What Is SEO Copywriting and How Does it Affect Website ranking?

Do you know one of the most important rules of quality SEO? It’s the ability to keep up with Google algorithm changes! In the past, search engines didn’t care about content at all. Poor quality links bought in bulk and other activities now considered black hat SEO were sufficient to rank high. However, much has changed in 2011 when Google introduced the seemingly innocent and adorable Panda algorithm. Back then, saying that “content is king” became unbelievably popular in our industry. The newer updates brought even more changes, with E-E-A-T – Experience, Expertise, Authoritativeness, and Trustworthiness – taking the place of the old saying, but one thing did not change:  SEO copywriting is an extremely important and precious component of any digital marketing strategy. Therefore, today we’re going to take a closer look at this process.

We deliberately applied the word “process” in the introduction – properly performed SEO copywriting that is supposed to bring the intended results is neither quick nor easy. It’s an elaborate process that involves a number of factors.

Let’s start from the very beginning. What exactly is SEO copywriting? In a nutshell, it’s the creation of quality content that doesn’t only attract users but also improves keyword saturation of your website, helping Google find phrases that are relevant for you. Therefore, its most crucial element is creating content that is addressed to people and optimized for search engines.

The ability to create content that attracts attention and makes people want to share it on social media channels inspires trust in your website and consequently helps you rank higher on Google. SEO copywriting will help you reach recipients and solve their problems with the use of well-formulated content.

Contrary to what you may think, writing texts that are properly optimized for SEO and, at the same time, enjoyable to read and seen as valuable by the user (meaning your potential customer) isn’t a piece of cake.

Combining these two features will allow you to endear appreciation of both users and Google robots. 🙂

One can be stated for sure – when it comes to SEO copywriting, a HUMAN is much more important than the Panda algorithm or Google. The human sitting in front of the screen and reading your content. Do you know why? Because this human generates website traffic and website traffic has a positive impact on your conversion.

Consequently, your content has to meet two requirements:

1. First of all, it needs to address specific people (users, readers, potential customers looking for answers to questions),
2. Second of all, it needs to provide quality answers to those questions.

Being able to combine these two features is a recipe for quality online copywriting.

Additionally, your content needs to be in line with E-E-A-T. What is E-E-A-T? It’s a set of guidelines for content creation prepared by Google. Each letter stands for a different principle of good content:

• Experience
• Expertise
• Authoritativeness
• Trustworthiness

Once, when doing research on user experience, we encountered the following quote:

Change “users” to “readers” to get a recipe for creating SEO copywriting that addresses users’ questions.

But, how to write user-oriented content? Get to know your readers to find out how to answer their questions. Do the right research. Put yourself in their shoes. What do they not know? What do they wish to find on your website? What should truly encourage them to buy your products or benefit from your services? You have to learn the answers to all these questions!

Let’s assume that you run a kitchen products store and you want to sell more blenders. Instead of singing the praises of your appliances, show the benefits of owning them. Share recipes for the most delicious cream soups and rejuvenating smoothies. Catch users’ attention – don’t convince them that they need your blender…but show them how it’s a solution to their problems!

And don’t forget to optimize your text – that’s what SEO copywriting is all about.

Who makes people do certain actions? A good copywriter who creates catchy slogans that encourage users to reach for specific products. A good copywriter is someone who makes certain phrases ingrained in your memory so strongly that you’re able to recite them even if someone wakes you up in the middle of the night. A professional is able to empathize with potential recipients, understand their needs, and analyze what keywords, headers, or paragraphs are likely to convince them.

SEO copywriters create exactly such content for online marketing purposes. Additionally, they take into account Google, the way the search engine “thinks,” and the phrases or text formatting styles that are attractive for its robots.

It’s also crucial to remember that proper text optimization is essential for SEO articles, as the appealing layout of the entry matters to readers. Don’t forget about headers; divide texts into appropriate paragraphs to make it easier to scan them and highlight the most important parts.

Let’s now get into detail, shall we? We’ve prepared a list of tips and best practices regarding SEO copywriting, so take a look below and learn how to create truly gripping content!

Let’s start with the research about your users. What should you do to understand your audience?

• Analyze your data (or ask your client) – Start with a data-driven approach, and discover who is most likely to visit your website and purchase your products. Collect information on geolocation, age, even the time at which there is the most traffic – anything that would help you create a user persona.
• Build your marketing personas – With all the data collected in the previous step, you need to come up with a few example personas of your target audience. Don’t only rely on data here – start thinking about their pain points and priorities, as your content (especially product and category descriptions) needs to address them.
• Collect feedback – Set up a comment section, and learn based on the reviews of your products. This will help you understand the users better, thus tailor your SEO copywriting to their needs.

On the one hand, you want to place keywords naturally. On the other, it’s often tricky, especially when most (or all) of them are questions. But don’t let this discourage you – map out your KWs!

You don’t want to repeat your keywords too frequently, so don’t force them. Instead, try different methods for writing your text. Perhaps it’s better for you to plan where you will place the keywords beforehand? Completely ignore them and optimize the text afterward (as they might appear naturally in the text)? Or, maybe, include them right away, thinking about what you’re doing?

If there was a manual or one universal way to create high-quality content, everybody would be using it. But, it doesn’t mean that there aren’t any good practices that you could implement to make your content better. So, how to make sure that your content is valuable?

