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13 SEO Copywriting Tips for Serious Bloggers

I’m pretty sure you know how important SEO copywriting is when it comes to doing content marketing. It requires you to produce high quality content that is written specifically for your targeted audience and making sure that your content is optimized so that it can reach out to your intended audience and therefore gain maximum exposure.

But do you know that SEO copywriting isn’t just about improving your website rankings and the web traffic anymore?

Yes, I know you want to achieve those search engine rankings as it is crucial, but you also need to have your content writing satisfy your readers as well. You should always be aware that your underlying goal is to build a relationship with your readers. Once you have achieved that, it will be easier for you to promote your products or services to them and at the same time you can establish yourself as an authority within your niche.

The following are 13 SEO copywriting tips to help you become a successful blogger:

1. Write for humans, optimize for robots

Optimizing your blog content for SEO is important, sure, but don’t forget about who you are actually writing for – human (your readers)! One of the biggest mistakes that most businesses make is to solely focus on optimization to the point where the quality of their content diminishes.

Sure, your blog content may be perfectly optimized using keywords, title tags, meta descriptions and anchor texts, but what good is this if your content is no good?

You may be drawing in lots of web traffic, but few of your visitors are going to stick around if your content isn’t helpful, informative, relevant or well-written. You need to focus equally well on writing content for your target audience and making sure it’s properly optimized for search engine crawlers.

2. Don’t worry about keyword density

Well, one of the biggest worries that bloggers often have is how many keywords they should use within their content.

The thought is that using too few will result in poorer page rankings while the use of too many will result in ranking penalties imposed by Google (they frown upon keyword stuffing).

This results in bloggers trying to hit a magic keyword density, which often results in their content reading poorly and the keywords being inserted unnaturally.

Caption: See what Matt Cutts has to say about keyword density.

Therefore, it is always advisable that you should focus on writing good content. Your important keywords should show up naturally as a result of natural content writing. Don’t worry about trying to hit a certain percentage of keyword density as this will usually diminish the quality of your content.

3. Use LSI keywords or synonyms

If you want to attract your target audience, you should use LSI keywords, which are often the synonyms of your main keywords, in the same paragraphs as your main keywords. LSI keywords provide context to your keywords, enabling Google to more accurately index your content.

For example, if your main keyword is “Apple products,” Google won’t know whether you’re talking about the fruit or the company. Google’s algorithm will search for LSI keywords to understand the context of your main keyword.

So if you use “apple pie recipe” as an LSI keyword, Google will know you’re not talking about computers or smartphones.

If you are interested to know how you can generate more of these LSI keywords, you can check out this free LSI Keyword Generator tool now.

Insert your keyword into this LSI Keyword Generator

These are some of the suggested LSI keywords

4. Optimize for long tail keywords

Trying to optimize your content for broad keywords isn’t going to help your page rank very high, especially if you run a smaller business.

For example, if you’re writing a blog for a small Ford dealership in Eugene, Oregon, then the keyword “car” isn’t going to help very much. Long tail keywords are more specific and often include location keywords.

For example, “used Ford taurus in Eugene, OR” is a long tail keyword and one that you would have a better chance at ranking highly for. Long tail keywords also often include words that are specific to your brand.

Also, below is a very interesting infographic as to why you need to pay more attention in finding and using long tail keywords.

Source: The Hidden Value of Long-Tail SEO by HitTail

5. Write long content

Many bloggers will write short content but release a lot of it. This is a quantity over quality strategy that doesn’t work very well. If you look at the data, you’ll see that longer content tends to rank better than shorter content. If you look at the web pages that rank in the top 10 for basically any keyword, you’ll see that the average content length is at least 2,000 words. One of the reasons for this is that the length of a piece of content is usually indicative of its quality. The longer a piece of content is, the more in-depth it generally is. Readers are more likely to share longer, more in-depth content, on their social media pages or through email than they are for shorter content.

6. Write good title tags

Title tags are important for numerous reasons. First of all, your title tags tell search engines what your pages are about, making it easier for them to index and rank. Not to mention that search engines use your title tags to display snippets of your content on their results pages.

Why is this important? It means that when a user is browsing the results page, they will read your title tag before clicking your link. This means that the more effective your title tag is in explaining what your content is about, the more likely you are to get clicks. Make sure that your title tags are not only relevant to your content but that they also contain relevant keywords.

7. Write attention-grabbing meta descriptions

Some bloggers don’t put nearly as much time into writing their meta descriptions as they should. This is because they aren’t a factor in Google’s ranking algorithm. However, your meta descriptions can be the difference between a user visiting your website versus visiting another website. A good meta description explains what your content is about (in greater detail than your title tags) and convinces the user to visit your page.

