Before I started working in SEO, I thought that it was a complex and technical discipline that I’d probably never really, truly grasp. It was techy and I’m not. I’ve been writing digital content for years - blogs and articles, website content and product specs - all with what I understand now as an ignorant dismissal of any SEO practice.
Of course, there are elements to SEO that are technical, but ultimately, high-quality, relevant content is going to be what converts.
Technical SEO strategies work to elevate your content - your technical SEO skills might be brilliant, but if your content is spammy, irrelevant or low quality you’re likely to experience one of two things:
- Your page won’t rank well because its content isn’t a good match for user search queries. Google won't look to display your content if it doesn’t think it’s relevant for the search query or beneficial for the user. The basis of copywriting for SEO, to us, is quite simply about being as relevant and adding as much value as possible.
- If it does rank, users are going to be dissatisfied. It’s important to remember that Google’s main goal is to provide its users with the most suitable results for their search query as quickly as possible. So user experience and offering value is important to make sure your users don't feel dissatisfied with your content. If it's the case your content isn't satisfying users then it's likely your rankings won't last.
Copywriting for SEO doesn’t have to be complex: the best way to improve rankings is for your content to be relevant and free of keyword spam - if it’s relevant, it’s likely to be seen as a good match to the search queries that you (should) have identified for each specific page.
Audience Profiling in SEO
If you want to create relevant content, you must be able to understand who you’re writing it for. Tone of voice and choice of language is of course important for branding - I wouldn’t be likely to adopt a chatty tone when writing for a financial services company, for example, but this should also reflect onto the type of reader that you’re targeting and, more importantly, their intent.
You should be able to identify a visitor’s interests, buying behaviour and stage within the buying process, personal demographics - and, as a result, what they might be likely to search in relation to your product or service offering. Content production should come as a result of keyword research and gaining an understanding of the type of content that users of interest are searching for. Copywriting for SEO is about providing value.
Search Intent
Search intent is a key consideration when copywriting for SEO - you should be able to understand whether the content that you’re producing is aimed at transactional search queries or whether it’s actually just providing a visitor with lots of useful information about a subject matter that they’re looking to educate themselves on - think NHS or legal advice, for example.
Reflect Digital takes a strategic approach to copywriting for SEO, ensuring that we produce high-quality content that adds value and meets the needs of users and their search terms. We believe that every line should serve a purpose and add some kind of value.
Find out more about our SEO services or get in touch for more information.
