The Ultimate Guide to SEO Copywriting - featured image

The Ultimate Guide to SEO Copywriting

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SEO copywriting is an essential part of every successful website strategy. From keyword identification to on-page SEO to content promotion and beyond, an SEO copywriter does a lot to ensure that a page or post gets in front of the ideal audience. Not only does effective content marketing drive more traffic from more diverse sources, it keeps users engaged for longer and increases a company’s chance of converting those users into customers or leads. So before you start writing for SEO, continue through this course to better understand what it takes to get content ranked on page one.

1) BEFORE STARTING

Before getting started on your next piece of first-ranked content, follow the steps below to ensure you’re properly prepared for search-engine success.

Keyword Research

Keyword research is built into the core of a good content and SEO strategy. It helps discover and optimize specific terms so that your website will appear for different search queries. With the help of strong keyword research and its implementation, your website is more likely to rank higher for those words and thus drive higher quality traffic.

Identifying New Keyword Opportunities

When doing keyword research, we identify quality short-tail and long-tail keywords. Short-tail keywords are typically characterized by one- to three-word searches that have relatively high volume and high competition. Long-tail keywords are three to four words or more, are more descriptive and have lower competition.

Although short-tail keywords can easily be identified by their popularity, they only make up 30% of the searches performed on the Web. The other 70% is attributed to more specific, long-tail keywords.

Long-tail keywords are known to convert better due to the consumer being more informed (as reflected by their detailed search) and being at a later stage in the conversion funnel. Going forward, you’ll want to identify relevant keywords and work them into your website content.

What Are LSI Keywords?

It’s best not to get spammy with your target keyword. Don’t overuse it. Rather, find related phrases to your target keyword and work those into headers and copy. These are known as LSI (latent semantic indexing) keywords and provide you with phrases that are related to your target keyword. Implementing a few of these throughout your content should help you rank higher for that entire category of terms.  

TIP:

Check out LSIGraph for an easy-to-use tool for finding semantic keywords and improving your content performance.

Creating a Content-Based Conversion Funnel

keyword-search-demand-curve

A successful website establishes a clear conversion funnel to attract visitors at different stages in the decision-making process and to encourage users to take an action. Having content for each stage of the conversion funnel means that your website will be a resource for those people simply looking for information, those who are researching their options and those who are ready to spend money. When searching online, keywords fall into one of three categories:

Informational: ​The awareness stage. These searchers don’t know what they don’t know. They need to first understand their problem so that they can be equipped to make an informed decision later on. This keyword category typically has the highest search volume and lowest probability of conversion.

Investigative:​ The interest stage. These searchers have found several potential solutions to their problem. Now, they’re researching their options to find what best suits their situation.

Actionable:​ The desire stage. These searchers now know what they’re looking for and they are ready to make a purchase decision. This keyword category typically has the lowest search volume but the highest probability of conversion.

three-step content conversion funnel for SEO copywriting

If your website has content for each stage of the purchasing decision, not only will search engines reward you for providing helpful resources, but visitors will come across your website several times during their search. This will increase your credibility and give your website a chance at converting these searchers.

Top Keyword Research Tools

Google’s Keyword Planner

keyword results on Google Keyword Planner

The most widely used tool to identify keywords is Google’s Keyword Planner. You should have access to this if you have a Gmail account. If not, create one so you can do keyword research for every piece of content you publish.

 

Google Keyword Planner Best Practices

  • Enter as many keywords that you can think of to cast a wide net and identify opportunities
  • Target by location if necessary, otherwise just do a general U.S. search

How to Use Keyword Planner

  • Navigate to adwords.google.com, sign in and click “Tools” on the upper navigation bar. Click ”Keyword Planner”.
  • Click the first expansion arrow under “Find new keywords and get search volume data”.
  • Enter in the appropriate criteria, press “Get Ideas”
  • The following page will return a list of results under the keyword ideas tab. Use this section to identify related terms that you can apply.
  • Navigate to the ad group ideas page to uncover “groups” of supporting keywords that are related to your primary term.
  • The ideal keywords have high average monthly searches and are low in competition. Additionally, the longer the keyword, the more likely it is to convert a searcher.

