You’ve been convinced!

Writing is not just important for selling your product and enticing the customer – though those are both still very important attributes of copywriting, don’t get us wrong – but you also need to write with Google as your audience as well.

You’ve read about how important this is, and you now are a dutiful convert of the no-keyword-no-customer school of copy. Great!

Now all that’s left is… figuring out exactly how to write what Google wants to see.

Never fear. We are here to support you in your smart copy endeavors. We have collected our top five tips for SEO copywriting right here that you can use immediately. Ready to foray into the dangerous Google wars to fight with your words and your wits for that coveted top spot on the search engine charts? Let’s roll…

1. Good writing

We won’t keep you in suspense as to what the most important SEO writing tip is. Drum roll, please: the content you produce has to be good. Make sure that it’s 100% free of grammar and spelling mistakes, and is both interesting and informative. Users are more likely to link to a site that is useful, and this ups your SEO through link building. Google itself is more likely to recognize your site as high quality if you have high-quality content – Google uses many indicators, but also through something called “latent semantic indexing.” Not only do you need to use keywords, but use synonyms and related words. Make your writing rich, authoritative, and interesting. This will have a lasting effect. Consider “flagship posts”, or “evergreen posts” – you’ll have happier readers too.

Remember: Content is king! Keep publishing content in various mediums, and translate/transcribe as necessary.

2. Keyword use and placement

Be aware of the targeted keywords in your copy and use them wisely. Keywords should always go in the title and in the first few sentences of your content or your articles, and then they should be strategically used throughout and at the end of the piece too – although you should think “natural”, not “scientific”.

However – and this ties into the number one rule of SEO writing – do not stuff your content with keywords to the point where the copy is either unreadable or ridiculous. Google doesn’t like it, and your readers won’t either. Keyword density – or the amount of targeted keywords appear in a piece per text page – is a useful tool, but like most tools it has the propensity to be overused. Keep your keywords in mind, but don’t let them run amuck through your copy.

3. Command the tags

If you don’t know anything about HTML, now is the time to learn. The H1 tag for example – specifically marks out certain parts of your text as a heading. Google will look at these tags, but you should test for results. If you take the advice of step 2 – have your keywords sprinkled both in your titles and through your text. Your rewards in the eyes of Google will be great.

4. Boldly use italics to underline the point

If you use any of these effects on words, search engines assume that they are keywords and zoom in. The flip side is that if you use them on words that are not keywords, the effect lessens. So use them wisely! UPDATE NOTE: This is more for the users than search engines, but we still left it here. Don’t bold for search engines, do it for the users.

5. Number it

People love numbered lists. People love to link to numbered lists. More links means better SEO results. They provide easy-to-digest information, such as this list on SEO tips.

If you take these five tips in mind, your SEO writing will improve vastly, upping both your rating in search engines and the traffic that you ultimately get for your site. We hope that this article was helpful for you in your quest to learn how to make your copy be the best it can be in regards to SEO writing.

What other techniques have you used that works for you?

Related articles

• Three Major Lessons from an SEO Amateur (dailyseotip.com)
• 7 Steps to Writing Good SEO Copy that Humans Will Read (seo.com)
• The Misleading Nature Of Latent Semantic Indexing In Website Content (smallbusinessmavericks.com)

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