5 Key Ingredients of Effective SEO-Friendly Copywriting
What is the fundamental difference between traditional and web copywriting?
In a word, it’s visibility.
When your content appears in print, it’s already in a place to catch a certain audience’s attention. Your copy is visible to whoever decides to flip through your magazine, unfold your letter or shuffle
open your newspaper.
Putting your ad into print is like fishing in a well-stocked pond. It doesn’t guarantee you’ll get a bite, but you’ve at least cast your lure where it will be seen.
Writing web copy, on the other hand, can feel like dropping words into the middle of the ocean. How can you possibly hope to reach anyone, let alone your ideal prospects, in such vast waters?
The answer is a lot simpler than you’d think.
Why SEO Copywriting Matters
Ask yourself: how do you find stuff online?
The most common answer is Google.
Search engines are the single biggest source of B2B and B2C website traffic, responsible for 61% of all website hits worldwide. Nothing else even comes close.
Incredibly, only 10% of that is paid search advertising – meaning 51% of all website visits come from the search results that occur ‘naturally’ (known as organic search traffic)
When you drill down and look at where all that traffic is coming from, you’ll find that most of it happens on the very first page of search results. In truth, experts estimate that 71% of all Google users hardly ever venture past page one.
What does all this mean to you as a writer? Simple: if you write content that Google loves, Google will put it front of an audience.
Instead of drifting aimlessly in the middle of the sea, you’ll be back to casting into a pond that’s full of potential catches.
What Google Wants to See in Your Copy
The challenge is convincing Google that your copy is worth showing people.
That means crafting copy in a way that impresses the search engine algorithm – the digital mastermind that decides where your webpage should rank for different search queries.
Sounds daunting, doesn’t it? Traditional ad copy plays on the whims and emotions of warm-blooded humans. Search engines are cold, heartless machines.
But Google doesn’t crawl and rank webpages all for itself. Google works for us. It was built to deliver accurate, relevant information and answers to every imaginable query.
Of course, search engines don’t look at a webpage the same way as you or I. Your copy and the webpage containing it needs to look a certain way for Google to know what it’s about.
Google loves copy that is:
- Unique.
- Enriched with relevant keywords and phrases.
- Organized with logical headings, bullet points and numbered lists.
- Surrounded by relevant images or videos.
- Comprehensive, complete and accurate
Here’s how that translates to practical SEO copywriting.
1. Make Your Copy One-Of-a-Kind
Imagine you’ve bought three books by three totally different authors – only to discover that beyond the unique covers, each book treads over the exact same content. Such a waste of time (and paper!)
You’d feel the same way if you clicked through three search results and found largely identical content. To avoid this annoyance, Google strives to fill its search results with pages that provide unique, distinct information.
If a site has two extremely similar pages – for example, ‘regular’ and ‘printer-friendly’ versions with the same copy – one of them is going to get filtered out. You can tell Google which version you’d prefer to show off in the search results using canonicalization.
But what if your website uses copy that appears elsewhere on the web? Say you’re running an online store that sells other brands’ products. You might’ve considered ‘borrowing’ some copy from the brand’s website on your own product pages to save time.
Resist the temptation. Duplicate copy can hurt your site’s search ranking. Google loves original content, even on the most well-tread topics.
2. Lock-On to Your Target Audience with Keywords
Search engines are great at picking up patterns. It’s one of the primary ways they process and understand what a webpage (and a website at large) is about.
When a particular word or phrase appears repeatedly throughout a webpage, the crawler clues in. If these terms are also surrounded by quality and relevant copy, it increases the odds of that webpage ranking for search queries that use the same important word. Hence the term keyword.
Keywords are at the core of SEO copywriting. Enriching your content with well-researched keywords is one of the best ways to help it reach the right audience.
3. Use Headings, Bullets and Lists
Have you ever had to speed-read part of a textbook moments before class?
No shame – we’ve all done it at one point in our lives.