Google Search Console

Google Search Console keyword position graph

Google Search Console position ranking

Google Search Console, formerly known as Webmaster Tools, is a very helpful tool that should be connected to Prairieorganicspirits.com. It’s free and provides great keyword data insights that Analytics does not. Additionally, it’s an easy way to spot URL errors, submit sitemaps and analyze links, among other things.

Use Google Search Console when trying to identify keywords that you’re on the cusp of ranking for.

Navigate to “Search Analytics” under “Search Traffic” in the sidebar; check the “Position” box at the top and then sort by position. Identify those keywords that are in the 10-20 position range. These hold the best chance to cross the cusp to page one.

Bing Webmaster Center

Bing Webmaster Center (https://www.bing.com/toolbox/webmaster) allows webmasters to add websites to the Bing Index Crawler, which also serves the Yahoo platform. This is usually best practice for SEO copywriters, although not as important as Google, as Bing only controls about four percent of the search engine market

Free & Premium Third-Party SEO Tools

There are plenty of free and premium third-party SEO tools that you can use to dig deeper into your keyword performance and targeting efforts. Platforms like Ahrefs, Raven SEO, SEMRush and MajesticSEO are popular options and provide more than enough keyword data to give you a leg up on the competition. For more information about useful keyword tools, take a look at our post: The Best Website Auditing Tools in 2020.

Keywords Everywhere Review (Browser Extension)

The extension, “Keywords Everywhere” (available on Firefox and Chrome), has been making a name for itself in SEO circles the past year or so. This easy-to-use tool provides a bunch of keywords ideas when you search for any term right in the sidebar of the SERP. While the extension has recently moved to a free/paid system, it’s still very affordable. One credit = one keyword, and 100,000 credits can be purchased for just $10. By personally comparing the data between Keyword Planner and Keywords Everywhere, we can say that the volume and competition levels are pretty much the same, so you don’t have to worry about untrustworthy data with this SEO tool.

Use Your Site Search Queries

Getting site search data is helpful because it provides insights from your website’s users that they’re directly curious about. It helps you understand what your users are looking for and what language they’re applying to do so. It can help greatly with existing content optimization and new content creation as well as overall user experience. 

Trend Research

Keyword volume gives you a snapshot of how many searches have occurred during a given time period, but it doesn’t tell the full story. Would you prefer to use a low volume keyword that is trending upward or a higher volume keyword that is quickly losing popularity? By analyzing keyword trends, you can stay ahead of the competition by uncovering search behaviors that are on the rise. In general, when creating new content, try to stick with topics that are trending higher or upwards on Google Trends. 

As you can see in the example below, two industries that Frahm Digital operates in, SEO and web design, are pictured on the graph. Using this data, we can logically assume that the majority of our published content, particularly past December 28th, 2019 (the noticeable spike), should be focused on topics within the realm of SEO.

Google Trend line for SEO vs. Web Design

Research Competitor Content

In order to rank in the top spots, or even just the first page, you’re going to have to research competitor content. Start with a simple Google search of the proposed title. Check out how many resources they are, how in-depth they go, what the comment reactions are like and note any obvious improvements that could be made, whether that’s textual, visual or UX-based. As you begin developing content, refer back to these posts and to ensure that you’re creating something that outdoes the competition. This will put you in a better position to capture a top spot on search engine pages (SERPs).

Decide How You’re Going to Track Users

What content metrics are important to your company? Maybe it’s lowering bounce rate, increasing organic search traffic, driving social media users or ranking in Google’s local map pack. Before starting, decide how you’re going to track users and what metrics you’ll be using to see successes or failures.