Example 1:

Example 2:

8. Avoid keyword stuffing

We mentioned keyword stuffing earlier – it’s a black hat tactic that Google frowns upon. Back in the day, page rankings were determined solely by the use of keywords. This led to websites using irrelevant keywords over and over in their content, with no regard to the quality of the actual content.

For example, if the keyword you were using was “SEO copywriting,” then an example of keyword stuffing would be “If you are SEO copywriting, then use these SEO copywriting tips.”

This strategy led to poor content ranking highly. Since Google’s goal is to provide the best possible results for searchers, they made it a point to penalize websites that were obviously keyword stuffing. Like we said before, focus on writing good content and the keywords will come naturally – don’t try to fill your content with keywords in an unnatural way.

9. Optimize your images (ALT Text)

Adding images to your blog is a great way to break up your text and peak the interest of your readers. However, you won’t want to forget to optimize your images. Google’s algorithm won’t be able to recognize your images unless you provide ALT text to each one describing what the images are. By remembering to optimize your images, you’ll help boost the page rankings of your blog content.

10. Don’t over-optimize your anchor text

Your anchor text, which is the text that you link out to another page or website, should be optimized using keywords that describe the content of the link.

For example, instead of using “click here” as your anchor text that links to a list of the 10 best restaurants in Brooklyn, you should use something like “10 best restaurants in Brooklyn” as the anchor text.

Pretty obvious, right? But there is such a thing as over-optimizing your anchor text. Google used to use anchor text as the way to judge the relevancy of a link, but it realized that many bloggers were taking advantage of this, often using unnatural keywords as anchor text or using generic anchors with no relation to their keywords. Use long tail keywords and use variety when creating anchor texts so that it looks organic to Google.

11. Use subheadlines

In addition to using h1 tags (the blog content’s main headline), you should also use subheadlines, or h2 and h3 tags. These should include relevant keywords as long as they can be implemented naturally. By using subheadlines, you are doing several things. First of all, you are telling Google what different sections of your content are about, making it easier to index. Secondly, you are telling your readers what the different parts of your content are about, making it easier for them to scan your blog. Scanning is important, since readers want to see the general gist of your content before reading it. If all they see is a giant block of text without any subheadlines, they are more likely to not read it.

12. Use a distinctive voice

Your voice needs to be consistent and personal.

Nobody wants to read dry content that sounds like it was manufactured by a machine.

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It needs to have personality. That personality should be appropriate for your brand, of course. For example, if your brand is aimed at an audience in their teens, then an excited and informal voice is appropriate. By using a distinctive voice, your readers will be able to connect with your brand better since it will be easier to relate to you.

13. Write award winning headlines

Never underestimate the importance of a good headline. Your headlines not only describe what your content is about, but they are ultimately what convinces readers to actually click on your blog page and to read the content.

Boring headlines aren’t going to interest your readers after all. Make sure that your headline remains concise, however. You don’t want the reader to get confused about what your content is about because you tried to fill it with too much information.

There are a lot of factors to consider when blogging. Use these 13 SEO copywriting tips to make sure that you are focusing equally on the quality of your blog’s content and your optimization of that content.

Updated: 12/6/15

Niche Keyword Data Mining: Great Insights For Every SEO Marketer

The importance of keywords in your SEO campaign should be pretty much a given at this point in time. Everybody and their mother understands that you have to use keywords throughout your website’s content in order to increase your web ranking.

However, figuring out what keywords are the most effective for your brand is a whole different matter. Many companies make the mistake of using keywords that are too broad or basic.

If you run a small local cell phone repair company, then you’re not going to rank very high for the keyword “smartphone” no matter how much effort you put into your SEO – you’re just not going to compete with major corporations such as Apple, Verizon and LG to name a few. It’s why we can’t emphasize the importance of using niche keywords, or long tail keywords, enough.

The long tail keyword is a more specific phrase typically made up of four or more keywords. Because long tail keywords are generally more specific to your brand, they are easier to rank for. This is why you should consider using niche keywords as part of your long tail keyword. Niche keywords are highly specific to your industry. In order to be highly specific, they need to be long-tail keywords.

An example of a niche keyword could be something like “Best used bookstore in Chapel Hill, NC.”

This is a long tail keyword that is much more specific than a generic keyword such as “bookstore.” A small used bookstore out of Chapel Hill is going to rank much higher for that niche keyword than they will for the broader keyword. You can also use detailed products as part of your niche keyword. For example, “used college textbooks in Chapel Hill.”

