In Google Era, making good texts for the web (read: texts that will be read) goes beyond having an interesting idea, researching and writing well. SEO copywriting techniques helps you to adapt your content and make it “findable” by the Google search engine and, consequently, by your target audience.
Unless you have a renowned brand or a famous blog, without using SEO copywriting techniques, readers will not find you and there will be one more good content wasted.
To get you closer to the mission of being on the first page of Google search results, in this post we will talk about:
- What is SEO?
- SEO on page
- SEO of page
- SEO copywriting
What is SEO?
What does most companies that invest resources in Digital Marketing want? Be on the first page of Google, among other goals.
Driving traffic to the website = bringing your brand, your ideas and your products or services to more people.
Being on Google, however, is not enough. We want to be on the first page right away, because 90% of people who searches on Google don’t even look the second page of results.
If we manage to be among the first search results organically (without paying for ads), perfect!
To work in this direction, you need to be aware of some SEO strategies.
SEO – Search Engine Optimization is a set of techniques that optimize websites and blogs for Google search ranking, generating organic traffic to them.
Considered one of the main Digital Marketing strategies, SEO gives visibility to your company on the internet, bringing you more customers, leads and, consequently, business opportunities.
Read more: Search Engine Optimization – Expert Guide On How To Master SEO
Search engines
To understand SEO, you need to know how search engines work.
Google Search was created to satisfy the needs of its users and, for this reason, it tries to understand the way they think and make their queries. The goal is to show in the first results exactly what people are looking for.
And that is why in order to fully exploit SEO strategies, it is necessary to put ourselves in the users’ shoes: how would you search for a content?
The result of a Google search is divided into two parts:
– Paid: the pages that were advertised on Google Adwords appear first. Pages are ranked when their keywords are entered in the search. Advertisers pay for clicks received.
– Organic: organic results come next. They are pages considered relevant by Google for the searched keyword, without investment in ads.
In the case of organic results, Google Bot tracks all the pages on the internet and read what is on each of them to make a ranking based on the keywords used by users during queries.
When we search on Google, the results are sites that it considers most relevant and with complete content to answer our question.
SEO On page
The on-page factors are those that we are able to work directly on the pages and posts that we publish.
Basically, the quality of what is published is essential. But how does Google know what is good and what is not?
Search engines use some parameters to determine what is relevant or not, such as:
Text size
On average, the content that appears in the first positions has more than 2 thousand words. Which means that, for Google, the content has to be complete to meet the needs of users and gain the status of relevant.
However, a text can be indexed if it is longer than 300 words.
SEO title
SEO title is the title of the page in the search engine result. It must be approximately 55 characters long, and the keyword must come first. So be objective.
A good SEO title is one of the most important features of your text, which can guarantee not only its ranking, but also a high number of clicks.
Internal title (title tag)
If the reader is already interested in your content when see it listed among the first Google results, when entering your page, they must quickly realize that it is exactly what they were looking for and be willing to continue reading the text.
The internal title should provoke curiosity and contain the keyword, regardless of its position. There is no character limit.
URL
When choosing the URL, it is essential to include the keyword. However, the fewer elements the URL has, the better. Use hyphens to separate words and ensure that it is related to the title of the post.
E.g.: title – “Women in digital marketing: why it is worth investing”. URL – www.yourwebsite.com/women-in-digital-marketing or www.yourwebsite.com/blog/women-in-digital-marketing.
Tips: do not change the URL after your page has been indexed by Google, nor use many subdomains (e.g.: www.yourwebsite.com/site/blog/women-in-digital-marketing).
Headings
Use only one heading 1 (H1) for the most important content and rank the other subtitles, from H2 to H6.
Thus, you tell Google what is most important and enable users to scan the reading (essential in online environments).
Tips:
- Always use H1, H2 and H3. Henceforth, it is aesthetic;
- Include the keyword in H1 and H2, if possible;
- Use long tails (long keywords) in the other intertitles.
Keyword
The keyword must appear at the beginning of the content. Thus, Google identifies that the page is talking about the subject that it proposed to address.
The use of the keyword and synonyms throughout the text must occur naturally, as exaggerations are also penalized. However, there is no exact number of times that the keyword should appear in the content.
We will talk more about this topic below, in SEO copywriting intertitle.
Time on page
Since Google is not able to read pages in the same way as humans do, it considers the time that users who accessed your content stayed on it to classify it as relevant or not.
To guarantee the reduction of abandonment, make quality content and an introduction that generates interest and curiosity in the readers. This way, they will spend more time on your page.
Images
The images that appear on your page must also be optimized for SEO. As the search engine reads only text and code, if you don’t optimize the images, it’s like leaving blank spaces in your content, damaging the ranking.
In the images, it is important to pay attention on:
- File name: use the keyword separated by hyphens. Do not use spaces and avoid numbers.
