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SEO copywriting is the answer to one of the biggest challenges faced by many website owners these days. Users now have to create content that appeals to people and search engines alike.
After all, we not only want to rank well and generate traffic but also turn that traffic into buyers, customers, and subscribers, right?
These two goals used to be the responsibility of SEO specialists and copywriters and it used to be enough to be either or. However, the way search engines work today, that is no longer the case.
To be successful in today’s online market, website owners and online marketers need to master both sides of the equation and embrace what is known as SEO copywriting.
If you are unsure what hides behind that term, this article will not only explain what it is but also show you SEO copywriting best practices to start using right away.
Search engine optimization is incredibly important for marketers. When you optimize your web pages -- including your blog posts -- you're making your website more visible to people who are looking for keywords associated with your brand, product, or service via search engines like Google.
But it can be a pretty tricky tactic to master with Google's copious algorithm updates.
How do you know what matters and what doesn't? What are today's blog SEO best practices, and what's considered "old-school"? How on earth can you keep it all straight?
We understand confusion is a common issue facing inbound marketers -- and we want to help. In this post, we'll cover how to optimize your blog posts for the keywords you care about, along with a few other optimization tactics you should keep in mind....
Updating old blog content is an interesting online marketing tactic. It doesn’t require a lot of hard work - unlike creating new content from scratch - and it brings a lot of benefits to the table. The only catch is that you need to have content that can be updated, and that your blog already has steady traffic and a decent email newsletter list. Otherwise, while you’re still free to apply this method, you might want to focus on other types of growth for your blog, such as increasing traffic and adding to your newsletter list by publishing new content. So, the main purposes of updating older content is to increase existing traffic to your blog, to get a piece of content higher in rankings, or use tweaks in order to improve conversions....
Millions of blog posts are published every day. A small percentage gain traction and attract readers.
And among those readers, 55% will read the blog post for 15 seconds or less.
(If you’re still reading, thanks for sticking with this one!) The internet is a daily battle for attention. Everywhere you turn, people are trying to share the latest marketing hacks with many of the same points echoed repeatedly.
I’m guilty of it myself, and I completely understand why many of us write articles that are a little similar and repetitive. It’s because they work. You could argue that content is becoming less art and more science. There are formulas to it — if you find the best keywords and write the correct content, you can build a high-traffic blog (that’s almost a guarantee).
But is traffic the goal of content? Or can there be some new and unusual ways of measuring content success? I have some ideas I’d love to share....
You’re checking the backlinks pointing to your site, as you do occasionally, when you see it: a huge spike in links. If your site has only a few hundred links, or even a few thousand, that’s when you need to be concerned.I have some good news for you (among the bad): If you do get attacked, it sucks. It will cost you weeks or months of lost revenue. However, you can almost always recover from negative attacks.Additionally, if you follow the four steps that I lay out in this post, you’ll be able to prevent negative SEO attacks from causing any real damage most of the time. ...
The majority of brands that researched and targeted long-tail search terms have experienced a leap in organic traffic and rankings, but that doesn’t mean you won’t experience challenges. Truth be told, if you want an immediate organic traffic boost, creating content around long-tail search phrases may not yield those results. But your focus should be on the long-term. That’s when your web pages start showing up in results, even for keywords you didn’t primarily target.
If you’re willing to play the long game, long-tail keywords can increase your organic traffic and convert better than head terms....
In the U.S. alone, we conduct an average of 12 billion web searches each month. Some of these searches are conducted by your ideal customers.
Whether you’re a B2B or B2C marketer, the good news is that 70% of the linkssearch users click on are organic results.
To truly sustain your search rankings, you need to respond to changes in search by focusing on industry trends. After all, whenever Google releases an algorithm update, the face of search changes.
You may not actually see these changes, but they’re there. That’s why you must always stay updated and align your content to user’s needs, in accordance with the then-current algorithm....
Have you thought about optimizing your social accounts for search?Do you know where to use keywords in your social profiles?In social media, there are two search engines you have to optimize for: the search function within each social network and Google search.In this article you’ll discover where to use keywords in your social profiles and pages so you are found when people search....
One of the most common and important goals of content is to attract links. Links are still a major part of SEO and probably will be for the foreseeable future.
Backlinks to a post not only help that specific post rank better in search engines but they also help all other posts on your site. Get enough quality links, and you’ll be getting tens of thousands of organic search engine visitors a month to your site.
That’s what I have for you today: a guide to the 5 best types of content that can attract not only a good quantity of links, but also high quality links. ...
If I had a dollar for every time someone asked me if I could get them a No. 1 Google ranking for a specific non-branded, hyper-competitive keyword, I would be rich. If I had a dollar for the number of times the people asking me that question actually had the content to warrant such a listing, I would be poor.
