SEO Copywriting Tips Your Online Content Needs To Rank

SEO COPYWRITING TIPS YOUR BUSINESS NEEDS

I recently joined forces with Dr Lizzy Tanguay on 'The talk.write.done podcast' to chat about two of my favourite marketing tactics: SEO and copywriting. Boy are they a powerful combination.

In this podcast episode I bare all on how to grow your audience, sales and revenue using SEO-friendly copywriting including:

• Background of my expertise (Nicki Sciberras)
• What SEO is and why it's important
• How do get started with SEO
• DIY SEO vs Agency
• Keywords, search intent and sales funnels
• Biggest SEO misconceptions
• Biggest errors made with SEO
• Content or SEO first?
• Step-by-step marketing course: SEO Made Easy

Listen to the podcast here or peruse the full transcript below to snag ALL my best SEO copywriting tips.

1. COULD YOU TELL US A BIT ABOUT WHAT YOU DO, YOUR BACKGROUND AND HOW YOU GOT INTO WORKING WITH CLIENTS ON SEO?

Hi everyone, I am Nicki and I run my own marketing agency Miss Marketing.

We are a full-service marketing agency but specialize in high converting tactics like SEO, Google and Facebook Ads, the tactics that people love because they produce great results.

We manage these aspects for clients but then also offer online, group and one-on-training for SEO and Facebook Ads.

In terms of my history, I have been a marketer for over 15 years. I completed my business advertising degree and then went on to become a marketing manager for several years. Three years ago, I made the move and started my own business. I wanted to be able to help more businesses build the business and life they dreamed off.

In terms of how I got into SEO, I studied SEO when I was a Marketing Manager back in 2016 as I understood the immense value of getting traffic to your website for free back then. It also was a large part of the international business I worked for.

For a long while in my business I was just focused on paid advertising but with the extinction of third-party cookies coming and changes as a result of privacy regulations, eg., iOS 14 and 15 updates, where we can’t track users as effectively, I knew I needed to open business owners and content creators’ eyes up more to SEO, a free tactic that wouldn’t be impacted by these changes.

2. WHAT IS SEO AND WHY IS IT IMPORTANT FOR BUSINESS OWNERS AND PARTICULARLY FOR COACHES WHO MAY BE LOOKING TO WRITE BLOG POSTS TO BUILD UP AUTHORITY AND THEIR WRITING PORTFOLIO BEFORE THEY APPROACH PUBLISHERS OR TRADE JOURNALS TO PUBLISH THEIR WORK?

The main goal of SEO is to get you ranking in the top positions of the search engine results pages. We know there are billions of searches every day so it makes complete sense that you would want to rank for keywords that your audience is searching to find you.

When you ask why SEO is important for business owners and coaches alike, there are a numbers of reasons:

First of all, it captures a user’s attention when they are in buying mode. When people are on Google, they generally know exactly what they’re looking for unlike other platforms like social media where people are there to connect with their family and friends. It makes sense to have a presence on Google, right?

Secondly, it puts you on the map – it makes your brand visible to people searching on Google. In turn, this increases traffic of relevant leads to your website. If you implement the right keywords, you’ll attract the right audience and more of them.

It instills trust in your audience. If Google is referring you, it’s a good sign that other people can trust you too.

Overall, more traffic will lead to great sales and more revenue. This should mean your cost of acquisition should go down to especially as SEO is completely free to implement. To find out more, head to my recent blog on this topic 'What is SEO and why is it important'.

If you’re a coach or a writer and targeting the right keywords, you’ll not only attract your ideal audience, but you’ll help build your profile too. The more blog posts that you post, the more keywords you can target and be noticed for, and the more that you can build your traffic and authority in that space.

If you’re an expert in your field, you’ll want to have a library of content people can access whether it be how-to articles or case studies etc. Build links from other reputable sites to these posts. This will help boost your rankings, traffic and authority whilst exposing you to new audiences. A great way to get started with backlinking is through guest blogging, interviews and appearing in industry publications your target audience reads etc.