Take a second to think about how you read a page when you’re down to the wire like that. You tend to flip through quickly, skim over paragraphs and focus on things that stand out:
- Heading and subheadings
- Lists, tables and diagrams
It’s not too different from how Google parses a webpage.
Search engines are increasingly fond of copy that can be turned into quick ‘snippets’ – and we know for a fact that your layout is key to creating snippet-friendly content.
4. Compliment Your Copy with Awesome Images and Videos
Think your web copy can stand alone? Think again.
Visual content is so powerful when it comes to SEO that it’s practically mandatory.
To date, Google Image Search has indexed over 10 billion images and stands as the second-biggest search engine (earning about 23% MORE searches than YouTube) Incredibly, images also account for about 3% of all Google search clicks via image blocks.
The stats on video are equally enticing. One research firm estimates that having a video on a page increases its chance of a top Google ranking by 53%! Another has found that video boosts your organic traffic by as much as 157%.
Video and image files also serve as another clue to the topic of your page in the eyes of the algorithm. You might not give a second thought to your file names and metadata, but this information can really help reinforce the keyword or phrase you’re targeting in your copy.
5. Be the Authority on Your Subject Matter
Above all else, Google wants to make its users happy.
Why? Because more users mean more advertising revenue.
The people behind Google Search (and competing search engines like Bing) work tirelessly to develop a search engine algorithm that delivers the most accurate, relevant answers to your queries. As a result, the system tends to favour content that is more thorough, accurate and digestible than other pages on the same topic.
This doesn’t always mean your copy needs to be longer than your competitors’ pages. Rather, it should deliver more information and/or better information (ideally, it does both).
Smart keywords, quality visuals and good formatting are all valuable assets when it comes to writing for SEO – but they’ll fall flat if the copy doesn’t deliver. In fact, Google can even penalize your website if the copy doesn’t live up to the hype.
Start Writing Copy That Google Loves
Of course, getting people to your landing page with search-friendly copy is only half the battle. You’ve still got to turn those eager prospects into customers. That requires a calculated blend of persuasive writing, pitch-perfect web design and proven sales tactics.
It’s well worth your effort to get the ingredients right from the start.
Google Ads vs Google Ads Express: Why Google Ads Wins Every Time
So, you’ve been looking at different types of Google advertising and you are deciding between Google Ads and Google Ads Express. Let us help you with this: Google Ads vs Google Ads Express? Google Ads wins 10 times out of 10.
Let’s look at what these two are and why the decision to pick Google Ads over Google Ads Express is an easy one.
What is Google Ads? (Formerly Google AdWords)
When you search on Google, you receive a list of search results. Have you ever noticed that the top search results may have a green ad square in the top left corner? These are ads from Google, known as Google Ads.
If your website doesn’t rank as well as others, Google Ads allows your website to be shown higher in search results based on the keywords you are targeting. The intent is that when users search for a keyword, results show your ad result near the top, and users will click your result first.
Yes, this costs money, but it can be effective if you are starting out, haven’t broken through the top contenders in your industry, or would like more leads/customers.
What is Google Ads Express?
Similar to Google Ads, this advertising platform that is often attractive to small businesses. It’s often used because of the ease of set up and hand-off ongoing management it offers. Set up your account in 15 minutes and Google does the rest of the work? Say no more! No website? Don’t worry – users can call you directly with one click on your ad.
Essentially, Google Ads Express is marketed as an “easier” version of Google Ads that can be set up quickly. Although you don’t have to do the groundwork after the set-up, the quality of groundwork is where the issues lie. If it seems too good to be true – it probably is.
What’s the Difference?
Sure, Google Ads and Google Ads Express seem similar, but the difference is the control over your monthly monitoring and optimization.
If you aren’t familiar with Google’s advertising or don’t have the resources to manage Google Ads, Google Ads Express seems like a less overwhelming option. Who wouldn’t trust Google to manage their own branded ads? While it’s not like they’re scamming you, they aren’t offering the manual optimizations that truly get the best bang for your budget.
