that align with the group’s age, socio economic status, marital status and other demographic criteria.
By understanding the language and queries of their target audiences, copywriters with SEO expertise can tailor their content to address specific needs and questions.
Improved User Experience
People like content that is written by real people like them (well maybe with more expertise and knowledge in the area they are researching). They don’t want AI generated content. So good SEO writing comes off as very human, even if there’s a science to which words are included. Regular people shouldn’t feel like they’re reading an academic paper or text produced by a robot. Top SEO copywriting is high quality content that is both informative and engaging, and contributes to a positive user experience.
Google examines every web page for “EEAT.” This stands for experience, expertise, authoritativeness and trustworthiness. Great SEO copywriters use words that demonstrate EEAT. Search engines reward websites that provide valuable content, and satisfied users are more likely to stay on a site that exudes the EEAT philosophy. 
What are the Best Practices for SEO Copywriting?
Conduct Keyword Research
Before writing a single word, thorough keyword research is required. Tools like Google Keyword Planner and SEMrush can help identify relevant keywords with high search volumes. High search volumes mean a lot of people search for the word. So “lawyer,” for example, is searched for more often than “attorney.”
That said, getting your webpage or ad to rank near the topic for the high volume search terms like “lawyer” is hard. You’re usually competing with big companies with big budgets and huge websites. That’s why some companies strategically use low volume search keywords. These are also called long-tail keywords. Yes, less people search for them, but websites also don’t use them as much, so you may rank higher on pages that focus on these keywords. And low-search isn’t bad. Just because less people search for it, so what? People still search for these words.
Create Smart Headlines and Meta Descriptions
Once you’ve identified keywords or keyphrases, write two headlines that use the keywords. They should include the keywords for search engines, but remember to keep your audience in mind. Try to grab their attention and encourage them to click. However, you want to do this without saying the word “click.” Studies have shown but humans and search engines don’t like the phrase “click here.” And it makes sense. If everything online said “click here,” you’d see that every three words on the internet. For example, you could try “5 Reasons to Hire an Attorney.” It contains the keywords, but encourages people to click for these reasons.
You can also write meta descriptions for the CMS. This is seen by users as the first 100 characters underneath a headline in SERP. Search engines scroll meta descriptions too for keywords. If you don’t know how or where to post a meta description in your CMS, reach out to us. Content creation and keyword research are two of our many specialities.
Produce High Quality Content Creation
Try to strike a balance between SEO optimization and reader enjoyability. Don’t use keywords too much. If possible, mention a keyword once in a headline or title, and in two headers. Then mention it 3-5 times in text. Anymore than that, and search engines may call it keyword stuffing, which means you’re overusing a word. Search engines want to make sure you’re not producing text just to rank at the top of SERP. And readers think it’s weird when they see the same word over and over. So use the thesaurus key in Word or Google Docs.
Pages with at least 1500 words tend to rank higher in SERP. This isn’t always the case, but experts have come to believe that 1500 words is a number Google likes. 1500 words is a lot – that’s why so many companies turn to us at SEO Design Chicago for content creation. We can turn out 1500 words without repeating ourselves, and incorporating facts and links. We also embed photos and videos and icons into text, which increases how engaged users are with a web page.
According to one study, it takes the average person around 3 hours to write 1500 words that include links, research, facts and quotes. Do you have 3 hours to spare a few times per month? If not, let us handle this task. 
Use Optimized URL Structures
Make sure your URLs (the www part in the address bar of your browser) is SEO-friendly. URLs should include relevant keywords and provide a clear indication of the content on the page. Your content management system may do this automatically for you. But sometimes, URLs contain weird numbers and letters and symbols. We can show you how to rewrite your URLs to make them more indexable by search engines.
Optimize Your Site for Mobile Devices
Often, people use their phones to look at websites. More importantly, mobile optimization is a crucial factor in search engine algorithms. Search engines also check to make sure your site is design responsive. That means it resizes to adapt to a variety of devices from desktops to phones to tables.
Embed Internal and External Links
Including relevant internal links from one page on your site to another keeps people on your site longer. The longer they’re on your site, the more likely they are to do something. Search engines also rank sites higher if they include authoritative external links to reputable sources, like government sites or academic sites. Just don’t like your competition.
A List of SEO Copywriting Tools and Resources
SEO Plugins
A plugin is a tool that can be added to a browser or a content management system. SEO plugins like Yoast SEO (for WordPress) or All in One SEO Pack to streamline on-page optimization if you use WordPress. You can also use the SEMRush plugin if you use Google Chrome. These tools provide real-time feedback and suggestions to improve the SEO-friendliness of your content. So before you hit publish, you’ll see what could be improved.
Content Management Systems
Your CMS should have an SEO tool that acts as a wizard, i.e. guiding you through what you need to do. Wix, Squarespace and Shopify have built in tools.
Others offer apps, or plugins, that you must install (some are free).
Analytics Tools
Why go through all of this effort if you don’t know if it’s working? Use analytics tools like Google Analytics 4 to track the performance of your SEO efforts. It’s free, and will show you your SERP ranking for various pages, organic traffic, bounce rates, and conversion rates.
We offer a free SEO analysis. Reach out to us, and from there we can discuss how to improve your SEO copywriting, or how we can handle the task for you.
Contact Us Today!