In order to figure out what the most effective long tail keywords are, you’re going to need to do some niche keyword data mining. What exactly is keyword data mining? Basically, it’s keyword research done via the collection and analysis of the data that you’ve collected.

The Importance of Keyword Data Mining

Creating long tail keywords is much more difficult than creating regular keywords. There’s a reason why regular keywords are so difficult to rank for – everyone is using them because they are easy to think of and apply.

Long tail keywords are much more unique to the brand putting them to use, making them easier to rank for, although tougher to come up with. Keyword data mining is an essential strategy for coming up with long-tail keywords as well as keywords in general.

The following are some of the reasons why keyword data mining is so necessary:

Keyword data mining is a fundamental step in the process of search marketing. It helps you to figure out what basic keywords you should be using for your brand, keywords that can then be used as the building blocks for your long tail keywords.
You can use keyword data mining to judge the effectiveness of your current keyword use. This can be done by analyzing some of the data gathered by using a rank tracking tool like RankReveal. This information not only helps you to cut down on the use of poor keyword choices, but it will also give you a clearer direction of which long-tail keyword you should be focusing on.
By doing keyword data mining, you’ll obtain a clearer understanding of your customer’s language. The data you obtained can tell you what type of language they are using by showing you which of your keywords are more effective at drawing web traffic and at converting visitors. By understanding how your customers are searching, you’ll have a better grasp of what language to use in order to reach your target audience.

Types of Keywords

While you can probably differentiate between a normal keyword and a long tail keyword, it’s a good idea to know what the different types of keywords are so that you understand how they affect your content.

Types of keywords

Head Tail Keywords – Head tail keywords (aka, fat head search terms) are the broad keywords, such as “NFL games” or “dentist.”
These types of keywords can generate millions of searches each month. Some head tail keywords can even triple that amount on certain days, such as head tail keywords like “father’s day,” “world cup,” or “holiday.”

Middle Tail Keywords – Middle tail keywords (aka, chunky middle search terms) typically consist of two to three words. They are not as competitive as head tail keywords but are not quite as specific as long-tail keywords.
For example, “super bowl winners” would be a middle tail keyword. They tend to have more direction than head tail keywords but are still not well targeted and can be difficult to come up with content ideas for.

Examples of middle tail keywords also include “holiday meals,” “2014 World Cup” or “father’s day gifts.” As you can see, they manage to be more specific than head tail keywords but are still quite broad in their intention. These types of keywords work well for landing pages.

Example of a middle tail keyword.

Long Tail Keywords – These are the kinds of keywords that will attract your target audience. Not only will you rank better for long tail keywords, you’ll eliminate the poor quality traffic that head tail keywords and middle tail keywords can bring to your website. The higher the quality of traffic your website gets, the better your conversion rate will be.
Long tail keywords also tend to reveal hidden information about your target audience, such as their interests, demography, geography and behaviors. You can see this in the long tail keyword “Seattle’s Best Coffee Iced Vanilla Latte.” This keyword reveals a lot of information about your audience, including location and interests.

Finding Long Tail Keywords

Long-tail keywords have much higher conversion rate than fat head terms.

As can be seen from the diagram, although the fat head keywords have higher search volume than the long-tail keywords, the longer tail terms have a much, much higher conversion rate than the fat head terms. That means that although there is less traffic generated, there are substantially more sales and conversions with long tail keywords.

While you can probably come up with some solid long tail keywords on your own, you’ll want to use keyword data mining in order to find more potential long tail keywords that can be even more effective. Use the following steps to find more high quality long tail keywords.

Step 1: Use Keyword Research Tools

There are a number of keyword research tools available that can assist you with your niche keyword data mining. The following are just a few of the keyword research tools we recommend:

Google Autocomplete Tool – All you need to do in order to use this tool is to type in a keyword into Google’s search bar. Google will automatically show a list of similar keyword suggestions. This is a great way to get long word keyword ideas.

Google will automatically show a list of similar keyword suggestions.

Ubersuggest – Simply type a keyword into their search bar and they’ll come up with thousands of keyword ideas that will be listed in alphabetical order for your convenience.

Type your keyword in their search bar

You will get thousands of keyword ideas

Bing Keyword Research Tool – This tool will help provide keyword suggestions and ideas for your content. Although this tool is free, you’ll need to sign up for Bing Webmaster Tools.

Bing Keyword Research Tool

Step 2: Refine Your Niche Keyword List

In addition to finding new long tail keywords to use, you’re going to want to make sure that the long-tail keywords you are already using are effective. This is where analytics come in. With RankReveal, you can find keywords that are ranking extremely low even though you’ve optimized your page properly for that keyword. This may mean that it’s simply not effective, which means you should consider using a different niche keyword.

