Writing for visitors and search engines - SEO copy
Wednesday, Nov 14, 2007
There are two main goals for the texts you write for your site: to draw visitors to your webpage and to get them to proceed to the sites that you promote. As an affiliate you sell leads and your most important task is to generate them.
“There are two main goals for the texts you write for your site: to draw visitors to your webpage and to get them to proceed to the sites that you promote. As an affiliate you sell leads and your most important task is to generate them.”
The content is the key
SEO copywriting not only focus on the viewable text, but also optimizes other page elements such as, title description and keyword tags in respect to targeted search terms.
The idea behind SEO copywriting is to create actual quality content that is liked both by visitors and search engines. In classic SEO copy the text should be optimized on certain key terms (usually1-3) in certain frequencies and densities. But the web has evolved and the focus of SEO copy today is how the content is viewed by others. So the most important thing is to write good quality content that others link to or rank high on Digg and other social media sites.Texts that search engines and readers like
The most important place to put your keywords is the title tag. The effect is that both search engines and readers will take notice of them. The title has to grab the attention of the reader and give a good idea of what the text is about.Follow up with the keywords in the opening of the text. But do it in a relevant way that interests the reader. Remember - this is where you need to persuade the reader to continue reading. If the headline and the opening sentence don't attract the reader it doesn't matter what you write in the rest of the text, because nobody will read it. Try to get the keywords into the subheadings as well.
Don't let the keywords limit your writing. Use related words and synonyms as well. This makes the text more live and dynamic and we can assume that modern search algorithms probably recognize contextually-related words that support your keywords.
Effective copywriting
It is important to remember that one of the main goals for the text is to make the user take some sort of action that we will benefit from. The overall principle of successful copywriting can be stated like this:Grab Attention
Stimulate Interest
Build up Desire
Urge the reader into Action!
A.I.D.A is a well known acronym among copywriters. It gives a good overview of what good copywriting is all about. You use an effective headline to grab the attention. The introduction text stimulates the readers' interest, the body text build up the readers' desire and in the end of the text you urge the reader to take action. Sounds easy, doesn't it? But as with everything, to become really good at it takes a lot of practice.
To sell a product you need to isolate the product's unique selling point (USP). You have to tell your readers in what specific way your product will benefit them. If you are an affiliate your product is very similar to what many others also has to offer, but your goal should be to get your product to stand out with good copywriting. If you manage to do this convincingly and you find your USP, you have a great chance to close the deal.
Call to action
When you have gotten the visitor to read the whole text and told them about your "unique" offer you need to close the deal. We want the visitor to take some kind of action that will be to our benefit. In the end this is what it's all about, without it all your efforts will have been in vain.No when you have enlightened the readers about your wonderful offer you have to get them to act on it. To do this you have to tell the readers exactly what they need to do in order to get your fantastic offer. You want them to sign up right away, because if they leave with the intention of coming back later there is a great risk that you loose them forever. A good way to get them to accept your offer right away is by setting a time limit on it or to give them some kind of bonus when they signup.
So basically SEO copy has three goals; to get you to rank high in the search engines, draw visitors to your site and get your visitors to do what you want them to once they've reached your site.
