With websites marching to the beat of their own drummer, the line between marketing and content is blurred.
But who wins when the drum circles back around?
SEO copywriting integrates your marketing and content efforts into a cohesive strategy. You work with a team of writers to ensure that your SEO-related content ranks well in organic search.
This highly targeted content will guide your prospects through a multi-step buying process, and it will do so in a way that is most beneficial to your business. You have a distinct focus on generating leads, building trust, and boosting conversions. From a marketing perspective, SEO copywriting can look like ordinary content marketing, but with a bit more of the “art” left in the process.
Why Should You Care About SEO Copywriting?
If you’re reading this, I assume that you’re either the person who wrote it or the person who is going to act on the advice it contains. In the former case, congratulations! Your business is probably already benefitting from the work that you’ve engaged a professional copywriter to do. If you’re looking for specific advice or you’re not sure which direction to take your business, continue reading.
SEO copywriting is the intersection of marketing, sales, and content. The better your content is, the higher it will rank in searches. At the very least, good SEO copywriting will make your content easier to understand and more memorable. Your target audience will retain information better if it is presented in a way that is both easy to understand and memorable. In other words, they will have more “drum circles” with your content than “drum circles” independently.
While the concept of SEO copywriting may not be new, the practice has evolved to fit the ever-changing needs of digital marketers and business owners.
The Evolving Role of SEO Copywriting
In the early 2000s, SEO copywriting was very much focused on getting a page or a blog post “spidered” by having a lot of backlinks built to that page or post. A lot of the focus was on trying to get a ton of websites to link to your content. Since then, the algorithm that drives search engine results has changed, and what was successful at the height of the “spider-man” era may not work as well today.
In general, SEO copywriting has evolved to become more of a lead nurturing strategy, where content is used to guide a prospective customer through a sequence of steps to ultimately sign up for a free trial or make a purchase. This is a far cry from simply getting a blog post or a webpage ranked number one in a keyword search.
The evolution of SEO copywriting has been enabled by two factors. First, the advent of content marketing. Second, the rise of voice search.
What Is Content Marketing?
If you’re reading this, I assume that you already know what content marketing is. If not, it’s probably about time you learned the term. As the name suggests, content marketing means using content to attract, engage, and retain customers.
What’s interesting is that even in today’s world of “content-first” marketing, content marketing is still considered a “best practice.” According to HubSpot Blogs, 91% of marketing professionals said that their approach to content marketing was “very effective,” and 80% said the same about their approach to social media.
Put succinctly, content marketing is about creating and distributing high-quality content that helps customers discover products and services that are relevant to their needs. The goal is to create content that is both informative and entertaining, while at the same time driving traffic to your site. Essentially, content marketing is about engaging with your audience through varied and robust content that is both relevant and interesting.
The Rise Of Voice Search
The other factor that has helped to shape the role of SEO copywriting is voice search. In the past, when you searched for something on Google, the first few results that came up would be the best matches for your query.
Thanks to the technology behind speech recognition and artificial intelligence, all of a sudden you no longer have to be limited by the results that appear on the first page of your search. You can now dictate your search criteria and have speech recognition find matches for what you’re saying.
While this has been a benefit to consumers, it has also opened the door for voice search to play a more prominent role in SEO. Forrester predicts that people will use voice search as a primary means of search 15% of the time by next year.
To see how voice search has influenced SEO, simply say the letter B into your microphone. Did you say “Basket” or “Blog”? You may or may not have noticed that when you said “Basket”, Google responded with a list of shopping results, including Amazon.com.
The next letter, C, opened with a long list of news articles. When you search with the letters C and S together, as in “Candy Searches”, you’ll notice that the top results are articles from Buzzfeed, The New York Times, and other trusted news publications. So if you’re looking for information on candy, you’ll see a steady stream of articles from quality news sources.
Why Voice Search?
As I noted above, the advent of voice search has played a role in defining the modern role of SEO. But what is voice search? Essentially, voice search is when someone speaks a query into a microphone or a digital voice recorder, and then listens to the results.
Why do people turn to voice search? According to HubSpot Blogs, 56% of people said that they use voice search because it’s easier, and 49% cite speed as the reason why they use it. Additionally, 42% of respondents said that they use voice search because they think that the AI-driven results are more valuable. Finally, 39% of respondents said they use voice search because they want to be sure that they get the results that they’re looking for.
The Evolution Of SEO Copywriting
The role of SEO copywriting has changed a great deal in the last 15 years. Back then, the main goal was to get a website or blog post “spidered” by having a lot of backlinks built to that page or post. A lot of the focus was on trying to get a ton of websites to link to your content.
This was more about inbound marketing, and it was all about driving traffic to your site, which was essentially a precursor to the modern-day concept of content marketing.
Today, the goal of SEO copywriting is to evolve into a more holistic strategy, where content is used to guide a prospective customer through a sequence of steps to ultimately sign up for a free trial or make a purchase.
The evolution of SEO copywriting has been enabled by two factors. First, the advent of content marketing. Second, the rise of voice search.