Importance of SEO copywriting
F5 Studio SEOs hate the term ‘SEO copywriting’ because it is totally wrong. It doesn’t accurately describe activities and services. SEO copywriting is just another form of “search engine optimization”. It’s all still search engine optimization. SEO copywriting is about the ability to write content that the search engines will index and show to their users. This is why SEO copywriting is important.
What about the mantra of SEO “Write for people, not search engines”? In fact, people read anything that is engaging. And people leave anything that bores them. Making boring content indexable doesn’t make it less boring.
All right, first thing’s first.
How do search engines work?
People complicate search engine optimization because any search engine is a complex technical system that was created by engineers. If you ask Google “How do search engines work?” you will find many articles about PageRank, algorithms, MUM, BERT, ranking factors, etc.
But the truth is anybody doesn’t have to be a technical wizard to do SEO.
Have you thought about why people created these articles? People created these articles because they know that one of the most effective things they can do to drive traffic on their sites is writing content that attracts and engages visitors.
If you want to know about SEO you will use search engines to find this information. Then, you will buy SEO courses, SEO services, or you will become a follower and advocate.
Honestly, you don’t need to know how search engines work unless you want to be an engineer who specializes in search engine development.
Any search engine’s goal is to show the most relevant search results for any given search query. This is why no matter how exactly a search engine processes content, indexes, or ranks pages. It doesn’t help you to create the most relevant content.
But what about “ranking factors”? Search engines know many ways which SEOs use to manipulate search results. Now SEOs are too focused on the backlinks. Sure, backlinks can be a heuristic for relevance and trust. Because good content usually attracts more backlinks than ‘spam’ content. But search engine’s goal isn’t to show the page with the most backlinks. Search engines focus on the search query and content relevancy.
Finally, you have to create content that will be relevant for search queries. But many search engines, for instance, Google, personalize search results. It means the content should be relevant to a search query and searcher’s persona.
As you can see it is all about content. This is why SEO copywriting is important if you want to drive valuable traffic (leads, customers) from organic search. But that’s not all.
Benefits of SEO copywriting
When SEOs and marketers talk about content, they mean text content, video content, images, audio content. Sure, video, images, and audio allow you to attract and engage website visitors. But search engines focus on text content because technically they understand the text content better. In other words, it is enough to invest in SEO copywriting to improve website SEO.
Another benefit of SEO copywriting is 100% control over the website content. Backlinks are hard to control. Using private blog networks is a risky way because search engines will identify them sooner or later. But you can improve your content whenever you want.
SEO copywriting improves website crawling. Search engines need more content to find the most relevant. If you create relevant content, you improve your website quality for search engines. Search engines bots will be more likely to visit your website to crawl it.
You can add internal links. Some SEOs and digital marketers think that internal links are ‘worse’ for search optimization than external links or backlinks. Just because links are internal to a site doesn’t mean they should be trusted less than external links (Bill Slawski wrote about links and the patent doesn’t appear to distinguish between external and internal links). In fact, your internal links are more likely to pass value in some form than any random external link. Also, you control internal links. You can create an anchor and link to it. Experienced SEO copywriters know that and use it to improve ranking. In search engine optimization, trust begins at home. If you don’t trust your own content and don’t use internal links search engines won’t trust it either.
Good website content earns backlinks. People like to share good content. Many SEOs think that backlinks help to rank better. The really good external links pass value and it affects the site ranking. But the main benefit is that the backlinks drive valuable referral traffic. The representatives of your target audience share the links to your site on sites, social media groups where your target audience is.
When you create more relevant content than that of your competition, instead of relying on backlinks, redirects from expired domains, guest posts, or other complicated concepts, it means your site is algorithm proof.
From time to time Google pushes an update, and everyone freaks out about decreases in traffic. Meanwhile, people who created relevant content continue to see improvements in traffic and revenue.
Because the goal of algorithm updates is to better surface relevant content to searchers.
In the end, website content encourages visitors to take desirable actions. In other words, website content has to convert visitors into leads, customers, followers, and fans.
Alright, SEO copywriting is more than search engine optimization.
SEO copywriting: how to create the relevant content
The creation of the relevant content is a challenging task for another reason. It is very difficult to understand which content is relevant.
Many marketers, SEOs, website owners are making the exact same mistakes all over again because they identify search engine optimization with the methods used to execute the process of search optimization.
What does it mean?
Writing headlines that fit into search queries or Google Search Suggestion is not SEO copywriting. Including low-volume keywords, writing quality content, including calls to action, and even answering readers’ questions are not SEO copywriting. Sure, website content should still include keywords and good structure to help search engines understand the content and predict relevancy. But these methods (and dozens of methods from the guides “How to SEO copywriting in 2022”) don’t help you drive valuable traffic.
Even if you see “optimized” pages on the top of the search result page, it doesn’t mean the content drives valuable traffic and converts the traffic into revenue. If you search for something on the web, you can see the search result page #1 is often filled with pages that really won’t answer your questions, keep your attention, or satisfy your curiosity.
SEO copywriting is to create something that people will read. Being unique in the crowd is the most competitive strength. Giving meaning and purpose to each page is the top priority for search optimization.
This SEO copywriting strategy takes time and requires investment but the results of this approach of search optimization last amazingly long.
SEO copywriting is important because it is about the present and the future of your business. You can create website content by yourself or order professional SEO copywriting services. Your choice depends on your skills, budget, and business goals. Anyway, if you create a good website copy, you will win.
