How To SEO Copy + Content

Use SEO to book more business, sell more widgets, or get hired, they say.

You say, how in the heck do I do that? Then you freeze + do nothing, which is the worst possible marketing strategy for any business.

Everyone knows that search engine optimization (affectionately known as SEO) is imperative to getting your blog posts and website pages to rank in the big search engines (like Google).

Knowing how important SEO is, I have searched for an SEO expert so I could learn SEO. After several years of searching, I finally found a genius SEO expert, Mike Pearson of Stupid Simple SEO.

Mike has a genius way of simplifying everything SEO. While his free course is genius, his paid course Stupid Simple SEO is ah-mazing. I took his free course + loved it so much that I immediately enrolled in his paid course.

I am not going to go over all of the steps Mike covers but I am going to walk you through how to SEO your blog posts + website pages so you can rank in the search engines over your competition.

SEO does this for you. It helps you to outrank your competition.

Do Your Homework

Before you start batch writing blog posts + before you start going through old posts to SEO 'em up, take a step back to make sure that you truly understand the types of clients you are trying to attract.

The bottom line is that you have to understand these folks better than any other professional that is competing for their business. 

Use free tools like Keyword Planner from Google (you have to have a Google account to use this free tool) to help you find the keywords to search for the products or services you offer (or are going to offer). You can also consider paid options like Keywords Everywhere, SEMRush or Ahrefs.

This is the foundation for creating content your dream clients want to read. It's also content they can find because you're using keywords that help the content rank higher in the search engines. 

Talk about a win-win.

Use Longtail Keywords to SEO

A longtail keyword is best described as a more specific keyword. For example, the term "wedding planner" is a highly competitive keyword. In the Google search below, you can see that 246,000 searches a month are for the term wedding planner.

A longtail keyword that is less competitive, but still competitive is "Miami wedding planner." You can see that 880 searches a month are for "Miami wedding planner."

An even better longtail keyword is "Miami Beach wedding planner." It gets about 30 searches a month. This is still a good amount of traffic per month but isn't so crazy that you'd never be able to rank for it.

(I also have to say that I am SHOCKED that only 30 searches a month are for "Miami Beach wedding planner" but that is besides the point :).)

Place Keywords Carefully

Once upon a time, keywords were the easiest part of SEO. All you had to do was scatter it throughout your content to attract the right clients for your business.

In the industry, this is known as keyword "stuffing."

Google got smart a few years ago + now if they catch someone keyword stuffing, it can remove the site from the search engines altogether.

And...nobody wants that.

Instead, use the keyword you want to rank for up to 3 times in the body of your content + then in some strategic places that 'll go into detail about later in this post.

External Sites Can Help You With SEO

Onsite SEO is when you use keywords + SEO strategies on your website + blog to attract the right clients to your business.

Offsite SEO is when you leverage external websites to rank in the search engines.

When other websites or blogs link back to your website or content these are called backlinks. Backlinks from quality sources can help you climb in +the search engine ranks.

Guest blog posts are one of the best ways to gain backlinks to your content + rank higher in the search engines. When you write a guest post for a high authority site in your industry that links back to your website, this can provide a lot of SEO juice.

Add SEO To Headlines + Sub-Headers

Creating fab content is #1 in importance. Creating that fab content also has to do with how you format it.

Formatting + SEO go hand in hand. When you're formatting website copy or a blog post, make sure you use your keyword in the headline (H1) and in a sub-headline (H2).

For example, if you're trying to rank for "best wedding planner in New York City," then include this keyword phrase in your h1 (Headline) + at least one h2 (sub-headline).

This way, you spread out the SEO juice across the page in all the right places. 

Learn How To SEO

The first step to SEO is to figure out the keyword (or at least the blog idea you're going to write about). Once you have the keyword you want to target, here's how you set up the post SEO on WordPress.

If you are using Wix or other site builders, then all of this is not going to work the same exact way that it does for WordPress sites. These site builders have the capabilities but you’ll have to try to figure it out on your own because I won’t be able to walk you step-by-step through the process.

The first thing you need to do is install the WordPress plugin WordPress SEO by Team Yoast.

Once you do this, the information you need to complete automatically appears (on the pages + posts of your site).

On the post or page where you are working, scroll down to the bottom. Once the plugin is installed, you can see a section that says Yoast SEO.

It’s time to fill in the blanks. Type in the keyword in the Focus Keyword box. The plugin automatically fills in the title of the post + the meta description. You can edit these by clicking on the Edit Snippet button.

The meta description doesn't really have anything to do with SEO. It is, however, the little description that pops up under a link in the search engines. You want the meta description to be interesting enough that they want to click your link + by including the keyword they were using to search, you can increase the chances they're going to click on your link.

Do you see the 2 sentences under the link? This is the meta description.

You want to make sure that the keyword you’re targeting for this post is in the title + in the meta box. When you start to write the copy for the blog post or website page, use the keyword at least one time in the body copy of the post as well (this is not at the bottom, but in the main copy section of the page—in the blog post itself).

You also want the keyword in the permalink of the post (this is the URL of the post) + at least one sub-header (h2) in the copy of the post.

You can also help SEO by including the keyword in the names of any graphics or pictures you use in the post. So when you create a Pinterest graphic, for example, name the graphic file using the keyword you’re targeting.

Check SEO

Once you save the draft of the post or update it, check on the analysis section of the Yoast plugin. You do not need a green light for all of the lines + you do not need the SEO check to be green in order for you to be good to go.

BUT…

There are specific sections here that you want to make sure that you have a green light.

Here you can see red dots, orange dots + green dots.

You mostly want to focus on having a green light for:

• Not previously using this keyword (You don't want to compete with yourself for Google ranking)
• That the keyphrase is in the meta description
• Text length (how many words is in the post)
• Keyphrase is in the slug (URL/permalink)
• The post includes outbound + inbound links

All of these are important for SEO.

Tackle each one of these lines at a time + slowly modify until you get a green dot. Then, move on to the next line. Again, all of the items that Yoast lists out does not require a green light for your SEO to be good.