Find out more about backlinking by taking a look at my recent blog 'Why is backlinking important and how do I get backlinks to boost my Google ranking?'.

3. HOW CAN PEOPLE GET STARTED WITH SEO ON THEIR BLOGS?

SEO has three main pillars: Technical SEO, Keywords and Backlinks and you can find heaps of information on my blog about all three of these topics on my blog.

I also wrote a blog 'SEO copywriting for conversions - Our top 5 expert tips' which offers additional helpful tips on this topic.

For the purposes of this audience, I’ll mostly focus on keywords which relates closely to copywriting.

I believe the key to marketing well is understanding your audience; their pain points, desires, challenges, objections to buying etc. Ensure you’ve got this down pat first as you want to speak to these points in your writing.

You should also consider your goals. Every piece of content you create should have a purpose that goes back to your greater business goals and mission.

Ultimately the content you create is to get conversions in some way, shape or form but you need to consider that each person in your audience is at different stages of the customer journey. The goal of each piece of content will therefore vary from creating awareness to growing your authority to eventually trying to sell a product like a book or your services.

Create a list of copy ideas or topics you want to be found for including potential questions that your audience may be asking. Type those keywords into Google and see what other suggestions or related keyword phrases show up. You can also use a tool like Semrush that will give you a free weekly trial. They have a tool called the Keyword Magic Tool which provides you with words that semantically relate to the seed keyword you type in. It’s absolute magic.

How do you select the right keywords though? If you’re a smaller business, look for mid-to-high volume words that have a low difficult (this data is available in Semrush). This means they’ll be easier to target for someone starting out.

Be sure to consider long-tail keywords which are phrases that have more than three words. A common long-tail keyword may be a question your audience could be asking. These types of words are less competitive and are more likely to convert as the more words a user types into a search engine like Google, generally the further down they are in the conversion path. There is also technical SEO and backlinking which you can find more out about on my website.

4. WOULD YOU RECOMMEND THAT THIS IS SOMETHING THAT PEOPLE SHOULD TRY AND GET TO GRIPS WITH THEMSELVES OR IS THIS SOMETHING YOU SHOULD HIRE ANE EXPERT FOR?

I think it all depends on the status of your business. If you are a relatively new business, it’s something you could implement yourself. A lot of people find the idea of SEO overwhelming, particularly the tech side but if you know the steps, it’s very doable.

Hiring an expert can be very price and on average cost around USD $1000-2000 (GBP £500-1000) per month. If you have the budget and little time that would be the time to outsource. Make sure you find a reputable agency.

5. WHEN YOU AND I LAST SPOKE WE WERE CHATTING ABOUT SALES FUNNELS AND THE DIFFERENT TYPES OF SEARCH INTENT REQUIRED AT EACH LEVEL OF THE FUNNEL. CAN YOU PLEASE GO THROUGH THIS?

The words a user types into a search engine inform us of their intent which essentially is the purpose for their search. The purpose for their search informs us of where the user is in their customer journey. The customer journey is the process of someone realizing they need something to the moment they buy it or take your desired action like book a call and even after (think loyalty).

You need to create content for every stage of the journey with each piece of content or webpage focusing on a different user intent. That way you can lead a user from the top of the sales funnel (informational keywords) down to the bottom of the sales funnel (transactional keywords) into a conversion.

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 makes a good coach?

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. Is a business or personal coach better for building my brand?

Transactional intent

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. Eg. Book a business coach

Certain modifiers or additions to a word denote the intent of a word. Eg. 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 points in their customer journey.

To find out more about keyword search intent and where to include what keyword types on what webpages, head to my blog '4 Types of SEO search intent you must consider for your website'.

6. WHAT ARE SOME OF THE MISCONCEPTIONS PEOPLE HAVE ABOUT SEO?

To be honest, before I even get into misconceptions, one of the biggest issues is that people don’t exactly even understand what SEO (Search Engine Optimisation) is. Simply it’s all the steps you take to help your website or content rank in the top positions of search engines like Google, Bing etc. when somebody searches for it.