Many digital marketing folks, especially in enterprise B2B companies, don't quite understand the relationship between content and SEO. It's long been said in SEO circles that content is king. However, some SEO folks would argue that links or social engagement is king, and that content is the primary driver of links and social success. There are valid arguments on all sides of that meaningless debate, but the point that often gets lost is that creating the best user experience for the vast majority of people searching for a specific keyword is probably what's going to get you ranked consistently for that keyword.
A content strategy that supports that bigger vision is typically different than the customer-focused strategies most B2B companies use. Many people over the years have told me, "Our company is the market leader for this term! We should be No. 1!" That is often true for products or services that are relevant to the keyword phrase they are targeting. It is true that brand recognition - and certainly the links that typically accompany successful brands - make it more likely that a company will rank well for relevant terms, but the fact remains that brand authority is not always enough to guarantee a top ranking for a particular keyword....
Original research means you’re doing all the work yourself, which makes it both a strength and a weakness of the strategy. It’s a strength because no other companies or individuals have sought to engage in this research before, but it’s a weakness because it takes significant time (or money, or both) to conduct this research. Some research ventures take months of careful planning and execution and hours of compiling to generate meaningful statistics.
Fortunately, you don’t have to commit to that level in order to create a solid, well-researched whitepaper. There are alternatives you can use to conduct the research necessary for a reasonable whitepaper without spending all your marketing budget or wasting countless hours of time...
We were even able to outrank more well known brands with more than triple the number of followers.
If you practice SEO, you’ll be glad to hear that ranking on Pinterest is far easier than ranking on Google. But it still requires persistence and time.
So what did we do to get ranked so high and how can you do the same for your brand?
Here are a few tips
There are clear markers websites use to help search engines find them easily. These markers keep getting updated regularly – some become obsolete, like Google Authorship – while new ones make their appearance every few months.Let’s take a look at some subtle markers on your website that directly, if not explicitly, contribute to your search rankings these days....
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SEO is a complicated discipline. There are many components to it, and best practices change from time to time. Add to that the fact that Google updates its algorithm frequently, causing ranking shifts that are known to make digital marketers lose sleep. Additionally, Google often releases new technologies that offer alternative ways to rank. That makes the lives of SEOs even more complicated, as they have to overcome a learning curve to properly serve their clients. One day, it might be easier to become a doctor than an SEO — kidding! (But not really… ) Even now, though, there’s a lot of misinformation (and missing information) about what it takes to rank a page in organic search results. Here are nine things most people don’t understand about SEO....
SEO is a marathon, not a sprint. And at some point, your businesses is likely to experience a lull in organic traffic performance that requires you to mix up your strategy to get back on track. One way to do this is through dynamite keyword discovery. The search landscape is always changing. This includes what people search for, how they search, and what syntax – or combination of words and phrases – they use to search for things. Efficient and resourceful keyword discovery, done on a regular basis, is key to a strong content strategy and rewarding SEO over the long term. So whether you’re in an SEO slump, or just trying to start SEO, use these 2 keyword discovery techniques to quickly identify promising terms....
To help you identify what SEO optimizations your website is missing, I have found an infographic that could be your guide. It’s simply called “SEO Ranking Factors” and is created by Coalition Technologies. The infographic lists 200 of the top most important SEO ranking factors that you should have implemented on your site. The SEO ranking factors are divided into ten different categories, and you might have to do some additional research to identify what they mean and how to implement some of them. Doing so, however, will not be too hard. As you might know, SEO is the one most vital aspect of growing the traffic to your website. If you are not already monitoring the SEO scene (and the changes continuously rolled out), you should start now. The amount of traffic that you can have routed to your site by just implementing the right SEO ranking factors is incredible. Whatever you do, do not overlook this free way of increasing the traffic to your site. The SEO ranking factors range from simple additions like implementing size tags on your images to server privacy issues. However, even though you are not very skilled in the makings of a website, most of them are super simple to implement....
Here is an infographic which includes 9 most important on-page SEO factors which are basic but equally important. Any webmaster and blogger should never ignore them and should always follow them sincerely....
We are in the early stages of a new era of search -- an era tied closely to more sophisticated patterns such as mobile, social, and voice search, among other things. And for the first time this isn't just a matter of adding a new chapter to our SEO strategy, it's a matter of creating entire new playbooks. To this point, SEO has predominantly revolved around browser-based search engines. More precisely, it's been linked directly to Google. That's where all the search activity has been. That's where content consumption has historically started. Not anymore.
New universes of search are taking shape outside of the browser window. In many of them the rules for optimization have yet to be defined....