Tracking Website Content Performance

Unless you have a built-in analytics tool through your CMS platform, chances are you’ll have to set up independent tracking software to see how users are interacting with content on your website. While there are plenty of paid options out there, we always recommend the simplest, most affordable, direct-from-the-source tool: Google Analytics. This is one of the most powerful tools out there, supplying you with all you need to know about user behavior. 

Set Up Google Analytics

Google Analytics is extremely useful in monitoring everything that happens behind-the-scenes with your website. For example, how users find you, what their purchase path looks like, where they’re located, their favorite content and much more. This has huge implications in building and optimizing website content to drive more users to the website--which is why it’s essential you setup an account. 

To setup Google Analytics and begin tracking users, follow the instructions in the video below that shows steps from signing up to activating the program on your website.

Develop a Content Outline

An outline is a critical component of crafting a cohesive, logical structure for your page or post. There’s a reason why the practice was drilled into your head in school. At the top of your content, place a table with the target keyword and all supporting LSI keywords (covered in the next section), with their search volume and competition level. Also include any goals, objectives, necessary language and other things that an SEO copywriter may need to know. This will help guide them in implementing important information. 

Use those keywords and develop headers and body copy ideas for your content. Below is an example outline of a piece of content for an article about SEO copywriting.

Title: 10 Ways to Improve Your SEO Copywriting

Meta description: Are you searching for ways to improve your website copy? Check out this guide built specially for SEO copywriters and improve your rankings.

Cover image: image.jpg

H1) How to Improve Your SEO Copywriting

    1. Introduction: 
      1. Writing optimized copy is becoming an essential decider of SEO performance -- this guide will provide you with a few basic tips to improve your website copy. 

H2) SEO Copywriting Basics

    1. Using Keywords: keywords are important because:
      1. Target a specific audience
      2. Drive organic traffic
      3. Outperform competitor content 

H3) How to Find Keywords

        1. Setting up Search Console
        2. Use Paid Platforms
        3. Use LSIGraph

H2) Improving Local SEO with Copywriting

  1. How to Rank in the Map Pack
    1. On-page optimization strategies

H3) How to Localize Content

  1. Local keyword research
  2. Local backlinks

H4) SEO Copywriting in Conclusion

  1. Conclusion paragraph
  2. CTA: Learn more about our SEO copywriting services
    1. Contact form & information

TIP:

Get a diverse team of digital marketers together at this stage of the process. Bringing different perspectives, from SEO and copywriting to web design, PR, UX, paid media and beyond, will help you cover all bases when developing your next piece of content. 

2) WRITING SEO CONTENT

After you’ve prepped your piece of content and it’s time to crack your knuckles and get to typing, make sure you check off the following SEO copywriting tips to ensure your content is completely optimized for the best performance. 

Looking for other information on crafting the best website copy? Check out our similar post, SEO Copywriting Tips to Take Your Content to a New Level.

Keyword Implementation

Do not simply identify a target keyword and put it everywhere on your page. There isn’t an exact number of times you should use your keyword, however, it’s generally best to try and implement it 3-5 times as long as it makes sense within the context of your headlines or sentences. The big thing to remember here is that you want to find relevant, LSI keywords that you can work into your copy to cast a wider net and capture more searchers. 

Branded vs. Non-Branded Keywords

Branded keywords are those that directly relate to your company, while non-branded keywords deal with other informational searches. For example, a branded keyword for our SEO agency would be “Frahm Digital Minneapolis”, whereas a non-branded keyword would be “SEO copywriting services”. 

Unless you’re a brand new company or have the same name as another established organization, the vast majority of your time should be spent on optimizing your content for non-branded keywords. 99 percent of the time, you’ll naturally rank for your brand name and its variants. And in order to drive truly organic traffic, you’ll have to draw users in who are not aware of your brand, through use of keywords that relate to your products and/or services.

Establish Location

For those with a hyper-local keyword strategy, establish the neighborhoods, cities, states and countries you want to operate in. Make sure you're targeting "[keyword] + [near me]" searches, as well as "[keyword] + [location]" searches, e.g. "Bloomington SEO Services" or "Edina SEO Services". Working in location-based these phrases helps search engines understand which markets you want to target.

