Your B2B website content is one of the primary ranking factors for search engines. It’s also one of the essential ways that your prospects learn more about the products and services your company offers.
So, how do you draft website copy that resonates with your ideal target market but also tells search engines everything they need to know to ensure you rank for the right SEO terms?
Let’s take a look.
A Human Should Be Your Primary Audience
If an “SEO specialist” tells you that your primary audience for writing B2B website copy is a search engine, they are wrong. While it’s important to optimize your copy for search engines, the audience you draft your copy for should always be your ideal customer.
When drafting copy for your target market, ask yourself:
- What questions do prospects ask?
- What content will help answer questions during the sales process?
- What copy and content pieces will build value for our ideal market?
As you draft B2B website copy, be sure to picture your target market. Speak to their needs, wants, challenges, and questions. Don’t be afraid to play to emotions or connect with their major frustrations.
Always, always focus on creating quality content.
Search Engines Can’t Be Forgotten
While humans are your primary audience for your website copy, search engines are a very close second. Why? Because you want your website to be ranked well and found by your end user (target market).
Remember, if your website copy is Pulitzer prize-winning, but search engines can’t figure out what types of products or services you offer, no one will ever read it.
For this very reason, you need to ensure that your copy is optimized for search engines. Search engines are relying heavily on AI to evolve and evaluate content. The maybe, kinda scary thing is that they are getting better at distinguishing quality content from low-quality content.
You Can Write for Both
When you work with a copywriter and an experienced SEO team, it’s possible to deliver content that engages your target market and enables your B2B website to rank well in search engines. The key to engaging readers and search engines is to draft high-quality, optimized content that includes ideal keywords and provides value to your reader.
Keep in mind, if you slap together crappy copy, not only will readers realize it, search engines will as well. Conversely, if you spend the time to carefully draft quality content that provides critical insights and takeaways, you will not only please and engage your prospects and customers, you will demonstrate to search engines that you are a reputable resource for your industry.
In truth, there is a balance that must be struck between writing copy for readers and copy that clearly tells Google what your page is about. Sometimes we come across clients who don’t like including keywords in copy or headlines because they fear keyword-driven copy isn’t engaging or creative. But if your goal is attracting more inbound leads, on-page keyword optimization is an important way to ensure your website gets found.
Everyday Failures in SEO + Copywriting
The biggest failure that we see in writing copy for B2B web design projects is that the writer loses sight of the two intended audiences and writes copy for just one or the other.
Here are a few other everyday failures we see in the creation of quality copy:
- Keyword stuffing – This was never a good tactic.
- Unnatural use of keywords – Keywords should work well in the copy and an experienced copywriter will place them properly.
- Well written copy without any attempt at optimization – Don’t be scared of alienating a reader with SEO.
- Copy drafted without SEO research – SEO research is essential for creating content that your prospects and clients are searching for and want to read.
- Not thinking about the searcher’s intent – If someone searches a phrase and clicks on your page from search results, your copy should deliver on what the searcher was looking for.
- A focus on either long-form only or short-form only – Variety of types and length of copy/content pieces is essential to serve up worthwhile material for each stage of the buying journey.
- Copy that is overly promotional – Copy that is overly promotional will get lost in the void. Instead, focus on copy and content that your end user wants to consume.
- Creating content that everyone else is creating – It’s ok to discuss topics that are similar to your competitors, but come up with a fresh angle or new information.
- Obsessing over rankings and ignoring engagement – It’s ok to have a smaller amount of website traffic as long as it’s quality. However, it’s not worthwhile to have a ton of website traffic if it’s outside of your target market.
This list could go on, but this is a good snapshot of what to avoid in creating copy that your users will love and search engines will like as well.
Co-authored by Rachel Cunningham, Content Marketing Director, and Robin Maylone, Web Content Director