Years ago, you could just stuff your post with keywords, buy links, and land on Google’s first page for a search term. Today, that would see your web pages penalized or totally removed from search results.
SEO is now about providing value for your visitors. And it usually begins with On-Page Optimization. If you want to rank high on search engines today, everything you do from email marketing to social networking to copywriting must be to provide value for your visitors.
Then you’ll improve your search rank. There’s no shortcut about it. In this post, I’ll be showing you vital tips to achieve better ranking through copywriting.
Why is website copywriting important in SEO?
The frank truth is that copywriting is the pillar of SEO. This is because when your potential visitors use search engines, they’re looking for content that will meet their immediate needs.
The quality of your copywriting and how you optimize it determines whether your post ranks first for a search term. Or hundredth.
Over the years, Google has made SEO majorly about quality content. The most important SEO advice has been: provide the best value for your readers.
There’s no better way to do this than through vibrant copywriting. How do you improve your copywriting to gain better search rankings?
1. Optimize your page title with the right keyword for effective SEO content
Your page title or headline is the most important part of your post. Because no matter how great the content of a post is, nobody gets to read it if the title is weak.
Legendary copywriter, David Ogilvy, said: “when you have written your headline, you have spent eighty cents out of your dollar.”
Your post title is so important that copywriting experts have recommended you spend half of the time to craft an irresistible title.
One of our recent posts about Client Onboarding Best Practices have has generated well over 14,000 views in less than 2 months has a catchy title. Take a look:
What’s the most important keyword you’re trying to rank for with your content? Make sure you insert the keyword into your title and as early as possible.
For instance, if your title has 8 words, let your keywords appear in the first 4.
Consider the title of this post. This post is essentially giving copywriting tips for your website. You can see that appears first in the title.
Apart from inserting a keyword, your title should preach benefits your readers would gain when they read the full post. You must be clear about this
If you’re not a natural at crafting titles, you can use headline templates that have proven to work in the past. You can model one of these 100 Headline Ideas by Content Marketing Up.
2. Use short sentences and thoughts to optimize content for mobile
Creating content for your website is different from writing doctorate thesis. Long sentences and paragraphs are allowed in your thesis. However, it could kill your website.
Especially when you consider mobile users. A paragraph that contains 4 lines on PC could easily take 8 on mobile.
According to Henneke Duistermaat on Enchanted Marketing, “To make your writing sparkle, you must cut long sentences and skip bland words.”
With mobile searchers surpassing desktop on Google, you have to know that optimizing your user experience for mobile is as important as the desktop. When you use long sentences and paragraphs in your content, it becomes difficult for visitors to read.
The next step they take is to bounce off your page. A signal like this tells Google that your website’s user experience is poor. You lose rank this way.
Make your sentences short and easy to read on mobile. This will definitely boost your traffic. As an example, by optimizing its website for mobile and other strategies, University of Cambridge was able to increase organic traffic by 66% over a year.
3. Use active voice to write your landing page copy and increase Time on Site
Passive voice is boring, unreadable, and does readers no good. This is because no matter your good intentions, readers will usually abandon your post before they get to the end.
What do I mean by passive and active voice? Let me give you an example. “I love you” is active while “You are loved” is passive. We both know the former carries more weight. Even though they may be trying to say the same thing.
Phil Jamieson said: “But too often, writers use passive voice unconsciously, leading to awkward, vague, or bloated sentences that make the meaning harder to understand.”
When you’re writing content for your website, you’re having a conversation with your readers. Active voice makes you feel connected to your readers where passive voice may feel detached. Like you’re writing for a robot.
Apart from boosting user experience on your website, it also automatically helps SEO. Because searchers use conversational terms to search. And with voice search gaining momentum every day, this will only get better as the months go by.
4. Link out to trusted websites to provide a richer user experience
The truth is that your website can’t have all the resources related to your content. More so, you can’t explain every concept in your post.
When you mention a concept that can’t be explained fully in a sentence or two, you should link to the best resource that throws a greater light on it.
Make sure you link to authoritative websites on any topic you’re talking about. What this tells search engines is that you’re providing the best value possible for your visitors.
Linking to these websites improve your authority in your niche — and boosts your chances of ranking high on Google for important keywords.
Reboot performed an experiment to find if linking to authoritative websites do have an effect on search ranking for a website. It found that sites with external links ranked higher than those without.
5. Craft meta descriptions by asking questions that challenge users
Your meta description is the snippet searchers see below your post before they click on it. Meta description gives the summary of your post. Ask yourself: “are you asking questions that they would like to get answers to?”
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With a meta description, you can ask questions that give potential visitors an idea of what they’ll get when they click through to your post. This is an example from Search Engine Watch that asks questions searcher want answers to. This is for search query ‘meta description.’
6. Use deep linking to create a flow and aid Google spider in crawling your website
When you have a website in a niche, Google wants to see you as an authority in that niche. One way to show authority is to use deep linking on your website. This involves having many internal links between your posts. We do this a lot in our posts.
One thing this tells search engines is that you have enough resources about your broad topic on your website. This allows Google bots to easily crawl your website which will only improve your search rankings.
7. Use the “Inverted Pyramid” to reduce website bounce rate
The first time Nora Ephron attended journalism class taken by Charles Simms, students in the class were given work to do. Mr. Simms presented facts about an event and told them to report it. Most students got it wrong. Why?
Because they failed to put the most important information first.
The ‘inverted pyramid’ method is all about presenting the most important information about your post first.
This serves as a hook that draws reader’s attention. By offering value to your visitor at the beginning of your post, this makes them continue reading your post.
Consequently, this reduces your bounce rate and improve your rankings. Laura Lopuch is a master at captivating the audience with the first line of her posts.
8. Match your website content with guest posts for relevance
Although the impact of links from guest posts has reduced over the years, it’s still important for SEO — especially if you get featured on reputable websites.
But to have the best SEO effect from your guest posts, you have to make sure they’re similar to the content on your website. You also have to guest post on authoritative websites that are in the same niche as you are.
When you write a guest post that provides value, readers on that website who click-through to your website want to see that same type of content (but better) on your website, not something entirely different.
When Silvio Porcellana needed more search traffic, he began a guest blogging campaign. And got a 20% increase in search traffic after publishing 44 guest posts.
9. Create long-form comprehensive content to outrank your competitors
If your goal is to rank high in search engines, then the short-form content is not an option. This is because, to a large extent, search engines believe only long-form content is able to explain concepts in details.
As a result of this, it is believed that long-form articles provide the highest values to searchers.
Search engines are trying to give search users the best information possible. Going into details when you produce content for your website will give you a better opportunity to rank as search engines believe you’re providing value.
Brian Dean conducted a research on 1 million Google search results and found that the length of posts correlated with their positions on the search results page. A post on Google’s first page had an average of 1890 words.
In another research by SerpIQ, they also found posts length to be correlated with their Google search position. The average length of the post in the number one spot was 2450 words.
Even though the word count differs on both studies, one thing that is clear is that long-form content dominates on search engines and affects your position.
By posting long-form content consistently, Success At School increased its search traffic by 1,000%.
Conclusion
If you have a website and you’re serious about improving SEO for your website, copywriting is the most important factor to consider.
With the right copywriting, you’ll improve user experience and build a successful website.
You can improve your search rankings, get customers to your website, and keep them glued to your content. This gives you the best chance to achieve the targets that you’ve set for your business.
