Firstly I’d like to thank Lance Bachmann for kindly accepting my invitation to write a guest blog post. With a passion for SEO and Content, it’s always a pleasure to help others understand just how influential the Internet can be.
The area of SEO I’ll be discussing – often the focus of many debates within the industry – is the importance and relevance of Content within an SEO campaign.
As a Content Writer it’s simple to appreciate how influential text can be to the success or failure of a website. With the vast opportunities to ‘spread the word’ of a business, why wouldn’t writing be the most important aspect of any SEO campaign?
With the combination of the onsite copy and external websites to support key phrases, it’s understandable why many SEO consultants within the industry still refer to content as ‘King.’
Of course, the success of writing depends entirely on these four points; Why Copy Is written, How To Write Effective Copy, Who You Are Writing For and Where To Distribute. Through this blog post I aim to tackle these points, explaining how they can be related to almost any copy and any campaign.
Why Copy Is Written:
Firstly, the most important aspect of web copy to mention are the keywords. As we are aware these little phrases are the skeleton of any SEO copy that is drafted. Whether you have two or fifty two key phrases, you want to ensure that you appear at the top of the search engines for all of them.
Starting with your website, copy is written to inform people that visit your website of the services you offer. The main focus of onsite text is to engage, tempt and call to action. As well as an imaginative design and easy navigation, the copy is what people focus on and should convince them to convert their visits into an enquiry.
Of course, the second point of SEO copy is to expose a business. Techniques to gain interest in your company may begin with articles, blogs, social media and press releases to name a few. By exposing your company in this way, your website will gain more authority and with the right distribution of keywords, your copy is more likely to be picked up in numerous places.
Your audience should always be the number one target for any of your copy. However, the Search Engines also need to be aware of your websites existence. With more exposure comes more authority and no one is more willing to reward honest, hard work than the Search Engines themselves.
How To Write Effective Copy:
In basic terms, writing comes with practice and patience. You need to be able to write well to make people engage with what you are writing about. Poor copy will only result in poor results and therefore the whole process is a futile one.
When writing effective copy, keep your keywords at the back of your mind. Keep the basic structure around what you’re link building for but don’t let it hinder your ideas. Key words should be natural and not crammed in at every possible opportunity as this will only turn off readers and annoy search engines.
Writing copy is about portraying ideas because you want to share with others of similar industries to ensure people know about your expertise. However, if writing isn’t something you feel confident with, there are plenty of companies that can provide this for you.
Who Are You Writing For:
Following on from the previous point on how to write copy it’s essential that you know how to target your audience. These are the people that make you money and by using copy, it’s your opportunity to really sell yourself.
The debate of content is more about the link building and how effective it is compared to other aspects of SEO. But what is vital to understand is that every aspect of SEO consists of content in some form or another, whether this is link building, social media, or email marketing.
Attracting the right attention from both search engines and prospective clients, starts with content and therefore knowing the difference between the writing styles to please both readers needs to be understood before putting fingers to keyboard.
Blogs can be more chatty, so make sure that you engage with your readers on a more personal level, in contrast to this is a Press Release where copy should be more formal. However, with any of your writing keep your personality within every aspect of your work. People want to interact with a face not a screen and by engaging your readers the response will prove this is effective.
Just imagine you are discussing your knowledge, ideas, opinions with prospective clients directly, because in theory, you are.
Where To Distribute:
One of the most crucial elements of any copy is where to get it noticed after all the hard work has been completed. You may have written the best paper on the topic of ‘internet marketing’ but if no one reads it, what good is it?
Distribution is the final stage of any Content Marketing strategy and knowing what to look for to gain the most exposure takes time and effort.
The most obvious place to put your copy is on your blog, if you don’t have one, it’s a vital tool to have for both SEO and for attracting clients.
After this, it’s up to you, but keep in mind the more places that are:
a) Relevant
b) Authoritative
c) Popular
The more your work will be respected by both readers and of course, the Search Engines.
For any successful SEO campaign content is king. Worked together in other strategies, from start to finish, key word selection to emailing clients, thinking about your copy may well get you up to those important top spots. greg@gccreation.com
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