Length of Content

Sometimes it’s hard to write good content, and sometimes it’s hard to write anything at all. But if you want search engines to comprehend and display your pages in search results, you have to provide them with enough content to know what your site is about. That typically means writing at least 250 words of unique content per page. 

However, 250 is just the bare minimum, and unless you’re posting something REALLY unique, you’re going to have trouble competing against other websites in the rankings. Overall, the best way to determine content length is to research competitor content and decide what will overcome them. 

TIP: Don’t just rely on word count alone. While SEO copywriting best practices tell us that longer is better, always put content quality above quantity. The length of your content will be entirely dependent upon your unique situation.

On-Page SEO

On-page SEO is important because it provides search engines with additional context as it pertains to your piece of content. If it isn’t properly implemented, search engines may not index and rank your site appropriately.

Title

search engine result title example

Title elements define the title of a web page. Title tags are often used on SERPs to display preview snippets for a given page. An optimized page title is between 50-70 characters in length and contains one or more relevant keywords as well as the brand name. Example:

Title of Post or Page (with Keyword) | Keyword 2 (optional) | Brand Name

In general, implement a title that’s more keyword-friendly and descriptive in order to provide more context to both search engines and human users about your business. And normally, we use the horizontal bar to separate items, as dashes can be seen as spammy and can act as a “connector” of two separate phrases. 

Build Better Content | SEO Copywriting Services | Frahm Digital

The above title provides more description and offers more relevant keywords to help rank higher and for more searches, reinforces offerings among searchers and supplies an aspect of the brand.

Looking at the search result page for a “site:yourwebsite.com” query, you can quickly see all of your page titles and begin improving them.

Meta Description

search engine meta description example for Nike.com

Meta descriptions are HTML attributes that provide concise explanations of web page content. Meta descriptions are commonly used on SERPs to display preview snippets for a given page.

An optimized meta description is an engaging description (between 150 and 160 characters) of the web page’s content that includes one or more relevant keywords.

If your site is missing meta descriptions, this is a big issue, as search engines use meta descriptions to inform searchers of what a website’s pages are about. It also gives you a chance to increase your keyword rank and relevancy.

Heading Tags

The header tag, or the "h1" tag in HTML, will usually act as the title of a post or page. It will usually be the largest text that stands out. There are other header tags in HTML too, like H2, H3, H4, etc, however, H1 is considered the most important, and is weighted more towards your overall SEO score. 

The goal with implementing header tags is to assign a hierarchy to the page’s most important, relevant content. Although multiple H1 tags are allowed, we still do not recommend that you use more than one H1 tag per page. Including multiple H1 tags may confuse bots and users alike. It’s best practice for SEO to use a main target keyword within the H1 of your page, and reserve related keywords for multiple "h2" - "h6" tags instead of an "h1".

The below format is how an optimized page should be laid out in HTML to create a clear hierarchy of content:

heading tag coding examples

Internal Linking

Always link between articles and pages on your website using relevant anchor text. Ideally 2-3 internal links per post. Also, link to other relevant pages when able, e.g. services, portfolio, case studies, homepage, etc. This brings attention to those individual pages and will be considered more important in the eyes of search engines.  

External Linking

When other websites link to you, it demonstrates that you provide valuable content. Backlinks play an important role in your placement in SERPs. Quantity and quality of backlinks are important authority indicators for search engines. Currently, SteveWoit.com does not have a very strong link profile right now with 28 backlinks from seven referring domains – see the image below.

URL

URLs provide you with an opportunity to describe the content of the page and inform search engines of relevant keywords. In general, follow these guidelines in order to create an optimized URL string.

