How to Incorporate Best Practices of SEO into Copy?

One of the biggest challenges of copywriting is creating content that’s optimized for search engines. With tens of thousands of copies being published online, appearing on the first page of Google is no easy feat. what are the different types of SEO practices that you must use to acquire the best results? Let’s discuss.

Check out these best SEO practices to optimize your content and boost your ranking on major search engines.

Choose Keywords Wisely

Let’s begin with the most important part – the keywords. Keyword hunting is probably the most daunting task in content creation, but if you nail the keywords right, you’re one step closer to attracting organic traffic to your site.

Here’s how you can find the right keywords for your content:

Start with keyword research

There are free tools that help you research and analyze keywords, such as Google Search Console and Google Keyword Planner.

Think about search intent

Internet users type keywords for three major purposes: navigational, information, and transactional (commercial). Choose the keyword that targets the search intent of your target readers.

Plan your journey

Know your audience. Identify the needs of your target audience and how they want to be communicated.

It’s also useful to think about your readers’ stage in the buyer’s journey. They could be at the awareness stage when they just realize they have a problem, consideration stage when they already have a list of solutions or products in mind, and decision stage when they decide which brand to choose.

Avoid Keyword Stuffing

While keywords are very important, you don’t want to overdo them. Keyword stuffing can kill your SEO. Why? The reason is it creates an awful experience for users.

Remember that content aims to educate, serve, and engage your readers. By stuffing your content with keywords, you stop writing for your readers. Rather, you write for search engines. This ultimately leads to a poor experience for your audience.

That said, how do you achieve a healthy keyword density?

• Assign a primary keyword to each page.
• Maintain a minimum word count of at least 300 words.
• Keep your keyword density below 2%.
• Add secondary keywords and long-tailed keyword variations in the copy.
• Know proper keyword placement.

Keep Your Content Unique

Strive to come up with fresh and unique content. Unique content plays a crucial role in search engine rankings because search algorithms favor unique content and penalize websites that publish duplicate content.

Here are some tips for creating original content:

• Never copy text from elsewhere. Use plagiarism tools to be sure that your content doesn’t contain duplicate texts.
• Use multiple resources when researching your topic.
• Use your unique style of writing.
• Give your content a different structure.
• Write using your own words. Explain things the way you understand them. Additionally, write from your personal experience.
• Write down your ideas. Keeping an idea journal is a great strategy because it gives you a place where you can keep all of your ideas and thoughts.

Use Clear Messaging in Each Step

The language you use for your content is an important factor too. Make sure you are clear with your messaging and that it suits your target audience.

Whether you’re creating a blog post or marketing content, clear messaging is necessary.

If the message of your content isn’t clear, your readers will have to exert more effort to understand what you do or why they should care.

Fortunately, there are little things you can do to ensure that your messaging is crystal clear. Check these out:

Adopt the StoryBrand Framework

StoryBrand Framework, a popular marketing tool among business leaders, allows marketers and organizations to clarify their message. It involves a seven-part process that leverages the power of storytelling.

Speak the language of your audience

If you’re trying to explain the impact of exercise in preventing cancer to a non-medical audience, you want to use common terms and speak their language.

Have a clear content strategy for each channel

The way you craft your content for your website will be different from the way you present it on social media and other channels or platforms.

Focus on User Experience

SEO and user experience (UX) are a perfect team. SEO leads internet searchers to the information they need, but it doesn’t guarantee that they will keep reading your content. If the information presented isn’t intuitive and hard to navigate, there’s poor user experience.

What are the best SEO practices that influence user experience?

Use headings

Reading a big chunk of content can be overwhelming. Headings do not only structure the content on a page but also improve readability, making it easy for users to understand the content. Incorporate keywords in your header tags to make your copy even more optimized for search engines.

Make your content longer

The minimum recommended length for page copy is 600 words. This ensures that every page has in-depth content that can provide answers to user questions.

Suggested:

How Long Should a Blog Post Be?

Speed it up

Users want information at a lightning speed. No one wants to wait more than two seconds for a page to load, and neither Google wants it. That said, poorly loading sites and web pages rank low on major search engines.

Update Old Content

Fresh content is critical to SEO. This doesn’t just involve creating fresh content, but also updating old content. Each day, SEO rules are changing. What worked a month ago may no longer be applicable today.

Remember that search engines are pretty smart. They prefer long articles with fresh, unique content written according to the current best SEO practices.

How often should you update your website content? It’s important to keep your site updated with new and interesting content. You should update blog content weekly. Adding new content multiple times per week can even drive more traffic to your site.

Check out these tips for updating your content:

Before making any changes or updates, check your SEO

Conduct an SEO audit of your site so you will determine the factors you’re hitting and which ones need improvement. There are free tools or SEO checkers you can use to see how well your content is doing in terms of SEO.

Look at what competitors are doing

It’s crucial to perform an analysis of the competitive landscape before making changes. Take a look at their content. Is there anything you can do better?

Can you provide more user-friendly content? Or can you write a lengthy piece of content that will provide more value to your audience and outrank your competitor’s content?

Incorporate multimedia elements into your site

Things like infographics, photos, videos, and audio will make your content more user-friendly and engaging. This means people will stay longer on your page. The more they stay, the better your ranking will be.

However, be careful when adding multimedia elements to your content. It’s best to compress any images or videos so they won’t affect the speed of your site.

Link-building

Link-building is another critical factor of successful SEO. Even though link-building is a time-intensive process, it’s one of the best ways to improve your Google rankings.

How? First of all, link-building helps you establish brand trust and online presence. Second, it drives more traffic to your website and helps generate future leads. It’s also an effective way to increase the value and domain authority of your website.

Here are some of the most useful link-building tips that copywriters and internet marketers use today:

• Reach out for links. Choose authoritative sites that are relevant to your content. A simple search using keywords within your niche will reveal potential link partners.
• Do guest posts. Write a blog post for another website in your niche and include a link back to yours.
• Find bloggers in your niche who can be your partners in link-building.
• Boost your infographic links.
• Add your links to social media platforms to drive more user engagement.

Conclusion

SEO has a major role to play in ensuring that your content reaches your target audience and your website ranks on top of Google.

There are many ways to incorporate SEO into your copy. These include choosing the right keywords, not overstuffing keywords, creating unique and fresh content, and ensuring that your copy sends the right message.

By adopting these best practices, you can create valuable content that readers will love, and Google too.