SEO copywriting: advice and strategy

When it comes to Internet marketing, you’ll often hear it said that “content is king”, but can this really be true? There are some websites that seem to dominate the search engine listings, despite having relatively little content.

Despite this, it is undoubtedly the case that a website with plenty of original, exclusive, informative content is in a better position to hang around in decent positions. Sure, some smaller sites might succeed for a time, but will they still be there tomorrow?

So it makes sense to create lots of original and interesting content. By doing so, you can improve search engine positioning for your targeted keywords, get more website visitors and generate more sales. It all makes a lot of sense!

What can I write about?

When it comes to putting the idea of content generation into practice, a lot of small business owners, in particular, run into difficulties. The problem is that many businesses sell products and services that don’t necessarily lend themselves to the creation of numerous articles. It sometimes feels like there are only so many things that you can say.

Writing 10 different variations of an extended product description might give you a limited SEO boost, but it’s probably not going to appeal too much to potential customers. So how can you create great content when faced with these issues?

This can certainly be difficult. If you own a business, then you probably understand your products and services better than anyone. But does that make it easy for you to write about them? Not necessarily so.

We’re not all natural writers – there’s no reason why we should all be able to write fluent, readable information. Then there’s the issue of knowing what to write. If you’re lacking in inspiration, then you may struggle to get anything useful on to the website. In essence, you may find that you’re wasting your time.

Outsourcing SEO content creation

One solution would obviously be to hire outside help. You might look for an SEO company, since many of them employ SEO copywriters or have contacts with freelance journalists. Alternatively, you could deal with writers directly. If you think creatively, you may be able to work with some talented writers who don’t charge massive fees. University students, for example, are often happy to take on this type of work.

If you do choose to outsource, then you’ll need to make sure that you’re happy with the work. You’ll probably want to check everything before it is published on your site.

SEO content placement

But where should all of this new content be placed on the site? One good option could be to include it all within a blog. This would allow you to have a little separation from the main content and most customers are prepared to accept that a blog might include a less formal approach.

This would also allow you to include content that is associated with your products and services, rather than being directly related to them. If you run a furniture store, for example, you might think that there is a limited amount of information that could be written about a dining room table, or a sofa.

By broadening your approach, you could easily include content about hosting dinner parties, or relaxing as a family on your blog.

From an SEO point of view, you’d obviously want to ensure that the internal linking on your site ensures that your articles are picked up by the search engines and that internal anchor text is used to boost your SEO efforts.

Writing new content isn’t always easy, but there’s often far more that can be written than you may realise. Whether you outsource the work, or carry it out in-house, it’s well worth the effort.

This article was contributed by Keith Barrett. Keith provides SEO consulting services and has worked within the digital marketing industry for more than a decade. He currently works for Search South, the UK search engine optimisation experts.