  • Keep URLs short and sweet 
  • Work a relevant keyword into the URL string if you can
  • Use hyphens to separate words, do not combine or use another character like underscore
  • For more in-depth information, head to the URL guide from the experts at Moz

TIP: If your post is a numbered list -- for example, “7 Amazing Event Websites”, avoid adding the number (i.e. “7”) in the URL string. If this piece of content ends up performing well, you might want to continue adding content and you don’t want to be stuck with the original number in the URL, since your title/H1 will likely change with new content. This will only create disconnect between the URL and page content. Instead, mimic the example below:

yourwebsite.com/blog/amazing-event-websites

Image ALT Text

The biggest aspect of image optimization deals with ALT text. The ALT attribute provides alternative information for an image if a user for some reason cannot view it (because of slow connection, an error in the src attribute, or if the user uses a screen reader). Be as descriptive as possible and try to add keywords when able (but again don’t stuff). 

Adding ALT text is easy on WordPress, simply go to the image through the Media tab and add the copy into the ALT text box in the right sidebar. 

Below is what the HTML code looks like on the backend:

Image ALT text code example

Image Size

While this doesn’t directly relate to copywriting, it is an important aspect of your overall SEO performance. Image sizes should be at or under 100KB for the best loading performance. Slow scores can deeply affect your rankings, so don’t give Google another way to penalize you with files that are too large. Use Photoshop and its “Save for Web” option or use a free option online like Tiny PNG.

Additional Page Elements to Consider

Call-to-Action (CTA)

An important SEO copywriting best practice is mastering calls-to-action. A CTA provides content with a direct link back to your company, providing the necessary language to motivate users to take action. You’ve undoubtedly seen these around the web in the form of “buy now!” and “learn more!” “download the paper!” But a good CTA is so much more than a simple salsey phrase. 

Call to Action Examples: What to Keep in Mind

When writing a CTA, there are a few tips that you should consider in order to better connect with the audience. Take a look at the call-to-action examples below for guidance:

Moz.com call to action example

1) Use commanding verbiage.

Urge the user to take action by using commanding language and action verbs. The CTA example to the right from Moz.com quickly lists product benefits with verbs like raise, improve and attract.

Take a look at Moz.com for more call-to-action examples.

Apple iPad call to action example

2) Keep ideas descriptive, yet simple.

Don't try to overdo it with a bunch of copy. Apple is perhaps the best at keeping copy short and simple, while still getting creative, informational ideas across.

Take a look at Apple.com for more call-to-action examples.

Puma call to action sample

3) Create a sense of exclusivity.

Make users feel like they're getting something other people are not. When you make people feel special, they're more likely to reward you with a signup, download or contact information.

Take a look at Puma.com for more call-to-action examples.

chuck and dons CTA example

4) Evoke a sense of emotion.

People are more likely to connect with your copywriting if you try to connect with them on an emotional level. This pet store uses a good combination of imagery and creative copy to achieve a statement with personality.

Take a look at ChuckandDons.com for more call-to-action examples.

zildjian home page call to action

5) Connect your copy back to your brand.

Beyond imagery, shape your copy to reflect your product, service or other brand elements. On this drum cymbal website for example, rather than a simple "click here" on the button, they say, "Find Your Sound." This supports that connection back to the product.

Take a look at Zildjian.com for more call-to-action examples.

Contact Form

While this shouldn’t be deployed for every piece of content, many pages, such as your services, landing or location pages, should include contact forms. This cuts down on steps the user has to take to ask questions, request services or order products.

You can also try pop-overs once users scroll down a certain percentage of the page, just try not to be too distracting with them. 

Distilling Content

People interact with content differently on a website vs. traditional advertising. Many SEO managers forget that aspect of digital marketing, and try to stuff too many ideas into one space. Many users online end up skimming content, and if they’re not seeing what they need right away, are bombarded with ads or annoying pop-overs, they’re more likely to bounce away. Below are some ideas on distilling content for the average user.  

A lot of this information comes during the brainstorming process – learn more about the best copywriting brainstorming techniques here.

