Copywriting – How to do it well

As the SEO copywriter / Social Media Monkey I thought it would be worth writing some hints and tips to writing good copy.

Firstly, what is good copy? This question is gets banded around every couple of months with people claiming content is king every other day, and in my opinion this is completely true. Content is written for readers in order to take action, not simply for search engines. However getting the balance right is the most difficult and interesting element of writing SEO content. Writing SEO content is the balance between the creative and the analytical, giving writers the task to find the middle ground pleasing both parties in equal measure.

Rant Over!

Now 5 elements of SEO Content

1. Title and Headlines

If you optimize anything it has to be the title and or headline. The title gets people to click through to your article, it therefore needs to be engaging from the start, if your audience does click through, your article or content will be thrown to the road side like millions of other articles, emails and web content.

From a Search Engine perspective, Keywords in the title will give them information on the content of the post; the title tag is one of the most important pieces of information search engines have to decide what the content is about. The emphasis on keyword optimization makes sense for titles and headlines however, Don’t Forget the readers. Which one is better?

• SEO Content, SEO copywriting, and SEO writing
• SEO Content – 5 tips to write good SEO Copy.

2. Meta Description

Meta Descriptions are the 160 characters that are shown below the search result.

Here the battle between usability and search engines comes together again, giving validity to either side of the argument. The Meta description again offers both parties information to help them; again it is important to remember the pecking order and who it is you are writing for. There are metrics and KW density scores to establish how many keywords should be in a given Meta Description – Personally I don’t like these metrics, if you are writing for a human readership it shouldn’t be based on metrics, especially with the development of Google semantics in relation to KW the cramming of keywords is something left in the past. However, again similarly to Titles the information based in Meta descriptions can offer search engines information about the content – especially when this is aligned with title information and the content itself.

3. Content

Content! Content! Content!

For me content is paramount to any marketing campaign – possibly everything!

Unique and regularly updated content is a big plus for search engines; Google et al appreciate fresh content as much as they hate duplicate content. Your content should be highly relevant to your title and Meta description which not only ensures that readers get what they click for, but so search engines can carry the semantic relations through the titles, meta data through to the content.

With regards the content of the content (does that make sense?) you need to ensure that the keyword focus is consistent through the content, again aligning with the keywords focused in the previous 2 areas.

It’s generally accepted that very brief content may have a harder time ranking over a page with more substantial content. So you’ll want to have a content body length of at least 300 words.

4. Keyword Density

The magic number in online copywriting has to be keyword density and frequency. Density being a percentage of the words on the page is the focused keyword, whilst frequency is how many times on a given page the keyword appears.

Keyword frequency is obviously a relevant metric as well as being a measurable one, whilst density is slightly more obscure as to its accuracy. However the measurable frequency obviously depends on the amount of words on a page and therefore relies on KW density metrics.

In layman’s terms you can only measure KW frequency dependant on the overall length of the content itself. As I mentioned above KW metrics aren’t the most important element to a copywriter and really shouldn’t be the main focus of your writing. With Google’s development towards semantic metrics and interpreting what content is actually about, both copywriters and search engines will eventually fade out the importance of keywords and focus on semantics.

5. Linking and Page links

I’m sure Tom will have his own views on page linking but simply from a copywriting sense linking can really help you content to be seen and your content itself can influence website link structures increasing SEO potential of your copy.

I have a simply mantra when it comes you using content for linking. It’s a general theory for best practice accepted by the majority of copywriters.

Make sure you links are: -

• Using relevant anchor text (including your keyword focus)
• Link in the first paragraph – get a link in nice and early
• Link internally to relevant pages to strengthen back links
• Don’t overdo it! – For usability I hate seeing a page full of links!

Done!

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