A lot of people think they don’t need SEO in their business which is untrue. Everybody needs SEO. Where do people go where they’re looking to buy something? Google! Why wouldn’t you want to be found there. Now, with third-party cookies leaving us, SEO is becoming even more important as advertising has and will become a whole lot harder. To find out more about the extinction of third-party cookies and how to best prepare for it, head to blog 5 Tips to future-proof your business against the extinction of third-party cookies'.

Another misconception is that SEO is a hard topic to tackle and the tech is overwhelming. I could see how people would think this but it’s also not true. If you have a step-by-step guide with the exact tools to check each factor, it’s totally doable.

Many people also believe that SEO is expensive – which is a myth. SEO is completely free to implement. It only costs if you outsource the word to an expert. It’s a separate beast from Google Ads which costs.

The algorithm is changing all the time. This isn’t entirely true. I like to think of it like an iOS update. The foundations stay the same with every update but there are a few changes that help the user experience. If you’re focusing on creating a good user experience with great content, relevant keywords and reputable backlinks you shouldn’t be impacted by the updates as that is what Google is all about. Google is only trying to get rid of people that aren’t doing that so if you’re following the rules, you’ll be fine.

It’s time consuming to manage. This is also a myth. Generally speaking, once you spend a few hours getting the technical foundations of your website set-up and selecting and optimising the right keywords, there isn’t a lot of ongoing management. Of course, you can always add backlinks to build your authority and boost your rankings, but it doesn’t require the same investment financially or time wise as normal advertising.

 

7. WHAT ARE SOME OF THE ERRORS YOU SEE PEOPLE MAKING WITH SEO?

There are a few but I’ll name the ones I see most.

Some of the biggest errors I see related to keywords. Not choosing keywords with the right search intent is an issue and you’ll be familiar with that now.

Another issue is not choosing keywords that have the right amount of traffic vs. difficulty for your website. If you’re a small business going after a head or body keywords (one-two keyword phrases), you won’t be able to compete with big brands and will end up not ranking at all.

A third issue is not adding unique title tags and meta descriptions on each page of their website and instead duplicating them.

Going for low quality backlinks is another issue. Less, higher quality backlinks trump lots of lower quality backlinks.

Finally using poorly written content. Write unique and valuable content to build trust with your audience. The better quality the content, the more likely people will share it and you’ll get backlinks from it too.

8. SHOULD PEOPLE START BY THINKING ABOUT SEO OR START BY THINKING ABOUT WHAT CONTENT THEIR AUDIENCE MIGHT FIND USEFUL, OR IS THERE A BALANCE?

It’s best to start by considering your audience and what their needs, pain points and desires are. You must also consider your goals and mission as a business. If you help solve your audiences’ goals, you’ll be able to meet yours too.

One you understand both these factors completely, you will know what content will be suitable. Make a list of content ideas and go looking for keywords that directly target them, and start crafting the copy.

9. I KNOW YOU ARE IN THE PROCESS OF LAUNCHING A COURSE ON SEO, COULD YOU PLEASE TELL US SOMETHING ABOUT THAT AND WHEN IT'S GOING TO BE RUNNING, AS WELL AS WHERE PEOPLE CAN FIND YOU.

Yes, definitely. I’ve created a course named SEO Made Easy that teaches you how to simply implement your SEO step-by-step. It’s launching this coming February which is very exciting and runs for 6 weeks but comes with lifetime access.

The course will take you from being completely overwhelmed and confused by SEO to being able to confidently implement a free marketing tactic that will help you drive traffic to your website and grow your audience, sales and revenue.

It’s packed full of valuable bonuses too like how to optimise your copy and website for conversions.

It’s for all business models from ecommerce stores to content creators and service-based businesses to brick-and-mortar stores.

You can find out more about it at here.