Bullet Points & Numbered Lists

Summarize important points with bulleted and numbered lists. This helps succinctly communicate the article’s compelling information for users to skim if they wish.

Use Stand-Out Headers

header and body copy contrast - web design example

As stated above, heading tags can help organize content, but they can also help key ideas stand out among page elements. You want to create contrast between the header and the body copy, so try out different sizes, colors and fonts in order to draw the user’s eye to what’s important.

Videos, Infographics, Tables and Graphs

Not only is visual content great for distilling content, it’s also extremely effective at engaging users. In fact, one study found that marketers who use video grow revenue 49% faster than non-video users. While nothing will beat high-quality copywriting, supporting visuals can help to keep users on your site for longer and help them remember content better.

General UX

While this should be a goal site-wide, a good user experience for a particular piece of content can mean the difference between an engaged user and one who bounces off your page. Read more about the relationship between SEO and UX in our post: Crafting a Better Website with SEO & UX

Consider Mobile Optimization

People consume content differently on mobile devices vs. desktop and laptop. As such, make sure you implement a mobile web design. At the very least, check your finished piece of content on a mobile device and make custom updates via HTML/CSS for that specific page. 

Sharing Functions

content sharing widget on blog postWhether it’s social media, forums, email or some other form of platform, make sure you include a widget for a one- or two-click share function. This will encourage people to spread your page or post across their own channels. Who knows, it could be the next big thing to go viral.

Always Connect Copy Back to Your Brand

Whether it’s through a tagline/slogan, copy with personality, descriptive CTA or imagery like a logo, always connect your content back to your brand. For instance, how does a recent article you’ve written relate to your services or products? This type of reinforcement will enhance awareness of your company and its offerings. Plus, when people share it, your branded content provides an extra dose of exposure to your company. 

Tips for Blogging

A blog is one of the best ways to drive organic traffic to the website. Blogging creates opportunities to deliver in-depth, brand-related content to new audiences that are searching via relevant keywords. By creating new articles, resource pages, infographics and more, you’re crafting a stronger online presence that raises your website in search results. Plus, it keeps search crawlers coming back to your site every time a new article is posted, allowing them to re-crawl and re-index more of your site content. 

  • The more blogs you post, the better your site will perform – try to start with one blog per week and increase from there. Search engines love fresh content, and you’ll watch your user count increase multiple-fold after just a couple months of consistent blogging.
  • Include 2-3 supporting images, including a cover photo at the very top.
  • Always link between articles using relevant anchor text. Ideally 2-3 internal links per post. Also, link to other relevant pages when able, e.g. services, portfolio, etc.
  • Linking to domains outside your own is also considered good practice and has been shown to help your SEO score.
  • The higher the word count, the better – but don’t sacrifice quality for the sake of it.
  • Try to be as helpful as possible with your articles. While this may feel like you’re “giving information away”, people tend to reward those brands that come off as more knowledgeable.
  • Identify one target keyword and find semantic alternatives (LSI keywords) to also work in copy. Do not just repeat the one main keyword over and over, that could cause a spam penalty.
  • Add categories and tags to each post.

Are you trying to develop great blog topics but coming up short? Check out our post, How to Overcome Creative Block: Great Tips on Writing Content.

SEO Copywriting Tools

There are several tools listed throughout this post, however the following may come in handy while you’re actually building and getting ready to post your content.

WordPress Plugins

Yoast is the most widely used SEO plugin for WordPress, for good reason. There are plenty of options to automate tasks, make improvement recommendations and identify pain points in your content. The plugin even provides a checklist on each page in order to help you track important SEO elements.

Wordcounter

Track your word count with an easy-to-use tool like wordcounter.net. Not only do you get word and character count, you get a breakdown of number of sentences, reading level and reading time.

BuzzSumo

BuzzSumo allows you to view the most-shared content across digital media channels. All you need to do is enter your topic or web page to view content that is directly in competition to your pages.  

buzzsumo content results

Dictionary, Thesaurus & Style Book

While this is old-school, it bears repeating: always have these resources on hand when developing a piece of content to find definitions, synonyms and proper styling, whether it’s AP, Chicago or APA. 