One such advance in Google’s algorithm was the Panda update in 2011. Moz describes it: Once (Google’s) computers could accurately predict what the humans would judge a low quality site, the algorithm was introduced across millions of sites spanning the Internet. The end result was a seismic shift that rearranged over 20% of all of Google’s search results.
In other words, SEO isn’t as much about title tags, H1s, and keywords as it is about how awesome your content is.
Let’s circle back around to the question. How do you make every piece of content SEO friendly?
The big answer: You make it user friendly....
Search engine optimization (SEO) experts say domain-level link authority features—such as the quality of links to a website and its overall PageRank—have the biggest positive impact on Google rankings, according to a recent report from Moz.
The report was based on data from an in-depth survey of 150 marketing professionals who specialize in search engine optimization. Each respondent rated the relative levels of influence exerted by broad search ranking factors on a scale of 1 (not influential) to 10 (highly influential).
Domain-level link authority features received an average score of 8.22, the highest of any factor. Page-level metrics ranked a close second (average score of 8.19), followed by page-level content/keywords (7.87). Detailed definitions of each factor can be found in the full report....
In the past, link building was based on quantity, not quality. But today, it’s a different ball game. If you’re a busy marketer, you have to understand that you can’t create incoming links instantly. It’s a gradual process.
The pages where you build links – specifically the quality and authority of those pages – play a key role in determining your position in the search engines.
This is where blogging comes in. When you blog consistently, you’ll get 434% more indexed pages, and your inbound links grow by 97%.
Beyond blogging, there are other proven ways to build the best links. I’ll show you 13 of these foolproof tactics that you can put to work today. They’re especially helpful for busy marketers who want to stay productive....
SEO and content marketing are still not one and the same. However, they’re much more similar to each other today than what they were last decade. For much of this decade the search algorithms allowed for a “build it and they will come” environment for content marketers. In some ways, social media networks did, too. Both HubSpot and Moz reaped the benefits of this over the years. This made content marketers feel like SEOs and SEOs that created content for real consumers feel like content marketers.
Over the last five years the cat’s been let out of the bag. It’s no longer a secret that content marketing can drive copious amounts of traffic to a brand’s website. That’s one of the major reasons why the amount of content on the Internet is supposed to grow by 500% in the year 2020.
A lot of that growth in content can likely be attributed to the thought leadership of brands like Moz, HubSpot and CMI. However, in an era of 500% more content it becomes much more difficult for content to stand out, regardless of the channel (search, social, email, etc.).
Add to that, social media networks and search engines aren’t built to serve up that much content today. With social algorithms purposefully reducing organic visibility and only 10 organic positions on the first page of most search engines, how are brands supposed to stand out?
The age of “build it and they will come” is over for many major industry verticals. This conundrum has further pushed the two circles in the Venn diagram above further together....
Google's algorithms are better-focused than ever, according to a new study from Searchmetrics.
In its fourth annual Google ranking factors study, the enterprise platform looked at the top 30 search results for 10,000 keywords and 300,000 websites on Google. According to Marcus Tober, founder and chief technology officer at Searchmetrics, the findings simply confirm the current trends.
"Understanding user intention and creating unique, relevant content is more vital than ever before," Tober says. "It is also visible that backlinks are continuing to decrease in relevance. Looking ahead, as the proportion of search queries from mobile devices continues to grow, it will be interesting to see what effect this has on the rankings.
"Some factors Searchmetrics saw positively affecting the rankings include mobile-friendliness; social signals, such as Facebook likes and Tweets; and backlinks, though the latter will likely decrease in importance. The study focuses on three other main areas...
Google in particular has made incredible strides in the last few years. Recently, there was a huge Phantom update that caused huge shifts in rankings. This update was the result of Google changing its core algorithm once again. It’s only going to keep improving from here.
I know that some of you are frustrated and angry because of those changes. It sucks if your traffic declines because your pages now rank lower.
I understand that, but in all honesty, does your content deserve to be #1?It probably doesn’t. Maybe it did before, and maybe it got surpassed. Regardless of why, the good news is that you can get your rankings back.
How? Create the best damn content out there. There are no secrets at this point.
Considering organic search still makes up about 64% of referral traffic, it’s worth it....
So, instead of focusing on the popular SEO practices of the day, I doubled down on highly valuable content. It turns out that was the correct strategy. Every single algorithmic change Google has implemented between 2008 and today has rewarded my content-centric approach and torpedoed the SEO link wrestling game.
Now, everybody is catching up to that reality. SEO is turning to content creation as a means to their end. An SEO professional recently remarked to me what a great job I was doing with SEO. I protested. “I don’t have a systematic strategy,” I said. “I’m just producing great content.”...
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This is a really good introduction to SEO copywriting for newbies. Recommended for those who need to understand the basics better.