You should also look at bounce rates – which is the frequency at which visitors leave certain web pages. Check to see what the targeted keywords are for pages on which the bounce rates are particularly high. There’s a chance that you’re either offering irrelevant data for your niche keyword or that you are targeting the wrong niche keyword altogether.

Another valuable place to retrieve data about your niche keywords is through your internal search engine. You can look at the search data in order to identity any valuable niche keywords that you are missing out on or even identify pages that have been optimized for the wrong keyword. The data you mine from your internal search engine can help you better optimize your webpages with more effective niche keywords.

Step 3: Determine How Competitive Your Niche Keywords Are

You can learn a lot from your competitors, including what keyword strategies are not working for them. Again, you can also use RankReveal in order to see what niche keywords your competitors are using on their web pages and how they are ranking for them. The niche keywords that they are ranking well for could also be the long-tail keywords that you want to optimize for as well, in order to make your niche keyword strategy more competitive.

Monitoring Your Keyword Ranking Performance

Once you’ve developed a list of strong long term keywords and have optimized your webpages for them, you’ll want to keep track of their performance.

This can be done through the RankReveal tool, which is unique among keyword tools in that it allows you to type in a domain name instead of a specific keyword. The tool will then display all of the keywords being ranked for on that website as well as a ton of other useful information, such as how many keywords are ranking in the top 3, the top 10 and the top 100 as well as how many keywords are trending upwards or downwards.

RankReveal keep track of all your ranking keywords

Additionally, it will tell you how many keywords your website is tracking for and how many potential keywords you are tracking for – and it will list all of those keywords along with detailed information such as their rankings. This kind of information is vital to monitoring the performance of your niche keyword, or long tail keyword, strategy.

Updated: 9/6/15

Mobile Friendly Updates: A Wake Up Call For Every Local Business

We can’t emphasize how important it is to optimize for mobile use especially as Google continues to focus its efforts on rewarding mobile marketing. Earlier this year, Google released a number of efforts that boosted the page rankings of mobile-friendly websites on mobile search results. The updates greatly benefit users doing mobile searches, since it is now easier to find higher quality content and more relevant results that can be read on their mobile devices without having to tap or zoom.

Anyway, the following are a few things you should know about these recent mobile updates:

The updates only affect mobile search rankings– This means although Google is rewarding mobile-friendly websites by increasing their page rankings on mobile searches, they are not punishing websites that are not optimized for use. Although non-optimized websites won’t be ranked high on mobile searches, their ranking will not be affected by the update on searches done on non-mobile devices, such as laptops or desktops. The updates are basically Google’s way of implementing quality control – they are for the benefit of the mobile user.

The updates will affect search results worldwide – This shouldn’t come as much of a surprise when considering the fact that Google is used throughout the world. Not to mention that mobile devices are just that – mobile, which means that mobile users could be doing mobile searches from anywhere. This also means that the updates will affect all mobile search results done on Google no matter what language they are in.

The updates apply to individual pages – There are websites that contain some web pages that are optimized and some that are not. Instead of an all or nothing ranking, Google judges each web page separately. This means that if your website has a blog that is mobile-friendly, it will be ranked higher on mobile searches. However, if your website’s homepage is not mobile optimized, it will rank worse than your blog on mobile searches.

While mobile marketing has been catching on quickly over the last few years, these updates will help drive mobile optimization even harder.

According to a number of recent tests, Google’s new mobile algorithms updates could affect upwards of 40 percent of the Fortune 500 websites.In fact, you may be surprised at how many top brands have yet to optimize their websites for mobile use. Studies done only two years ago showed that barely one-third of the Fortune 500 were prepared for mobile search.

If you look at the top 20 companies listed on the Fortune 500, you’ll find that six of them are not mobile-friendly while one of them had no response.

Why is Google focusing so much on mobile updates?

Why is Google so obsessed with emphasizing mobile optimization? Google understands that there will be over 2 billion smartphone users by the time the next year rolls around and that, according to numerous experts, almost 33 percent of the world’s population will use smartphones by the year 2018. So, taking this data into consideration, Google has made these updates to, first of all, make their searches better for mobile users. Secondly, these updates will help ensure that Google retains its position as a useful search engine in the mobile age – something that isn’t a given, especially with mobile properties such as Facebook making big splashes. In fact, Facebook went from having a 5.4 percent market share of worldwide mobile ad spending back in 2012 to 21.7 percent only two years later!

Why should these mobile updates concern you?

Let’s say you have a website that ranks on the first page for numerous searches. If your website is not optimized for mobile use, then you won’t be ranked on the first page for those same searches done on mobile devices. This will actually have an enormous effect on you. As smartphone ownership increases, so do the number of mobile searches.