Let’s look more closely in terms of the lack of control and management where Google Ads Express falls short.
Why You Should Avoid Google Ads Express
No ROI
There is no “conversion tracking” in Google Ads Express. Yes, your ads are still showing for brand awareness, which is important, but having tracking to show how many people have contacted you or completed an action on your website is huge. This proves what your return on investment is and can justify the cost of advertising on Google.
Trust us, your financial controller will agree.
Broad match keywords
This means your ads will show up on more keywords than needed. In turn, there are more opportunities for users to click on your ads and for Google to charge you.
Kickpoint provides an excellent example for this: If Ads Express bids for edmonton catering companies, broad match keywords can end up showing to edmonton pig roast companies. Reason being, is they can generally be related in catering terms, but chances are this catering company would definitely not offer pig roasting. This leaves you with users searching for pig roast companies clicking on your ads and Google charging you, all for the user to realize you don’t offer that type of catering and leaving your website.
No keyword choice
Similar to broad match keywords, you cannot choose your keywords – Google does this for you. You can’t add any new keywords, you can only turn on/off any keywords that Google has chosen for you. This goes back to the note above about more opportunities for users to click on your ads which means more of your money in Google’s pocket.
No negative keywords
This is a huge bonus when advertising on Google. This means you can remove any unwanted keywords associated with terms users may search for in relation to your industry.
Not sure what keywords you would want to avoid for advertising? Here’s an easy one to avoid: FREE.
Add-on extensions
Add-on extensions can be many things: call-outs, site links, structured snippets, locations, or options to directly text/call the company. These appear at the bottom of your add to all work together to make the search results appear more dynamic.
This extension builds up your ads and add extra information that users may be looking for – which is a bonus you would be missing with Google Ads Express.
Bidding Options
Do you have one keyword producing the best results, while your other keywords are simply helping to hit your daily budget with no conversions? Bidding adjustments allow you to allocate a larger percentage of budget to your keywords producing better results and less on the others.
This means your ads with the better performing keywords will show more often and optimize your ad spend to utilize these to produce more conversions – and better results for you.
Unfortunately, Google Ads Express is unable to change the bidding on different keywords, leaving all your keywords being shown an equal amount – for good or bad.
How Do I Manage Google Ads?
Are you unsure of how to manage Google Ads?
Google offers some great free resources including some video tutorials that can help you get started.
Don’t have time to constantly manage Google Ads?
We offer Google Ads set up and optimization and can manage your ad account with all the above-mentioned things that Google Ads offers. Get in touch with us and see how we can help!
How Google Search Rankings for Local Businesses are Different in 2019
Google search rankings – page one. The online Holy Grail.
Every business wants to be at the top of the list of search results, or at the very least, on the first page. After all, most people don’t look beyond the first page of results.
Depending on which report you read and how the data is presented, the number of people who can’t be bothered to even have a look at page two results can range anywhere from 71% to as high as 95%. Regardless of who is right with the exact percentage, it is clear that page one is prime real estate when it comes to search results.
“Content is king” was the mantra for quite some time.
Others placed large amounts of energy into link building.
So, what is the 2019 roadmap for local businesses looking to secure their place with Google search rankings?
Unified Effort
Throughout the years, various single metrics have become the focus of local businesses. After all, there’s only so much time one can allocate to managing their online presence. In order to move up in Google search rankings some – especially the smaller businesses – had to pick and choose which ones would give the biggest bang for their efforts.
Google currently looks at over 200 indicators as part of their algorithm, when calculating rankings. Focusing on just one particular indicator is no longer a viable option. Fortunately for the smaller businesses there are some broad-brush strokes that can be utilized to help with their rankings, while still leaving them time to focus on their actual business.
If your business doesn’t have a lot of time or resources to devote to SEO, make sure you at least give attention to the following basic items:
- “Local” online presence
- Content
- Social media
- User experience
Local Online Presence
What makes a local business “local”? The location of course.
