SEO Copywriting: How to Write Content For People and Optimize For Google

If you want to build your blog audience, you’re going to have to get smarter with your content.

One of the biggest challenges that bloggers and content marketers face is writing content that’s optimized for search engines, yet will also appeal to people.

According to Copyblogger, SEO is the most misunderstood topic online. But, SEO content isn’t complicated, once you understand that people come first, before search algorithms. SEO firms make their money understanding these simple concepts.

Thriving in your online business means that you must go beyond simply “writing content.” Your content needs to accomplish two goals: first, appeal to the end-user (customers, clients, prospects, readers, etc.) and second, solve a particular problem.

But, how do you create content that meets those goals? How do you create content that ranks well with Google and also persuades people? That’s what SEO copywriting is all about. Don’t worry if you can’t afford an expensive SEO copywriter. You can do this following simple rules.

And, that’s what you’re going to learn in this article. It will cover:

• What is SEO?
• Understanding Copywriting
• What is SEO Copywriting?
• Elements of SEO Copywriting
• Writing Useful Content For People
• Keyword Research for Content Creation
• Copywriting – Getting People to Act

Let’s get started…

What is SEO?

We all know what happens when you type a search query into a search engine and hit “enter”: You get a list of search results that are relevant to your search term.

Those results pages appear as a result of search engine optimization (SEO). In a nutshell, SEO is a method of optimizing (enhancing the effectiveness of) your content for the search engines, in order to help it rank higher than content from other sites that target the same search terms.

Alpha Bee Design gives a clear picture of the SEO process:

Step by step, then, SEO is when:

1. You research keywords …
2. Then select a particular keyword and …
3. Use that keyword to write content …
4. Which other people then read and share on Twitter, Facebook, their own blogs and other social media platforms.

According to Redevolution, Google displays web pages in their search results based on the authority and relevance of the page to enhance the user experience. How does it measure authority and relevance?

• Google determines the relevance of your page by analyzing its content based on several factors, including where and how often you use certain words in that piece of content.
• Google measures authority by the number of links pointing to that page and how trustworthy those links are.

On the Internet, links are like votes, with a slight difference. The winner of the election is determined solely by the number of votes, whereas your web page’s rank doesn’t depend so much on how many incoming links it has (quantity), but rather on the quality of those links. You and your marketing team need to understand this.

Quality has become the #1 ranking factor in Google, especially since the Google Panda and Penguin updates.

Understanding Copywriting

Copywriting is the art and science of creating content that prompts the reader/end-user to either buy a product, subscribe to a list, take a test drive or take some other action that will benefit you.

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