SEO Copywriting 101: Why Your Content & Marketing Can’t Ignore It

If your small or mid-sized business has a lean or one-person marketing team, you might not fully understand why posting regular content is great for business…or what SEO copywriting is all about. Publishing blogs, press releases, and other content consistently boosts your website’s rankings—or in simpler words, the position of your website on search engine results pages.

You don’t have to be a search engine optimization expert to know why that’s a good thing. Whether you’re a software company or a landscaping business, you want the people who search online for businesses like yours to find you easily (and more easily than your competitors). And the companies that appear at the top of the search results organically (vs. paid search ads) have a big advantage over those that appear on pages 2, 4, or 7.

How important is it to post blogs and write content regularly?

When Voice clients ask me how important publishing new content is for their overall content marketing strategy, my honest answer is very.

If your goal is to appear higher in those search results and draw more traffic to your website, there are a few things you must pay attention to:

• The quality of your content
• The content’s relevancy to a person’s search query (i.e., does your website’s content match what the person was looking for?)
• The performance, responsiveness, and stability of your website

You get the gist—consistently updating your website’s content is good for SEO, and it helps your company get found by the right people (your target customers). If you have a blog integrated into your website, that’s the best place to start. Eventually, you can create a news page and issue regular or occasional press releases too. Sending out a monthly or bimonthly e-newsletter to get even more mileage out of your marketing and copywriting/content is another best practice.

Of course, you can always contact Voice for content writing services/blog writing services too!

SEO copywriting for blog posts: where to start

As simple as it sounds to “just start blogging,” there are several strategies you can employ to do things right. Here are a few tips on how to write SEO-friendly blog posts:

1. Focus on producing high-quality content.

If you’re going to write and post blogs consistently, you must make sure they are of high quality. The reality is that search engines are smart. Google’s search index is built through “crawlers” that visit websites 24/7 and then index and rank what they find. The crawlers learn how often a website’s content changes and revisit when needed. Why should you care about this? Because the quality of your blog content has a direct impact on its value to search engines.

So, what does “quality content” even mean? It means that your blog post (or other content)…

• Offers helpful and valuable information
• Showcases your expertise on the topic at hand and gives readers the impression that you know what you’re talking about (and are a trustworthy authority on the subject)
• Is organized well, comprehensive, and insightful

Search engines consider content with these traits to be of higher quality than content that is generic and rambling. With every blog you post, think about the problems that your target audience is trying to solve or the information they are seeking when they (hopefully) land on your website. Are you offering information that will help them? Does your blog/other content make clear that you’re a trustworthy authority on the topic?

Is ChatGPT-produced blog content good enough?

Let’s address the elephant in the room, while we’re at it. Can’t you just crank out blogs using ChatGPT?

Honestly…nope. This blog by BlackBean Marketing dives deep into this and says it better than I could. But longer answer is that while ChatGPT is useful for lots of things (like generating ideas and gathering information that you can then research further), it just cannot replace a strong copywriter/content writer. Especially when it comes to producing distinctive, genuine-sounding, well-written content.

Your website will not be considered authoritative and quality if it is full of words that sound just like everybody else. We marketing geeks get this, but businesses owners sometimes don’t, which is understandable. There’s a lot to this content marketing/SEO copywriting thing. But the bottom line is that “shallow” content like the kind you’ll get out of ChatGPT is not going to move the needle on your website rankings.

2. Do your homework on SEO keywords.

The next tip on best practices for SEO copywriting/blog writing is to make an effort to research and target keywords that will drive more organic search traffic.

If you’re already glazing over, don’t worry: engaging a freelance copywriter like me who also understands the SEO copywriting stuff means you will get well-written blogs and other content and guidance on how to boost your company’s rankings and attract the right kind of traffic.

I will get more into SEO keywords in a future blog post, but this is a longer-term strategy that requires (you guessed it) consistency. Posting blogs/content that incorporate target keywords can work wonders for your website rankings, but it does take time and brainstorming/research. Put simply, you’ll yield the greatest success if you target lower-volume, lower-competition keywords that are still relevant to your business.

Although some blogging is better than no blogging, you’ll have greater success with organic SEO if you 1) post blogs/other content regularly and 3) incorporate keywords you want to rank for into those blog posts and press releases. Extra tip: Spending a little bit of time researching your competitors using a tool like Semrush to see how they’re ranking for the same keywords is definitely worthwhile.

3. Make sure your web content is readable, concise, and all-around awesome.

I mentioned content quality above, but in the context of Google’s parameters for valuable, authoritative content. Now let’s focus on quality in the context of good writing. Anything you publish on your website should be well-written.

Here’s what I generally consider to meet the definition of excellent writing (for the web, in particular):

• It is easy to read.
• It isn’t overly technical or complicated (this is especially important if you’re marketing something complex to prospective customers).
• It has plenty of sentence variation, making for good flow and readability.
• There are no wordy or difficult-to-understand sentences.
• Paragraphs are short and the content is easily scannable thanks to things like bulleted lists and subheaders.

There are distinct differences between best practices for writing for the web and writing for other formats (like brochures or social media). For the content you post with the intention of improving the SEO of your website, it is also important to know your audience and keep them top of mind.

Overwhelmed? An SEO content writer can help

Even if you have a marketing department (or marketing point person), most businesses find it challenging to keep up with a regular blog posting schedule.

Voice can help. If your business, college, or organization needs copywriting and content writing services, contact me today.