• Put the user first – While you need to optimize your content for bots, they’re not your main target audience – real people are. Think about them, how they view content, what intentions they have, what they are looking for. Provide them with texts that are easy to read and captivating.
• Come up with a UVP – Unique value proposition is usually discussed only when products are concerned, but it’s a mistake! You have to think about it also during the copywriting process. A good article that will rank high in SERPs has to provide the readers with something new, fresh, unique, something that they cannot find in multiple other articles on the same topic. Especially, since we’re entering the era of internet flooded with AI-generated content.
• Build trust – You also need to build trust with your copywriting. The best way to do so is to find reliable sources (e.g. statistics) and cite them. This way, your content will become reliable, which will also affect the ranking.
• Showcase your expertise – You have a case study on the discussed topic? Or, maybe, you’ve seen examples of customers making certain mistakes that you mention in the article? Make use of these and show that you’re an expert. This will affect trust and build your brand image, while increasing the value of your content at the same time.
• Be concise – If the answer to a question is yes or no, use…either yes or no. If the article is about a pizza recipe, don’t start it with a lengthy section on the history of pizza. Get straight to the point and don’t beat around the bush.

What is good copywriting in an unpleasant layout? Bad copywriting. That’s why, you need to think about the format in which you serve your copy.

A good layout can be the make or break of content, no matter how gripping or engaging the text itself is. Internet users hate long blocks of texts, get tired if an article is too long, sometimes they just scan the article for the particular piece of information they’re searching.

What do you need to do in this case? Structure your text with H2 and H3 headers, introduce bullet point lists, divide the text with photos, banners, quotes, or videos and mark the key fragments in bold or italics. This is one of the reasons why generative AI achieved such a success. While it might hallucinate or tackle topics shallowly, it structures the text in a way that is digestible for the users, so that’s something we should all learn from the robots!

Should the content be updated? Yes! Should you stay updated? Also positive.

You can’t leave the content be, expecting it to thrive for years. After some time, it’s bound to attract less traffic. This might be caused by new, more valuable content emerging on the internet, or even the changes that occurred in the field discussed in your article. By regularly monitoring your content (its performance and relevance) you’ll know when to update it to maintain its performance and attract more users. Just take a look at the topic of SEO copywriting – a few years ago content was king, a bit closer to now intent was king, now we’re all about E-E-A-T and there’s AI on the way. Imagine an article on this topic written 5 years ago, would it be relevant at all if it wasn’t updated?

When it comes to you staying up to date, we mean the algorithms. With them being updated, your ranks in SERPs might change, along with the best ways to write content. Thus, you should follow up all updates and monitor how they change the copywriting landscape.

There are a number of theories on what works best in terms of SEO. However, without a shadow of a doubt, domain trust and authority are among the key elements that affect website positions on Google. Being able to apply relevant keywords on the page is also important. And it’s hard to apply them naturally without appropriate website content.

There are 6 main components of SEO copywriting that affect SEO and should be borne in mind:

• Website speed. It’s been one of the Google ranking factors since 2010. If the website loading time is too long, the content doesn’t matter, as users will simply resign and they won’t read it. Additionally, website speed has been proven to influence conversions significantly, so you need to ensure that your site has top-notch performance.
• Headers. These elements attract users. If they aren’t mesmerizing, the quality of the content of the paragraphs isn’t really important, as hardly anyone will read it. A catchy header encourages users to click the link. It’s a good idea to provide numbers like “5 ways to…” or “10 worst methods…”. This way, you promise to give users helpful solutions, and they truly appreciate it. If you want to learn more about website headers, check out this entry on the MOZ blog: https://moz.com/blog/5-data-insights-into-the-headlines-readers-click.
• The content itself. Actually, users type things on Google because they want to access relevant information. Information means content. Don’t let users down and address their concerns. Remember that both readers and Google robots care about the content that’s up-to-date.
• Meta description. Think about it before creating content and update it before publishing texts. This will make it easier for the search engine to find your content, comprehend its essence, and included phrases. A meta description is an attribute that concisely explains the content of your page to Google. Therefore, it’s worth making sure it’s properly structured.

• Keyword saturation. It has to be optimal. However, remember that there is nothing worse than gilding the lily. Using too many keywords and applying them in headers in a way that’s not natural is considered keyword stuffing. Although it worked a few years ago, now it’s categorized as a dishonest practice that may result in a Google penalty. Phrases shouldn’t take up more than 5% of the whole content. Page Keyword Density Analysis or wordcounter360 are useful tools for checking your keyword density.
• Links to websites. Links are a cornerstone of website development. Including links to various websites in your SEO articles indicates to Google that you’re connected to other helpful content (whether it’s yours or someone else’s). It shows that you want to contribute to Google’s mission – which is to organize valuable information in the online world. Thanks to it, your position in the ranking improves.

If your SEO copywriting includes all the abovementioned components, you can sleep soundly knowing that Google will notice your website and improve its position in the ranking, which will translate into higher traffic and conversion rates.

It’s also worth keeping in mind that SEO copywriting isn’t only about blog content or website articles. This term also applies to descriptions of your homepage, categories, products offered by your store*, or services you provide. To tell the truth, the more valuable website content you have, the better your page is perceived by Google.

Let’s sum up what SEO copywriting is and how to do it!

• SEO copywriting is a process, one that might be challenging.
• With quality SEO copywriting, you can not only attract customers to your website but also boost sales by improving conversion rates.
• You should prepare your content with E-E-A-T in mind, offering texts that show your expertise, experience and topic authoritativeness, while evoking trust.
• To write good copy, you need to:
  • answer user’s questions,
  • be up-to-date,
  • be appealing and as substantive as possible,
  • use proper formatting – catchy headers, highlights, italics, etc.,
  • create an attractive meta description,
  • include linking,
  • ensure proper selection and density of keywords,
  • provide users with unique value!
• Even the best content has to be monitored and regularly updated.

This does feel like much, doesn’t it? Don’t worry – check out our blog writing services and see how we can help you create unique content tailored to your business goals!

This is an updated article, initially published on April 19, 2021.