SEO Copywriting For Conversions - Our Top 5 Expert Tips

Want more conversions? I’m going to share with you how to get greater visibility, traffic, conversions and most importantly, revenue combining two of my favourite tactics: SEO and copywriting. Let’s talk SEO copywriting for conversions.

WHAT IS SEO COPYWRITING?

SEO Copywriting is the process of creating content that is well optimised to attract your ideal audience whilst also allowing search engines like Google to present it in the Search Engine Results Pages (SERP’s) as best as possible. This means, your copy must be written in a way that pleases both humans and search engines.

Google wants to serve its customers the best possible results, that means delivering content that exactly matches the users search query and speaks to them where they are at.

If your website and content is the best at achieving this, Google wants to rank it in the top positions in the SERPs. When done right (alongside technical SEO and backlinking), this means you’ll be seeing more of those cha-chings. Not only that, but you’ll be also increasing your impact as a business owner AND creating more freedom to do the things you love, with the people you love.

WHY IS SEO COPYWRITING IMPORTANT?

• Helps attract qualified traffic with minimal to no cost
• Instils trust in your audience because you’re creating the exact content your audience is searching for
• Helps get your visitors to take action e.g., download your opt-in, book a call or make a purchase
• Gives you’re a lower cost per conversion 

HOW DO YOU ACHIEVE SEO COPYWRITING SUCCESS?

When it comes to pleasing both humans and search engines like Google, there are several strategies you can implement. Here are my top five to achieve SEO Copywriting success.

1. KNOW YOUR IDEAL AUDIENCE AND WRITE FOR THEM

Writing good copy requires you to know your audience well. This includes their demographics (age, location, job title, income etc) and their psychographics (needs, pain points, desires, interests etc). You need to know who they are and exactly what keeps them awake at night so you can speak to those problems and provide a solution. It may feel a little creepy, but trust me, it converts.

How do you find this information?

Profile your audience by interviewing them or running a poll or survey to find out. Then create a buyer persona/s (a fictional depiction of your ideal customer or client). Be sure to give your buyer persona a name and add an picture of them so you know exactly who you’re talking to when you write your copy.

Knowing your ideal audience will help you:

• Find and select the right keywords to target
• Attract your ideal audience to your website and/or content
• Determine brand identity, tone of voice and messaging so that you can create content that is engaging and speaks directly to the consumer
• Increase the duration of pages each user visits, and time spent on site which signals to Google that your content is a good match for their search query.
• Facilitate more conversions as your audience will believe you understand them

You can quickly learn more about your audience demographics by looking at insights from your social media profiles or heading to the demographics section in Google Analytics. It’s worth setting up Google Analytics if you haven’t already.

Go ahead and fill out the below for your audience:

• Location
• Sex
• Income
• Language
• Education level
• Family Status
• Job Title (and level)
• Industry

To discover more about your audience’s psychographics, you’ll need to interview your current, former, and ideal customers or clients. Survey them through polls on Instagram or by sending out a survey via email and sharing on your social media profiles. Use simple programs like Google Form, Survey Monkey or Typeform to create your survey.

Here are a few sample questions:

• What is your biggest pain point right now when it comes to (insert your topic here)?
• What do you like or value most about (insert your product/service)?
• What would hold you back from buying (insert your product/service)?
• What would convince you to purchase (insert your product/service)??
• What would make you choose a competitor’s (insert their product/service) over our offer?

Knowing who your ideal audience is and writing for them will not only make crafting your content easier but will properly equip you to write copy that converts.

2. FIND THE RIGHT KEYWORDS

Keywords are the words people type into search engines like Google to find a brand, product, service or content they’re searching for. When writing copy, it’s important to find, select and include the right keywords your audience is searching for in your copy.

Create a list of keywords you believe your ideal audience may be searching for in Google to find you. Be sure to include your products and services in that list. To help generate ideas, type one of those keywords in Google and see what suggestions or related keyword phrases they suggest or use a tool like Keyword Shitter or Semrush's Keyword Magic Tool. They offer a free weekly trial. This time-saving tool provides you with words that semantically relate to the seed keyword you search and lots of them.

