An easy guide.
Content is an essential part of any SEO strategy:
Maybe the most important.
Pay Per Click advertising is all well and good, but without decent content, page views will convert to high bounce rates. You know what else? Google can limit your PPC success if you have poor content.
SEO copywriting is often held up as a magical mix of bizarre components:
The trick is to write simple copy.
Why is that?
It's because search engines, especially Google, don't like it when copywriters overuse keywords. There's a term for it: Keyword Stuffing.
Do you want an example? Well, great!
This sofa is a fantastic sofa, because unlike other sofas, this sofa comes with a detachable headrest designed for this sofa. The sofa also fits in any room and this sofa is big enough to sleep on.
Historically, this was the best way to get your pages to the top of the rankings. Search engines worked on keywords. More keywords meant more hits. Simply stated, everyone abused the system. Pages were unreadable. But then, the search engines fought back.
Nowadays, search engines punish Keyword Stuffing.
In fact, they're intelligent enough to track synonyms. The example above should be written more like this:
This reclining sofa is a fantastic item of furniture, because unlike other chairs, this one comes with a detachable headrest designed specifically to fit. This recliner fits in any room, and the seats are wide enough to sleep on.
So, in the dim and distant past, search engines looked for keywords and used them to rank a page. Now they're intelligent enough to understand its meaning!
What this means:
While keyword stuffing and duplicate content are punished, engaging, original copy is rewarded!
SEO copywriting is at it's best when it's carefully targeted, interesting and shareable.
If you do it right, your readers will do your work for you. Keep them on the page, and your rank increases. Get them sharing the page, and your rank increases. All you need is good copy!
So where to begin? Once upon a time, your English teacher taught you the right way to write. Ignore her! If you want engaging content, you'll need to use a few tricks.
First, do a little research. It's easy to start writing, but you need some direction. What do your visitors search for? What do you want to target? If you have a plan, it's a lot quicker. All you need to know are the four or five keywords that you want to target.
Now, do you know what you want? Then start sprinkling!
The trick is to use the keywords without stuffing. How do you do this?
Simple!
Aim for your keywords to be less than 5% of your content. 100 words means 5 keywords. And, don't forget those synonyms. Just because you've mentioned a donut doesn't mean you can't mention a pastry. In fact, you should!
Remember, search engines track the overall meaning. Most pages should have 300 words of copy, so there's plenty of room to build a story and hit your search terms.
It's equally important to make sure that those keywords are relevant to the page. If your page is about calculators, then focus on calculators! Luckily, most eCommerce sites are already stuctured to support this format.
Just like that, you're sorted. Still, there's one very important thing to remember:
Don't let anything get in the way of good copy.
If your text doesn't flow, no one will read it. If no one reads it, they'll leave the page. And then, the search engines will record the high bounce rate. And then, after a complicated series of events, the world will end.
Luckily, it's quite easy to avert the apocalypse as we have a secret. A little mix of tips that're guaranteed to increase time on page.
First, make sure you're breaking up your text. It's tempting to put everything in a clump (your teacher did teach you about paragraphs, after all), but that makes it hard to read, especially on mobile devices. Short sentences are great. They grab attention. They encourage the reader.
But, there's more!
Explore space and use line breaks. Sometimes you want to give the reader a break; add some padding so they can take a breath.
Put a gap around an important point.
Then, play with some simple formatting. Header Tags are used by search engines to follow page content, but they have another bonus. Look up this page; it's split into sections. Much easier to read! Likewise, a few important bits are highlighted in bold. Enough to emphasise, but not enough to dazzle; balance.
Don't be afraid of bullet points:
Finally, you're going to need a bit of sparkle. Something to attract the eye. Pictures and videos make great additions, but in our experience balance is best. No wall of text, no overpowering images. They should be the accent mark. The cherry on the sundae.
Now you know what to do, there's no excuse. It's easy to populate your pages with fantastic content, so go for it!
All you need to do is to remember a few simple rules whenever you're writing copy for your website. It needs to be simple, informative and focused. Do your research and ensure that you're targeting the right keywords to maximise the effectiveness fo your campaigns! Format the page in an interesting way and engage your reader.
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Phil Andrews, Fuel Tank Shop
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