Don’t just place your address in the footer of your webpages and hope Google will find it when crawling your site (assuming you’ve set things up properly). Directly tell Google your address by creating a Google My Business account. This is even more important now that Google is phasing out Google+, previously a favourite among smaller local businesses.
When it comes to info the search engine giant can never get too much. Whether you are signing up for an account for the first time or have had your GMB account for years, be sure to fill in as many of the available fields as possible.
Content
While we do not recommend relying solely on content for online efforts, it is also foolish to abandon it altogether. Those who rise in Google search rankings are generally seen by their algorithm to be an expert in that particular field.
This is indicated, in part, by presenting content. Do it like you know what you’re talking about, even if you’re just starting out. Do it as often as time will allow but be consistent. It is better to post one blog a month, than to post 3 in one month, then nothing for the following two or three months.
Ensure the quality of the content is high!
This not only means being knowledgeable in your subject, it also means presenting the information in an easy-to-read format. Google will look at your spelling, grammar and syntax. Even professional writers have their work proofread. Have someone look over your content before publishing and make recommendations regarding corrections or changes. If you just don’t have the manpower, at least use an app built for this purpose. Grammarly is one of the better-known offerings around.
Social Media
Content doesn’t always have to be in the form of blogs. It can be helpful tips on social media, a recipe, a quote, even a picture. Anything that adds value to the user experience is good, and can pique interest leading to increased traffic to your site via links in your posts.
This is part of a process called backlinking – basically any link on another website that links back to your site. An increase in traffic from social media linking through to your website is an indicator that people are interested in what you have to say and see you as an authority on whatever your specialty is.
A word to the wise: as a general rule, do not use your personal social media account as your business social media account. You may wish to keep your family photos and personal info private.
For a business social media account to be most effective it should be as transparent as possible to google. Most will have the option of making it visible to the public, or even specify that you wish it to be discoverable by search engines.
User Experience
In case you haven’t noticed by now, securing a place within Google search rankings has become about the overall user experience.
While a goofy viral video can get a person or business their 15 minutes of fame, Google looks at the complete unified picture. Their main goal when presenting search results is to ensure that the user receives the information which is most relevant to their search. This not only means the quality of the information, but the way in which it is presented. You want to rank with Google because ultimately you want traffic coming to your website to buy your product, secure your services, or consider visiting you in real life.
Is your website slow to load? How is your bounce rate? Is your site optimized for mobile devices? Are pages on your site buried (more than 3 clicks away from the home page)? Is your site overloaded with industry specific jargon, or is it easy to read? Are the backlinks which drive traffic to your site from quality sites? Are the links leading out of your site relevant to the information being presented?
If you are a brand-new startup, and are familiar with these metrics, then you may want to be adventurous and create your own website with a website builder such as Wix.
If on the other hand you are not tech savvy, or a small to medium business, we recommend you secure a web designer. Having a professional build your site can make a world of difference to your search engine optimization, which directly impacts your Google search rankings. Great SEO can also improve your bottom line.
The Bottom Line
Any local business’s online efforts for 2019 should be unified across various platforms and outlets. Don’t place too much value on any one single metric or indicator. Google likes to see quality and relevance in all aspects of an online presence.
The bottom line of all this? In everything you do, keep in mind the user experience is paramount.
5 Common Reasons Google Could Penalize Your Website
Trying to increase your website’s ranking on Google? Heard horror stories of Google’s updates completely wiping sites off the search rankings? It happens, but not at random. Let’s have a look at what exactly a Google penalty is – and the reasons Google may drop your site in its rankings.
What is a Google Penalty?
Let’s start with Google’s goal: to eliminate poor-quality content to refine the quality of search results.
To do this, Google released their Penguin update in 2012, which wiped some sites out of search rankings altogether. This update downgrades site rankings based on many factors (which we will chat about shortly), forcing companies to change the way they look at SEO and prioritize the quality of their content.
