Steps to Ranking High in Google With Your Content
A lot of people write articles for their websites without ever considering what their readers want to read. In reality, you should be putting a lot of thought into what you’re producing. If this sounds like you and you’re ready to make an impact in your market, and rate highly in search engines, it’s time for a change.
The best way to do this is through SEO copywriting.
If you want to learn how to write read-worthy content that will get your posts ranked in Google, you’ve come to the right place. Read on for a comprehensive guide to everything you need to know about SEO copywriting.
SEO Copywriting: The Basics
In order to fully understand what SEO copywriting is, you need a basic understanding of each part of the whole.
SEO
Search engine optimization (SEO) is a process that businesses and influencers use in order to increase their webpage’s ranking on a given search engines results page (SERP). This includes Google, Yahoo, Bing and any site that you use to perform Internet searches. Your goal is to get to #1 and SEO helps take you there.
Copywriting
Copywriting is simply writing with the intention of persuading your reader take a specific action. It can be anything that helps move your company’s agenda forward and is used in all areas of advertising.
Bringing Them Both Together
So, when you combine SEO and copywriting, you’re looking at a type of high quality writing that utilizes specific, target keywords that will move you up in the results pages. Your goal is to rank higher and SEO copywriting is what accomplishes this. You’re taking the best of both worlds and meshing them together to create something that your readers want to read and search engines want to rank.
So, while all of this sounds pretty self-explanatory, it’s a bit more intensive to put into action. Luckily, we’ve put together a comprehensive guide on getting your content ranked in Google, and other search engines, using SEO copywriting.
Let’s get started.
Research the Right Keywords
The first step is making sure that you’re utilizing keywords that will actually have an impact on your ranking. To do this, you need to do some research. Don’t skip this step; it’s what you’ll use in each of the following steps to find success. Since each and every post that you’ll write will focus on a primary keyword, getting the hang of this process is crucial.
Start out by brainstorming a list of potential keywords that are informational rather than transactional (a.k.a., they’re used to teach something rather than sell something).
When people make searches on Google, it’s almost always to learn new information, not make a purchase. They go to review sites or straight to Amazon for that.
Use a keyword tool like Google Adwords to perform research on the SERP of your brainstormed keywords. This will show you whether or not people are actually making searches with those keywords. If they’re using them, you’re good to go. If they’re not, find another keyword.
Don’t leave out long-tail keywords. Even if they don’t have as much competition, if people are searching for them, they’re in the cards.
Understand Your Audience
After you’ve researched some potential keywords, put yourself in the mind of your target audience. Does it sound like something you could write an entire page about that they would actually want to read it?Think about what kind of content they want to see and work with that. Focus on search intent and research the current top ranked pages on your keywords. Look for commonalities and try to understand why they’re ranking highly.
Most often, you’ll find that the highest ranked pages are answering questions about a topic in your niche or explaining how to do something. They come to search engines with questions and the sooner you understand their thought process, the sooner you’ll be able to answer them.
Remember, the goals of your posts are to draw in your potential customers and give them something they want to read. Thus, not only are keywords essential to this success, your content needs to be high quality and catch their attention with a solid introduction (more on this later).
Using your keyword research and audience knowledge put yourself in your audience’s shoes. The goal is to think about what you’d want to read… then write about it.
Study Your Competition
During your research stages, you’ll start to notice similarities in the top ranking pages. Do your research and take the time to study your competition. This will help you revise and refine your process so you can understand how to use your target keyword to get more results.Start by looking at the top 5 positions in SERP for your target keyword. Open them all and review their content. Seriously, read through the entire post and keep track of what they’re doing.
Take notice of the format they use and mirror it. Most often, visitors want things that are easy to ready or skim through, which most people do. Focus on the writing aspects of SEO and see what your competition is doing right.
Chances are, at the end of your research, you’ll find that their content was well formatted, easy to read, comprehensive, up to date, relevant and accurate. When you create your next post, make sure that it adheres to these 6 major content checks.
You may also want to take the top 5 ranking pages and do a back-search to find out exactly what target keywords they’re utilizing. If you think you can create better content, go for it. If not, amend your keywords and try something new.
Stand Apart From Your Competition
Studying your competition is important because at the end of the day, it’s what allows you to stand apart from them. In SEO copywriting, it’s nearly impossible to create and write something that is 100% unique. There are trillions of articles already published on the Internet and the likelihood of publishing something that isn’t already out there is slim to none. Instead, use SEO copywriting to stand apart from your competition.You can do this by creating a unique voice and using it. Take something and put your own spin on it, add to it, elaborate, basically do anything to make yourself different from the rest. People find inspiration from personal experiences and personality and use it in their writing.
Spend Time on Your Introduction
Like we mentioned earlier, your introduction matters. It’s what draws people in and convinces them to either keep reading or try another site to get what they’re looking for. These are the words that will help people decide whether or not you can answer their question. Use them wisely.
Not only do you need to make your introductions catchy, you need to unequivocally show your visitors that they’re in the right place. Communicate that you know who they are and why they’ve come to your website.
Unfortunately, there’s no universal formula that you can use for each one of your introductions. Each one will be different because each of your pages will likely have a different target audience (depending on your keywords). Use the information that you’ve gathered thus far and clearly communicate search intent. If you demonstrate that you understand the reader and their problem, promise a solution in your post and then prove that you’re the right person to provide that solution, they’ll know they’re in the right place.
All people want from an introduction is to know that they’re in the right place. Give them that and you’ll increase your reader base tenfold.
Link Your Post
While you can go ahead and edit, polish and post your article now, you may want to spend some time getting backlinks first. The more you have, the higher your post will rank. Both internal links and backlinks are important, but since you can handle internal links yourself, we’ll focus on getting backlinks. Backlinks are when other people link to your post. Unfortunately, most of them won’t come naturally. You need to put in work to get your numbers up there, but if you deliver what you promise, it’ll get easier as you go.
For starters, you need to prospect and reach out to other professionals in your field. As long as they’re not direct competitors, most will be happy to include a link to your article in exchange for a link to theirs. The more unique your post is, the more people will link to it. This step will take some time to develop but has a huge benefit in terms of SERP growth. Check out a detailed post on how to get more backlinks here.
Edit and Polish Your Post
Now it’s time to edit and polish your SEO copywriting. Re-read your post numerous times and make sure that everything is accurate, up to date and relevant.Since most readers just want to know the solution to their problem, remove any unnecessary content or fluff. While we would love for everyone to read each and every word, it’s just not a reality. The more simplified your post is, the better. Use short, easy to digest, sentences and paragraphs and make sure that it is “skimmer” friendly for best results.
Make sure your formatting includes lots of lists, white space, images and screenshots in order to break up your text and compliment your SEO copywriting. Use internal links and emphasize certain words for better readability. Once you’ve gone through it a couple times and feel like it’s ready to post, you’re done!
The only thing left to do is upload your post to your website. Repeat this process time and time again. It will take time to perfect, a lot of time, but once you do you’ll receive more and more traffic to your site each month and appear higher in organic searches. If you’ve read through this comprehensive guide on getting your content ranked in Google and feel like you need some outside help, or just want to streamline the process, reach out to us at SEO Fuel. Our search engine optimization professionals are here to help with SEO copywriting for your website that gets you results.
