Series Post #12: SEO Copywriting Basics to Get Ranked on Google

Welcome back to another post in the Series: How to Earn Passive Income with Affiliate Links as a Writer!

For the past two weeks, we’ve been talking about writing copy. We even practiced writing some copy of our own last week. Today, we’re learning about SEO keywords and how you can use SEO in your copywriting to get ranked on Google.

Let’s get started!

What Are SEO Keywords?

Search Engine Optimization (SEO) is just what the title suggests– a way to optimize your content and copy so your site will rank in search results.

You can optimize your website to organically rank in searches by writing good content, creating a clear structure for your site, and having other reputable blogs link to you.

You can also utilize SEO keywords.

You may be wondering, what exactly are these magical little words that make your website rank-worthy?

SEO keywords are words or phrases that best describe the content on a page or post. They also help Google and other search engines understand how and where to rank you in search results. If you want to drive more traffic to your blog or site with very little effort, you need SEO keywords.

Let’s look at a few examples of the different types of keywords.

Head and Focus Keywords

These keywords are only one or two words. They’re usually pretty generic but they have the potential to drive a ton of traffic to your site.

Head keywords are also known as short-tail keywords and they tell search engines what your entire site is all about. For example, the head keyword for my site is “content and copywriter.”

Similarly, focus keywords tell search engines what a specific page is about. Two examples of focus keywords in this blog post are copywriting and SEO Keywords.

Though head and focus keywords are vital for your copy, they are extremely difficult to rank for. That’s why you should also include mid- and long-tail keywords.

Mid- and Long-tail Keywords

Mid-tail and long-tail keywords consist of anything from a couple words to an entire phrase. They are much less common than are head keywords, which means they’re also much easier to rank for.

An example of a mid-tail keyword in this blog post is use SEO in your copywriting and a long-tail keyword is use SEO in your copywriting to get  ranked on Google.

Note how the focus keyword is included in both the mid- and long-tail keywords. That’s key SEO optimization right there, folks, and is exactly what you want to do with your own SEO keywords.

SEO Keywords for Copywriters

Now that you know what SEO keywords are, let’s look at how to use them in your copy.

Titles and Headings

Including keywords in your titles and headings is like a giant neon sign telling search engines exactly what each page and post on your site is abou. Here are a few pointers when using SEO keywords in your titles and headings.

• Include keywords in your title and one other heading on the page or post
• Try to use your long-tail keyword in your title but, if you can’t, at least make sure your focus keyword is in there somewhere
• You should also include your focus keyword in the headings throughout your posts including <h2>, <h3>, and <h4>

We’ll talk more about that last one when we get to the section on SEO basics for content writing in a few weeks.

Body

Sprinkling keywords throughout the body of your text is another way to let search engines know what your page is about. Here are some qualities of good body keywords.

• Keywords should be bolded in body text so search engines know which words are important
• Keywords should be placed in the body text at a density of about 2% of your word count
• Use multiple phrasings of your mid-tail keywords to rank in different but related searches

Part of knowing which keywords to use in the body of your page or post is learning how to do keyword research. Here’s a link to an excellent video describing how to do keyword research for free.

URL

Using keywords in your page URLs is another great way to get your site ranked on Google. You should definitely try to include your head keyword in your homepage URL. How? By choosing a domain name that includes your head keyword.

Here are a few other tips for using SEO keywords in your page URLs.

• Use the title of your page as your permalink
• Include keywords in your page and post titles

Meta Data

Metadata, or meta descriptions, are those little snapshots of what a page is about you see in Google search results. Not sure what I’m talking about? Here’s some metadata from the homepage of my website:

Notice how my site’s head keyword pops up in the meta description? If you don’t stuff your head keyword anywhere else, make sure you get it onto your homepage. Here are some more tips for using keywords in metadata.

• Metadata should be page-specific and summarize exactly what users can find in the page or post it describes
• Use only one focus keyword per page and include this keyword in the page’s meta description for optimum SEO results

So there you have it! Leave a comment and let me know your favorite part of this series so far. Happy writing!

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