Subsequent updates continue to sharpen the search engine’s ability to judge the quality of a site.
Why Does Google Penalize Websites?
1. Your Website is Outdated
The design of a website plays a large factor in its site ranking. Two main design concerns are whether the site is mobile-friendly or if it is new or up-to-date. According to Forbes, “you could lose anywhere from 5-30% of leads based on this factor alone”.
When you’re building your website design, make sure you also keep meta titles and meta descriptions in mind. They help Google understand what keywords your website wants to rank for; without them, Google may not recognize your site as relevant and penalize you.
2. Poor Link Structure
What makes up link structure? Let’s break it down:
- External links – these connect your content to other sites. You want to link to other high-ranking websites so that Google will associate your content with other high-quality sources. Additionally, these sites should be relevant – for example, if your website is fashion-themed and only links to sites about food or electronics, Google views this as a problem. Linking to low-quality or irrelevant content sites will put you straight on Google’s radar to drop down in ranking.
- Internal links – these connect your content to other pages within your website. It gives Google an idea of how your website is mapped out and what your overall site content is like. That being said, it’s important to interlink to relevant If you’re linking your blog post about saving money to your pricey gift shop, for example, you may get penalized.
- Backlinks – these are links from other sites that direct back to yours. The goal with backlinks is to get high-ranking websites to link back to you. It would be fantastic to have backlinks from CNN or New York Times. This is high-level, but the idea is you want to avoid fake or illegitimate websites to maintain a higher ranking.
When it comes to links, remember – quality over quantity.
3. Buying Links
Yes, some companies still buy links to their website to increase in ranking.
Google sees this as an attempt to deceive PageRank, which calculates where your site should appear in search engine results based on what content Google views as relevant and high-quality.
When you try to manipulate Google, they can catch this – and the bad links you have been buying. Buying links can even drop you off the rankings completely.
4. Your Content Has Little Value
This can be anything from not enough content, shallow content that your readers have already found on many other sites, or content obviously trying to rank for keywords. These are all the wrong way for your content to help rank your website.
Your site must offer significant content to readers. Google judges how users interact with your website. If people visit your site and immediately leave, Google will catch on that users don’t value your content and will penalize your site and it’s ranking.
5. Slow Speeds
How frustrated do you get when a page is taking 10 seconds to load? Do you abandon the page and move on?
A lot of people do – and Google notices. Neil Patel recommends using a caching plugin or a CDN right away to avoid this issue.
If you’re not sure how fast your existing site is, check out Google’s PageSpeed to see if you have room to improve on your desktop or mobile site load time.
Stay Prepared
In the end, you must always put the user experience at top-of-mind.
They’re the ones visiting your websites and, in turn, buying your products or services. The goal is to give them the most seamless experience, so they have no reason to exit your page.
Doing this will help avoid penalties, increase the quality of your traffic and number of conversions, and create a happy relationship between your website and Google.
Reputation Management SEO: Why Branded Keywords Should Be On Your Radar
Online reputation management involves more than establishing a website and social media profiles. Conversations about brands are happening at various channels around the web, and the loudest of these discussions converge at one important place: the search engine results page. This post covers the basics of reputation management SEO, including the relationship between reputation and search engines, branded keywords, and strategies to dominate page one.
What is Reputation Management SEO?
Have you ever Googled yourself?
Not everyone might admit to it, but it’s doubtful anyone could resist Googling their name at least once or twice.
For most people, the results are typical: a few social media profiles, a company “About Us” page, maybe a quote in a local newspaper. Depending on your name’s popularity, the top results might be about an entirely different person; someone you’ve never met, but with whom you share a search engine results page.
You might’ve Googled yourself out of curiosity, or boredom, or because we put the thought in your mind just now. But there could be a time in your life where someone makes that inquiry with more significant intentions: a manager thinking of hiring you, a college weighing your application, or a potential partner scoping you out before a date.
In that case, the search engine results could have very real and lasting impact on your reputation.
The same goes for brands.