Next up, you’ll need to select the right keyword for your business. If you’re a smaller business, your best bet is looking for mid-to-high volume keywords with a low difficulty score. Semrush can also provide you with all this information. This means they’ll be relatively easy to target yet have a decent search volume. Be sure to consider long-tail options (keyword phrases that are more than three words long) as they are less competitive but are also more likely to convert. The more words a user types into Google, usually the further they are down the conversion path.

You’ll them need to place those keywords in the exact places search engines require them on your website to get you ranking. 

3. CONSIDER SEARCH INTENT

The words a user types into a search engine inform us of their intent; the purpose of their search. The purpose of their search informs us of where they are in the customer journey. The customer journey is the process of your customer or client realising they need something to the moment they buy it or book a call, or even after. You then need to create content for every stage of the journey, with each piece of online content or webpage focusing on a different user intent. That way you can lead a visitor from the top of the sales funnel down to the bottom into a conversion. Show image of sales funnel.

There are four types of intent searches:

Information (Attention)

User is in the discovery stage and looking for more information about a specific topic. User is generally hitting your blog page eg. What are the best newborn baby clothes brands?

Navigational (Interest)

User is looking for a specific website or page eg. Facebook login. They’ll likely search the exact term that’ll land them where they need to be eg. Gucci newborn baby clothes

Commercial Investigational (Desire)

Search performed to compare something and are investigation their options. They are close to buying. User is generally hitting your blog or product/service pages eg. Are Gucci or Prada newborn baby clothes better quality?

Transactional intent (Conversion)

Search performed to buy something or take an action like book a call. User is generally hitting your product or service page ready to convert. E.g. Buy Gucci newborn baby clothes.

Certain modifiers or additions to a word denote the intent of a word, e.g., adding the word ‘buy’ in front of a keyword tells us the person is ready to make a purchase or the word ‘how to’ informs us that the search is informational.

You can also use tools like Semrush to show the intent of keyword phrases. You can search a keyword and find out exactly what kind of intent it has. That way you can make sure all your webpages are attracting people at the right point in their customer journey.

4. WELL STRUCTURED, READABLE COPY

It’s important to create content that is written and structured in a way that is engaging and easy to read for your audience. This will help guide your reader through the copy so that they can find the information they need to take action, progress further down the sales funnel and spend longer on your website of course (which we know pleases search engines).

Good structure also helps guide search engines particularly if you apply the right headers (H1, H2) and include your keywords in all the right place.

Consider how you could break up your topic into sub-topics and paragraphs.Then further break up each paragraph with visuals, numbered lists and bullet points.

When it comes to crafting a copy, here are a few of my favourite pointers:

• Start with a strong headline that informs the reader what the copy is about
• Include a hook to reel your target audience and get them interested in your offer
• Add your value proposition. This is the value you promise to deliver – this should set you apart from your competitors
• Infuse copy with your brand personality and tone of voice.
• Wrap up with a strong call-to action.

A little more on CTA’s…

SEO Copywriting has one purpose: to drive users further down the sales funnel and along the customer journey, into a conversion. Call-to-actions help substantially here. If you implement them correctly, they can substantially help your user achieve the goal for that piece of copy, whether it be to move them from your homepage to a product page or from a service page into a booking.

Implementing CTAs in your website will result in a decrease in bounce rates, an increase in page views, engagement, and conversions and this all signals to Google that your content is worth ranking.

Start each paragraph with the key message, that way if the readers skims, they’ll get the most important content from reading that first line. It’s difficult for readers to scan big blocks of text. Lastly, be sure to write shorter sentences as it makes the copy easier to read. Aim for sentence length of under 20 words.

LINKING (INTERNALLY AND EXTERNALLY)

Google is on mission to organise the worlds information in the most accessible and useful way possible. A keyway to help do this is through linking both internally and externally to other relevant content.

Linking internally on your website allows you to guide users smoothly through the customer journey, from the top of the sales funnel to the bottom, towards the pages that’ll will convert them. You can also link users to other content on your website that expands on the topic or point you’re covering.

As you share valuable content, this will instil trust. It will also result in the user spending more time on your site, which indicates to Google that the content was a good match for the users search query and should therefore be ranked high up in the SERPS.

Linking to external reputable and authoritative sources to support your claims or stats also helps instil trust in your audience. Ensure external links open in a new window or tab.

Conclusion

You’re all set, time to write SEO copy that leads your audience down the sales funnel and into conversion. Which of these strategies have you implemented so far?