So you know you have to write your website copy with SEO in mind… You’ve done a bunch of googling, started with a blank sheet of paper and ended up playing basket ball with screwed up papers into your bin… more than a few times I’m imagining.

There’s something about SEO that gets people all in a twist.

It doesn’t have to be like that though … these are 6 simple steps that I use with all my clients to help them effectively use their key words to write copy that gets them found on google.

So you have your key words (if you missed that part – skip back and read What are Keywords & How to Use them) – now we’re going to use them to write copy that gets you found on google.

1. Link SEO Key Words to Content

The first thing to do when we’re writing copy for SEO is to decide what key word you’re writing for. It’s best to choose one per page (with a secondary variation if you want) and ensure that’s the focus of the content on your page.

Now we have our page’s keyword we want to make sure people get what they ordered when they click on your link in their search results. i.e. quality content that matches your key word.

Why link key words to content (or why search intent is important)

You wouldn’t love it if you ordered a carrot cake and got a brownie? Not because the brownie isn’t yummy, but because it wasn’t what you were craving. Same for search results. If your content isn’t what people thought it would be they’ll leave, and that’s not great for them, or for your rankings.

How to match content to search intent

We can start this process by matching the content to a keyword. Something to help us here is to consider key words in 3 categories.

Informational: wanting information on a certain point “what was Michael Jackson’s middle name? ooo let me google it” *googles What was Michael Jackson’s middle name*
Navigational: wanting to visit a specific website. This often happens when a user knows the business but doesn’t know the url
Commercial: used when searching to purchase something “Buy trainers in Paris”

This helps us because we don’t want to target an informational article against a commercial key word, this will lead to the searcher landing on content that is not valuable or relevant and quickly leaving the page (a no-no for your rankings).

Blogs will often be informational, however products in an online shop, or a services page would be commercial. Use this framework to help you carefully match your key words and content.

2. Plan your content

Now you have your key word and the focus of your page – spend a little time planning out your content. Give it a structure – consider how you want to approach your topic. Some useful things to think about here are:

How you might want to use lists or subheadings to break things up.
Where you’d like to cover certain information.
If you’d like images or infographics to support your points.

It can be helpful to think of a “story board” of your page – what information you want to cover in each section, but also the ending of the story, and the call to action for your audience – what do you want them to do next and how do you get them from A - B.

Heard that blogging can help you get found on google? You’d be right…

3. Know your on-page SEO elements

A need to know if you want your copy to get you found is what “on-page” copy elements are the most important…

Let’s start with what copy elements there are

1. Headers – Header 1 (H1), Header 2 (H2), Header 3 (H3) & Header 4 (H4) etc…

Your headers carry more ranking weight than the paragraph text on your page, so use them wisely. Include key words (especially in H1), along with power words to engage your audience – your H1 (title) should be hooking them in. Use them also to structure your text so that as people skim they see useful, engaging information in your headers and stick around to see what more there is to see. Try this article for some title inspo.

2. Image Alt descriptions

These image descriptions (called file names on Squarespace) are a great opportunity to increase your SEO currency by using key words in your text. They’re also really important for accessibility reasons as visually impaired website visitors viewing your website with an e-reader will “read” your images by listening to the alt descriptions.

Top tip: Don’t “key word stuff” (shove in a load of key words that don’t make sense). Google doesn’t like it, and it won’t make any sense to people accessing your site via an e-reader. Use key words where they’re relevant and accurately relate to the image you’re describing.

3. Body text AKA paragraph text

Don’t think that because it’s not as relevant for your ranking in and of itself it’s not valuable. Your body or paragraph text is very important as it’s where a lot of the value of your article or page is.

This value is why people stay on the page, and come back to your site. The trick with body text is to continue to engage people throughout your article. You can do this by

Creating valuable content - do your research and make what you write really useful
Make sure people get what they ordered by matching your content to your page title
Highlight key words in bold/ italics or underlines
Break up your content with bullets, lists and sub headings (good for the skimmers - see point 4)

For more on SEO for your Squarespace Website - read this.