What shows up on page one of the results for branded keywords (searches that include the name of the brand) has a measurable effect on that brand’s reputation. That’s the importance of reputation management SEO, which is search engine optimization strategies and tactics to influence the results for branded search inquiries in order to preserve and improve a brand’s reputation online.
How the Search Engine Results Effect a Brand’s Reputation
It’s Friday night, and you’re decidedly too exhausted to make dinner. But you’re not feeling like any of your go-to restaurants, either. So, you pull out your phone and Google the name of that new place in town.
The first result is the restaurant’s homepage; the second is a link to their menu. Perfect. But there, in place three, is a preview of their Yelp rating:
Rating: 2.5 – 63 reviews – Price range: $40-$60
In an instant, your opinion has turned; there’s no way you’re paying 5-Star prices for a 2-Star meal.
Review sites like Yelp can have an enormous impact on a brand’s reputation online. So can Google reviews, news stories, blog posts, forum discussions, directory pages, career sites, and all the other third party websites that rank for branded search inquires.
The problem is that brands can’t control the content on these sites as they rule their own domains. A well-optimized homepage will usually outrank third party sites for branded inquiries, but customers aren’t as likely to click through if it’s surrounded by negativity on the SERP.
You can ask the authors to remove negative pages, but that can easily backfire and result in an even worse reputation.
So, what can be done about it?
Reputation Management SEO Strategies
Rarely do brands have the power to remove negative search engine results outright. However, it is possible to:
- Use search engine optimization (SEO) to influence the results for branded search inquiries
- Influence the content of third-party review sites
- Publish new types of content to claim more above the fold space on the results page
The goal is to enhance the ranking of positive items in favour of negative ones, either by displacing the negative content or improving it. There are several ways to go about this; we’ll briefly cover three strategies in the sections below.
1. Encourage Positive Reviews
Third party review sites like Yelp (along with industry-specific sites like G2Crowd for B2B software, or HomeStars for trade contractors) are crucial when it comes to reputation management SEO for local service industries.
These sites tend to rank well because they provide relevant information consumers want to see. Authentic customer reviews tend to carry more weight than curated testimonials on a brand’s own website.
It might not always be possible to outrank them, but it is possible to turn these sites into an asset:
- Most third-party review sites allow brands to “claim” and modify their profiles. Take this step and fill out the profile completely, using it as a platform to speak to potential customers.
- Upload enticing, high-quality photos that put products and services in the best possible light.
- Encourage happy customers to leave positive reviews on the site to bolster the score. Great reviews are the most effective way to diminish the weight of negative ones.
2. Publish New Content
With proper placement and optimization, quality blog posts, videos, and images that utilize branded keywords can rise in the rankings to displace negative pages.
YouTube videos are especially powerful in this way, since they can even claim the coveted position zero ranking, claiming valuable above-the-fold real estate.
It’s worth utilizing off-site publishing platforms as well as those on the brand’s domain. Industry-specific news sites, as well as pop news sites like The Huffington Post, can be valuable both for back-linking and reputation management.
3. Get Others to Write About the Brand
Journalists, bloggers, editors, and video creators are always on the hunt for great content. Pitching positive stories about the brand helps to seed the web with a variety of content relevant to branded search inquiries.
Over time, these stories can gain enough traction to rise in rank and claim a spot previously occupied by negativity.
Managing Your Reputation Online
Reputation management SEO takes time. Positive stories cannot displace negative ones overnight; high-quality links need to be developed over time; and legitimate customer reviews don’t always come easy.
But at this day and age, reputation management SEO is absolutely worth the time and effort.
The search engine results page serves as a brand’s first impression to many, many people. Negative results can stop potential customers in their tracks.
It’s like the old saying about planting a tree. The best time to plant a tree was 20 years ago. The second-best time is now. Change takes time, so there’s no better time than the present to work on your brand’s online reputation.
Get in touch with us if you’d like to chat about where your brand stands in the digital marketplace.