3) After You’re Done

Once you’ve wrapped your conclusion, it’s time to post your content and get it out to the world. Make sure to check off the following tasks in order to follow through on a cohesive content publishing strategy.

Searching for more tips on building high-performing content? Check out our similar post Content Marketing 101

Use a Grammar Checker

There are plenty of free and paid options for checking your grammar -- first, of course, is your internal spell check system. If you want something more powerful, however, you’ll have to consider a third-party option.

Grammarly Review

Grammarly spell check example

Grammarly (the free version) is a slightly more advanced spell check, automatically examining your writing for grammar mistakes. It also provides suggestions and guidelines on what you’re doing wrong and how to fix it. The best part is that it automatically works on WordPress with the extension, which is much better than the platform’s included spell check.

A premium version is available for $30/month, offering advanced vocabulary enhancements, plagiarism checker and platform-specific integrations, among other things. A business version is also available with custom pricing.

Hire an Editor 

If you have the resources, hiring a real-life editor is always a smart option. If you can find someone with SEO copywriting experience, even better. Not only will they check grammar, sentence structure, verbiage and language as it pertains to your brand, they can recommend keywords, linking and other SEO opportunities.

TIP:

Save money and time by hiring an editor through a reputable site like Writer’s Access or UpWork. You can choose skill-level based on price to find the right match for your needs and budget.

Ask for Feedback

Hopefully, you were able to consult with your team of digital marketers, as discussed in the first section. Gather that same team, or even reach out to new people within your company and generate feedback. Any constructive criticism can help improve upon the piece of content you’ve written.

Use a Plagiarism Checker

Avoid duplicate content (a big no-no in the world of content marketing LINK TO CM BP) by double-checking your work with a plagiarism tool. 

  • Plagiarism Checker - a simple free tool that displays percentages of duplicate content, as well as sources of duplicate content across the web.
  • Siteliner - the free version of Siteliner is limited to monthly analyses of sites up to 250 pages, with a paid version available. This tool can shed some light on the duplicate content within your website itself.

Siteliner duplicate content example

Google Search Console links location

Reach Out for Backlinks

When other websites link to you, it demonstrates that you provide valuable content. Backlinks play an important role in your placement in SERPs. Quantity and quality of backlinks are important authority indicators for search engines. Find relevant voices of authority on the web; look to Twitter, blogging platforms, forums and other social media sites to pinpoint those that may be interested in reading and sharing your content. 

As you start reaching out for links, you can monitor how many you get and where they're coming from through Google Search Console – just click on the “Links” section on the left sidebar after you sign-in.

Share on Social Media

While social media doesn’t directly affect the SEO performance of your content, you should always post your content to all your social media channels. As an SEO copywriter, keep your post text short and simple and try to avoid truncation on sites like Facebook, Instagram and LinkedIn.

Track Content Metrics

Since you’ve already setup Google Analytics and have a good idea of the metrics you want to track, you can now see how users are interacting with the content to see its level of success. At the end of the day, you can always improve content, no matter how it’s performing.

Common Metrics to Watch

If you’re new to Google Analytics, you may be overwhelmed at the amount of data provided by the platform. There are a few common metrics that you can track though that should give you some high-level insight as to how content is performing

  • First, Adjust the Date Range: Usually, it’s best to get a more macro view of your data by increasing the time frame. If you’ve just implemented Analytics, you won’t be able to view historical data, but if you’ve had it for a while, zoom out to get a more accurate view of your metrics.

How to Change the Date in Google Analytics

  • Bounce Rate: This tells you how many people are leaving your page directly after landing on it. Generally, the lower the bounce rate the better. To reduce this, always leave the user with a next step--for example, a CTA at the end directing the user to a services page or another article. 

how to find bounce rate on Google Analytics

  • Top Performing Content: This gives you a quick summary of what pages on your website are most popular. From this, you can decide to develop more relevant pages that are centered around content that people are consuming most often.

