SEO Copywriting, optimizing an article’s content
Persuasion, but not only: SEO copywriting is a rather complex and sensitive activity, as we previously tried to describe with articles focused on who has the task to write articles for the Web, that does not really end whenever we put the last full stop on our piece nor when we finally publish it online. An article’s optimization can happen later on too, to precisely check its trend and the answer both of users and search engine to the content and to try and improve its performance using online writing tools, such as SEOZoom’s assistant.
SEO Copywriting is not just about placing an article
As already said, the main parameter to abide to write an article with true chances to rank is quality, without obviously forgetting about the importance and authority of the hosting website. Relevance and authority are two of the main ranking factors (we also covered it talking about the importance of links), and for very simple reasons: keywords are one of the ways the search engine determines a content’s relevance to search intent, and Google’s main interst is to provide the closest result to the starting request; at the same time, when assessing the rank the site’s “strength” has decisive weight, given the fact that a thing is an article signed by the Times and a total different thing is a small newborn site’s signature.
Writing for readers and search engines
On a more practical level, SEO copywriters must be able to write in a more “complete” manner, successfully intercepting both the favour of readers (that must be provided with interesting and useful news), and the one of the search engines‘ web crawlers, that must believe our product is way better than the competition’s one and for that it deserves a better ranking among results. Up until a few years ago, the idea was to specifically stress this latter aspect using the “keyword stuffing” strategy, a.k.a filling texts with words and sentences carefully selectioned with the right level of research volume and traffic, but nowadays everyone know (or everyone should know, at least) that Google is perfectly able to identify the “value” and “quality” of the contents written with the ideal goal to provide an added value to the reader’s experience rather than simply rank better.
What is SEO Copywriting (or what it should be)
Therefore, when we talk about SEO copywriting we refer to a true and proper form of “art” that combines the ability to write in a captivating way for readers and, at the same time, find search engines’ approval to help the website ranking better among search results.
First goal, using keywords in the most natural way
The first piece of advice an editor can give to one of his copy (or personally practice) is to focus and include keywords naturally inside the article: the best result for a quality article happens when the readers cannot tell if the text has been optimized for Google and, simultaneously, if the search engine itself likes our work, positively evaluating our techniques. In practical terms, this means for example starting to write in a compelling flow since the first paragraph, successfully including the keyword inside the sentence without grammatical nor syntactical forcings.
Suggestions on SEO Copywriting
But, as mentioned, there are interventions that can be operated even after the article has been published and possibly verified by Google, that might have not rewarded our work the way we wished for, and SEOZoom allows us to discover which aspects to fix in order to optimize the contents in a SEO perspective. Assuming that no errors occurred in the previous phases – such as the build of an appropriate keyword research, ideal choice of title and headings, correctly entered meta description and so on, things that almost stand as the abc of copywriting and SEO copywriting – generally, the most overlooked or straight problematic spots are mainly three: keyword density, page links and gap intent with better performing competitors.
Aspects to look after
On the so-called keyword density side, the old times Google used to reward those site that maximized the use of the keywords are maybe over, now choosing quality over quantity; also thanks to the evolutions of the algorithm, that nowadays seems to acknowledge relevant and reliable contents. At the same time, though, it still is truly important to use keywords in an adequate way, which is without overdoing nor lacking in its opposite: it is obviously very difficult to give a specific number of how many times the primary keyword should appear inside the text (even if a common trend identifies this range between 1 and 3% of the total), but still it is so much more important that those keywords are being used in a very natural way inside the content.
Do not overlook the value of the links
What should we do then when we think to have found pretty good keywords (and used them accordingly), to have chosen strong title, meta description and headings and hence to have written a quality content but, despite all of this, we have missed our ranking goal? A first solution could be to reinforce the page through sharings, maximizing the extent of social users and aiming to realize an organic link building, that is by acquiring links and mentionings from other websites that value as reliable (again with this adjective) the offered content, promoting it on their pages as an interesting and useful insight.
Optimizing the content with SEOZoom’s tools
Even more useful is one of the latest tools developed by SEOZoom, the intent gap analysis lately made available to Professional, Business and Corporate subscribers or as an add-on: it is an original algorithm that allows to discover and highlight any focus gap there should be in a website page compared to the ones better trending on Google, conquering the highest positions in SERPs. For instance, the feature allows to know which are “the most recurring terms” in the articles ranking in Google’s Top10, but to also display the our completely missing ones; already by simply integrating these keywords one should succeed in a better reach of the user’s search intent (or the search engine’s) and, in the end, to optimize the page and to improve its performances.
GM