According to a recent study, mobile traffic to websites grew 35 percent over the course of one year, while 28 percent of all online revenue was actually generated by mobile devices. Basically, if your webpages aren’t optimized for mobile use, you are going to begin feeling the effect of missing out on website traffic, and even online revenue, if you haven’t already.

How can you check to see if your web pages are mobile-friendly?

To see if Google’s recent updates are going to affect you, you’ll need to figure out whether your web pages are mobile-friendly or not. You can use several Google tools, such as Google’s Webmasters Tools Mobile Usability Report feature or the Mobile-Friendly Test, in order to go through your website to see if it’s optimized for mobile use.

You’ll most likely experience a significant decrease in mobile traffic if your web pages are not mobile optimized, but Google has stated that as soon as you make the changes necessary to make your website mobile-friendly, they will re-process all of your website’s pages automatically. Just keep in mind that this can take as little as a couple of hours to as long as 72 hours to complete.

7 Mobile Mistakes To Avoid

In the process of making your web pages mobile-friendly, there are a number of common mistakes that can be made. The following are 7 of the most common mobile mistakes that you should take extra precaution to avoid:

Blocking JavaScript, CSS and image files – You need to make sure you allow Googlebot access to all of your JavaScript, CSS and image files, otherwise it could make it difficult for its algorithms to render and index your website’s rankings, resulting in lower page rankings. To make sure that you aren’t blocking access to these files, run the “Fetch as Google” feature available in Google’s Webmaster Tools to see how Googlebot sees your content and to spot and fix any problems. You should also use Webmaster Tools to test your robots.txt.

blocking-javascript-css-and images-files

Unplayable content – Certain media content won’t play on mobile devices. For example, media that requires Flash, which isn’t widely supported on mobile devices, won’t play. Obviously, mobile users are going to be frustrated if your website contains unplayable content. To avoid this, use HTML5 standard tags to include your videos and animations. Google Web Designer makes it easier to do this.

Faulty redirects – If you are using a separate mobile URL, then you need to redirect mobile users from every desktop URL to the appropriate mobile URL. One of the biggest issues with this is when mobile users are redirected to the homepage – or another incorrect page – every time. A responsive web design will eliminate the need to have two separate URLs. You can also check the Smartphone Crawl Errors section of Webmaster Tools to spot any faulty redirects so you can fix them.

Using mobile-only 404s – Mobile-only 404s occur when mobile users try to access a URL that is only accessible to desktop users. It basically means that the page is unavailable for mobile users to view. You’ll need to create an equivalent mobile page at a different URL or make sure that your website has a responsive design to avoid this. If you have Webmaster Tools, you’ll be sent a notification of this issue if it exists.

App download interstitials – An interstitial is kind of like a pop up ad. Many websites will promote their native apps by using app download interstitials on their mobile websites. The problem is that these can result in indexing issues and will also disrupt your visitors’ experience exploring your website. Instead of using app download interstitials, use a banner that promotes your app. This can be done by using something like Smart App Banners for Safari, or by simply creating an HTML banner that links to the app store.

Cross-linking inappropriately – Websites that use a separate mobile URL often have links on the mobile URLs directing users to their Desktop URLs and vice versa. This is a very common mistake and one that is going to affect not just your mobile user experience, but also your desktop user experience. To avoid making this mistake and disrupting your user experience, check all of your links to ensure that they are directed to the correct equivalent page.

Slow mobile pages – Mobile users have even less patience than desktop users. If your mobile website loads slowly, there’s a good chance they’ll back out of your website. In order to identify any pages that are loading slowly, check the Speed section of Google PageSpeed Insights and focus on the issues that are marked as “Should Fix.”

If you haven’t optimized the pages of your website for mobile use as of yet, then you need to get on that immediately – especially now that Google has released its mobile-friendly updates. If you don’t optimize your website, you are going to begin experiencing a big drop in the amount of mobile web traffic that you are receiving. However, as you go about optimizing your website for mobile use, be careful not to make any of the seven most common mobile mistakes.

Since mobile search results are all about getting local relevant keywords to rank for your business, finding the right tool to search for and to keep track of your local ranking keywords is extremely important. This is why you may want to check out RankReveal.

Not only will RankReveal help keep track of your ranking keywords, it will also help you to discover all the local ranking keywords within your niche, including those that you may not be aware of. You can then build your strategy around those keywords that you want to rank for your business.

If you are interested to find out how to get all of these geo-specific information, you can always check out RankReveal. Our software can help you discover all your ranking keywords based on different localities. Click here to find out more about RankReveal now.

Updated: 25/5/15