I’ve been a copywriter for nearly 5 years now, working in various agencies as a copywriter, in my own time as a blogger and for small/medium businesses. I like to think I’ve got onsite copywriting down to a fine art, particularly when it comes to writing for SEO.
What is onsite content and why is it important?
Onsite content is just as important when it comes to your overall SEO strategy. It’s not all about link building and fast websites, blogs often rank higher and more frequently than landing pages or home pages. This is because they are relevant and helpful!
Google is leaning more towards content that offers value to its users, which means that onsite blogs should be a big part of your SEO strategy going forward.
These blogs should sit on your website, not a subdomain. Make your blog section easy to find and write keyword rich content that also offers your users and potential customers value. Just simple tweaks like this will make a massive difference in the visibility of your website and blog section.
The reasons many digital marketers love blog posts is that they offer the opportunity to target a wider range of keywords. It’s hard to target longer, higher volume keywords in your landing pages, so a blog is the perfect place to get creative and start ranking more frequently!
How can you start writing for SEO?
When it comes to writing for SEO, the way to success is with keyword research. Each blog post should target its own unique keyword in order to give it its best chance at ranking highly.
It’s best to come up with a few blog post ideas and start to research 4-5 keywords you want to target for each post. You’ll then use these keywords and phrases to build out your blog. You may even find that your blog idea evolves and changes with your keyword research, in order to create a blog that people are actively searching for.
There are a couple of boxes you need to tick when it comes to writing for SEO, whether that is with a blog post or on a landing page:
- Meta title and description – these both need to include your chosen keywords and not exceed the character limits. Keep in mind your meta description’s biggest job is to get people to click through from organic search results, so don’t make it too keyword heavy. Write for your audience, not the bots.
- Internal and external links – make sure to include a mix of both. This helps to not only build out your internal link structure, making it easier for Google’s bots to find their way around your site. It also helps Google to find you through the links you’ve built to and from your site. If you’re worried about people leaving your site through an external link, make sure to set the link to open in a new tab.
- Keywords – make a note of the keywords you are targeting in each blog post or landing page and ensure you include them around 3-4 times in your copy. Do not stuff your keywords in wherever you can, as this will have a negative effect on your ranking prospects.
- Readability & relevance – make sure your article is easy to read, even if it is 1000+ words long, ensure you have short paragraphs and you have proof read every sentence. Most importantly, ensure your content offers value to the reader. This also increases your chances of being shared by others and links being created to your post.
Copywriting marketing – what do you need to keep in mind alongside SEO?
I mentioned it briefly above, but making sure your content is valuable and easy for the user to digest is extremely important.
Try and increase metrics like your bounce rate, pages viewed and time spent on the page. All of these will help to give Google a better idea of how helpful your article is for its users.
For example:
You have just written a blog about how to make coffee. You check the blogs metrics and you see that people land on it from Google searches, but they leave straight away. Your bounce rate is high, your time on site is low and people don’t click to other pages on your website.
This tells Google that the content isn’t relevant to their users, as they are clicking onto your content but immediately leaving to find info elsewhere, as your content didn’t deliver what they were looking for.
Reverse example:
You have just written a blog about how to make coffee. You check your blog stats and your bounce rate is a reasonable 65%, time on the page is around 3-5 mins (the time it would take to read the full blog) and people head to other blogs on your site when they have finished reading.
This scenario tells Google that the users clicking through to your website are loving your content, they are reading right till the end and they have clearly got some value from it. Google then puts that blog higher up in its search results, because it knows that its users will find it useful.
Think of your blog metrics as a review from your users. Google wants to offer its users the content with the very best reviews, so that those users keep coming back to use Google as their search engine of choice!
SEO copywriting service
Writing for SEO can be frustrating and getting the balance of keyword focused content and valuable content can be tricky.
If you need help to create SEO friendly copy for your website or blog, drop me a message to see how I can help!
With a fast turn around and a history of high ranking blogs, it’s the easiest way to ensure you are getting the most out of your onsite content.
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