- Alt text: Google needs a description of the images in order to understand them and rank them on Google Images. Furthermore, alt text is used by visually impaired people who use software that reads what is on the page.
The alt text must be the literal description of the image, using the keyword. This is the main factor for the image to appear on Google.
- Image size: heavy images overload the site, making it slower. Small images also compromise users’ experience. All of this is taken into consideration by the algorithms.
Linking
Links are extremely important to give relevance to your page, as Google’s crawlers check the users’ experience when browsing between your posts and other relevant content.
However, it is not enough to link your pages with others that are not indexed and have low reading.
Choose to include in your content links to official websites and relevant institutions, or companies and blogs that appear on the first pages of Google search on the subject that your content is addressing.
Of course, the link must be related to the topic of your post. Otherwise, it will not add as an SEO strategy, nor in the reader’s experience.
Responsive design
In addition to search engines prioritize mobile friendly sites, more than half of all internet traffic worldwide is made from smartphones.
Knowing that, it doesn’t make any sense to have a website that is not optimized for mobile devices.
Charging time
The page load time is fundamental for a good ranking.
Do you usually wait more than 4 seconds for a page to load? Most people don’t…
Meta description
Meta description is the description of the page that appears to the user on Google Search. It does not influence the ranking itself but makes the page to be clicked (or not) when it is listed in the search results.
To make a meta description, do not copy and paste a piece of the introduction. Use the keyword to summarize to the reader in 150 characters what he will find in the content.
Share buttons
As we will see below, Google also looks at how popular your page and content are on social media platforms.
Therefore, make this resource available on your website to facilitate contents sharing by readers.
SEO off page
In addition to on page factors, more easily managed by page owners, Google also values some off page characteristics.
According to the reasoning of the robots, off page requirements represent the authority of your content and how customers or readers have benefited from it.
Google considers:
Link building
Link building are links from other sites to yours.
Google understands that links to your site are recommendations. So, the more relevant external sites point to yours, the more authority you have over a given subject.
It is worth mentioning that if you receive links from a website that does not talk about the same subject as you, the relevance of those links is not so significant.
Link building is considered the most important part of off page SEO!
Local
Search engines prioritize results from companies that are located where the user is. So, it is always important to indicate where your company is located, even if its area of operation is not limited by the address where it is based.
Social media
Mentions and shares of your brand on social media also count.
If Google sees that your posts satisfy social media users, your site gains authority in the search engine.
Also read: Social Media Management: what happens when we work on it
Domain
Older domains are considered more relevant.
They are also likely to have more content published, which is another significant factor for the search engine.
SEO copywriting
SEO copywriting is a strategy to attract Digital Marketing to drive traffic to your website and, consequently, generate business opportunities.
SEO copywriting techniques aim to adapt the way you write to, in addition to meet readers’ needs, ensure that your content is better positioned on Google Search results and generates business.
In short, the idea is to attract your target audience by offering quality content through contents published on your website page and on your company’s blog on subjects directly related to the products it offers or services it provides.
Here are some tips for composing the texts, in addition to the essential points of SEO on page and off page mentioned above.
Persona
Get to know your audience. Knowing your clients, you will find out their interests and will be able to write directly to them. This applies not only for SEO copywriting but also for all your communications.
Tip: build characters with very specific characteristics (such as name and surname), that have the profile of your customers. Thus, it is easier to write texts 100% focused on serving them.
Create relevant content
Use tools like Google Trends to find out what people are looking for.
Through your company’s communication channels, you can probe your customers’ interests specifically.
In addition, make sure you search about the selected subject to provide readers with all the information they may be looking for in a single post.
Keywords
Enjoy the benefits that using keywords brings to your text but beware of obsessions.
The exaggerated repetition of a term makes the text tiring and unpleasant to read. The ideal is, then, to work with the keywords in a way that the reader does not realize the intention of highlighting them. Using synonyms and related terms is also a good solution.
There are several free online tools that help you select keywords, such as Google Suggest (auto complete from Google search itself), Keyword Planner and Ubbersuggest.
Form
Reading a text on the internet is not like reading a book, is it? Therefore, they must be written differently.
Use resources that facilitate reading, such as bullets for lists, tables and intertitles (as we mentioned earlier). Highlighting important parts in bold is also a good practice, but don’t overload it.
Paragraphs should preferably not be longer than 4 lines. And the text must always be aligned to the left.
Use the success of your content for conversions
Whenever possible, include a call to action button.
Remember that it is not necessary to force the situation, because, in any case, the content leads potential customers to your brand and, if you nurture this relationship, it can become a business opportunity.
Please algorithms and people
This last tip is a summary of everything that has been said so far indeed. Keep in mind: content optimized for the web must first be qualified for your target audience.