4. Let people know the value of the content (quickly)

How many times have you landed on a page, given it a quick skim, decided it wasn’t for you and left (all within less than 30 seconds)?

You’re not alone, research into reader patterns on web pages show people get bored after 2 paragraphs and skim the rest. If you haven’t already sold them by the end of para 2, then you’ll lose them. Let’s build on points 2 & 3 with some more ways to hook people in.

Dean Evans from That Media Thing advises you to make sure your opening sentence uses one of the following devices:

Curiosity (“You'll never guess what happened to me this morning, before I even had my coffee...”)
Question (“Did you know there are just two things you can do to avoid getting penalised by Google?”)
Empathy (“I bet you wish you were a super hero.”)
Surprise (“Everything you've ever heard about how much sleep you need is wrong.”)
Statistics (“16% of startups don't make it past the first two years.”)

Ways to make sure your value is clear from the get go

Use paragraph one to…

To show the reader that understand their problem, that it can be solved, and that that’s what you’re about to do.
To describe the pinnacle point (their dream scenario), tell them what’s holding them back, tell them how they can overcome this.
To explain the “why” for what you’re writing about

e.g. Research shows having a bilingual website increases search traffic to those websites by 80% - that’s nearly twice the number of people, and if you’re converting them, twice the number of sales/clients). That’s why now is the moment to …”

As an extension of the key word immediately providing some more detail/ information

e.g. V, W, X, Y, Z, the top 5 most important things for every yoga teacher’s website… not too tricky right? Let’s jump right in with number one.

5. Create clickable page titles & meta descriptions

We have 3 often missed “off page” opportunities to use copy to help us with our SEO.

Your url (Uniform Resource Locator). The first part of this will be your domain name e.g. www.risingtidecreatives.com. But the second part of it (AKA url slug) is something you can choose (the forward slash X Y Z). Make sure you’re using your key words smartly in your url.
Your page name. This is the part that shows up in bold on a google search page. Again, use your key word here. But also make it exciting, make it “clickable”. For example if your key word was “SEO strategies”, rather than “5 case studies on SEO strategies for Yoga Teachers” try “5 Yoga Teachers changing the game with winning SEO strategies”
Your page meta description. This is the couple of sentences that sit below your page title on google. Google will show around 160 characters here so I suggest keeping to around that mark. Once again it’s a great place to use your key word, and to generate some excitement for the searcher about what’s to come when they click. Don’t be afraid to use sensational and power words – in fact it’s highly encouraged. See this from Buffer on some of the most powerful words to use in your copy writing and what makes them awesome.

6. Plan, draft, edit, review

We spoke about planning at the beginning, it’s a really important stage of the process – try to ensure you have a robust plan before you put pen to paper for the writing – it will save you time in the long run.

Once your plan is in place – just go for it – start writing. Its often this part people find the most challenging as it’s easy to doubt yourself and worry about “getting it right”. My best advice here is to just go for it – you can edit later.

You’ve finished the first draft? Great - now it’s time for reviewing and editing. You can try reading out loud or by asking someone else to read and give feedback. Don’t forget to check for typos and spelling errors as well as “readability” and relatability. You can also see whether your key word is coming through strongly enough by using a tool like wordle which makes an image with the most commonly used words in the largest size. (See my wordle for this article below - it’s pretty clear from it what it’s about!)

Finally, before you get ready to post your blog, or input the text for your website refer back to your key word(s) to make sure the copy you’ve created meets the need of the person using that key word search – double check this throughout, but especially at the end to make sure they’re still well connected.

So there it is, the approach I use when I’m writing content for my website to ensure that I maximise the opportunities to use my copy as an SEO tool.

The above blog contains a lot of useful tips - but really the very most important thing at every stage is to understand your ideal client & create great content. This is more important than any other strategy.

Another way of saying this is that the goal when creating content should always to be to deliver the most value. If you do this, you can’t go far wrong.