How to Find Top Performing Content in Google Analytics

  • Time on Page: this tells you how long people are spending on a page. If your interactions are above 1:00, you’re doing pretty well! Try to pump that time up by adding more copy, implementing videos or adding links.

How to Find Time on Page in Google Analytics

  • Geo-Location: This metric shows you where your users are coming from. Not only can you see which country they’re located in, but you can drill down deeper into specific regions, states and cities.

how to find cities of users in Google Analytics

how to find countries of users in Google Analytics

  • Traffic Source: This metric tells you how users are finding your content. Organic search describes those users coming from search engines like Google and Bing.

how to find traffic channels in Google Analytics

  • Behavior Flow: This handy graph shows how users move through your website. The first section is the landing page, followed by the next steps (indicated by light blue) and number of drop offs (indicated by red). 

how to find behavior flow in Google Analytics

  • Sessions By Device: This data is handy when trying to create the best user experience for those consuming your content. If a lot are coming from tablet devices, for example, you’ll want to ensure your website layout is optimized for those types of devices. Make sure content is readable at the size of 768 x 1024 pixels (iPad). 

How to find device category in Google Analytics

Set Up Goals

Defining the website’s goals is important in tracking our success. Goals help us define things like leads, signups, newsletter signups and white paper downloads. Here are some examples of goals that can be implemented in Analytics to track the performance of your content:

  1. URL Destination Goals

This type of goal is useful for tracking specific URLs. For example, set up a URL destination goal on a specific blog post in order to track when users are on that page. 

  1. Visit Duration Goals

This type of goal provides an easy way to track how long users are interacting with website content. You can also use this to weed out those that aren’t sticking around for a certain amount of time, filtering out users who aren’t worth tracking.

  1. Pages/Visit Goals

Similar to visit duration, pages/visit goals give webmasters insight into how many pages each user sees before they bounce from your site.  

  1. Event Goals

Setting up an event is somewhat more complicated, but is necessary to implement this type of goal. However, when properly in place, provides perhaps the most control over tracking goals. This type of goal allows you to track almost any type of action the user takes (also known as an “event”). Whether they click on a link, start a download, spend a certain amount of time watching videos, sharing to social media -- all of this and more can be tracked with event goals.

Learn more about setting up event goals here.

To set up a new goal, navigate to the Admin section on Analytics (located at the bottom of the left sidebar), select the desired property, click goals and follow the instructions on the following page. 

How to setup Google Analytics goals

Don’t Ignore Old Content

Identify your top performing content in Analytics (instructions above), and keep adding to those pages/posts that are performing well. Even if there’s a post that seems to be underperforming and you feel like it could really take off, consider adding more copy, imagery and links to those as well. Or, develop a brand new piece of content around a related keyword and link between the two to target terms further.

Searching for more ways to improve your content? Read one of these great copywriting books to really boost your writing capabilities!

Contact an SEO Consultant

An SEO consultant can audit your website’s content and make specific recommendations on how to improve your search engine performance. Whether it’s through developing a holistic content strategy, coming up with blog titles, identifying geo-location targets, improving on-page SEO or anything else, these experts are responsible for improving rankings for the top companies throughout the world and can help you succeed online.

Conclusion

Now that you know everything there is to know about SEO copywriting, you’re ready to start your next piece of search-friendly content. 

Remember, that proper SEO copywriting is a unique skill set that will help boost your website conversion rates. From content creation through publication and promotion, SEO copywriters will help get your brand get in front of the right audience. 

Frahm Digital: SEO Consultant in Minneapolis

If you’re considering hiring an SEO consultant in Minneapolis, turn to Frahm Digital. We’ve helped dozens of brands improve their website content to drive more conversions. Take a look at our portfolio to see the diverse set of companies we serve.

Or, inquire about our SEO copywriting services today by filling out a contact form.

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