Introduction
I’ve been a writer for over 10 years, working in everything from magazine articles to marketing copy. While I started out writing about travel destinations, my true passion is helping businesses grow through content. In this post, I’m going to share how my experience with SEO has led me to where I am today: helping the world’s most talented writers build their careers on the web through Words On Pages. See how your own SEO specialist Sydney expert can reap huge benefits for your business from page one Google rankings that come from years of experience in SEO.
I started in SEO about 10 years ago when my dad, a web developer, dragged me into helping out with his websites.
SEO copywriting is the art and practice of writing for search engines. This means writing with the sole intention of helping your website rank higher in Google and Bing, so that more people find it.
The first step toward optimizing your content for search engines is to realize that there are many different types of SEO copywriting. The three main ones are:
- Skyscraper (large blocks)
- Navigational (site structure)
- Technical
My dad built a site and asked me to find ways to get visitors to it.
My dad is a web developer and has been for years. When I was in high school, he asked me to help him with his website. He wanted to increase the number of visitors on his site and make more sales.
At first glance, it didn’t seem like there was anything wrong with my father’s website: it had all of the important information about his business displayed prominently on its homepage and he had succeeded in getting several customers by doing things such as putting up flyers around town or advertising online through social media sites such as Facebook. But after looking at how many people were visiting each page on his site, I realized that most of those visitors weren’t ready to purchase anything from my dad’s company—they just wanted information about what they could do so that they could make an informed decision before buying something else from somewhere else (which would probably be cheaper). I decided that instead of having multiple pages across multiple categories related only tangentially (if at all) under one umbrella topic area (“Need Help?”), we should put together more focused content covering specific topics like “How To Get Your Website Ready For Search Engines” or “What Should You Know About Cryptocurrencies?”.
I learned how to use keywords and placed them throughout the page.
To use keywords effectively, you need to ensure they’re used in the correct places. Avoid adding them directly into your content unless it is absolutely necessary. Instead, add them in these positions:
- Title tag
- First paragraph and first sentence of every paragraph
- URL (for the page itself)
- Page description (when it appears in search results)
- Meta description (when it appears in search results) * Headings (h1-h6 tags) * Body text
I did some research into finding which keywords were the most popular for people who wanted to buy bonsai trees.
I did some research into finding which keywords were the most popular for people who wanted to buy bonsai trees. I found that most people were searching for phrases like “bonsai tree care” and “bonsai tree tips”. The good news is that there weren’t many other sites competing for those terms in my industry, so I was able to rank pretty quickly.
I created a new page on my website called “Bonsai Tree Buyer’s Guide” and used all of my chosen keywords in that guide.
Keyword research is the first step in creating an SEO strategy for your website. It’s not enough to simply use a keyword over and over again. Instead, you need to write about what people are looking for and make sure that there are different keywords used throughout the page.
The most important thing when it comes to keyword optimization is relevance: you want your site visitors to get what they’re searching for quickly and easily—you don’t want them bouncing off the page because there isn’t enough information relevant directly related to their search term (e.g., “how do I grow my bonsai tree?”).
I realized that while I was getting more visits, they weren’t buying anything on my site.
Many businesses make the mistake of writing content for their website without first understanding their audience and goals. This is a big problem, because it means your content might not be relevant or interesting to them. As a result, they won’t buy anything on your site.
So how do you avoid this? By doing research! Before writing any content for your website, ask yourself these questions: What do my customers want? What are they searching for?
You may be surprised by what you discover when looking into these topics more deeply. For instance, if I had known that people were looking up cooking recipes online before starting Words On Pages (my blog about food), maybe I would have started with an article about sous-vide cooking instead of one about SEO tips!
After reading up on why, I realized it was because it was a vacation site!
This was a big lesson for me. As I mentioned earlier, I had previously tried to make my site appealing to everyone and anyone who might visit it. This is not the right way to go about doing things!
I realized that if you try to sell something to everyone, then you won’t be able to sell it at all. You can’t be afraid of excluding people from your site or business—you need to focus on the people who are interested in what you have available and exclude those who don’t fit into that demographic.
For example, if someone wants a vacation in Thailand but they don’t have any money and can’t afford it, then offering them a free trip isn’t going to do much good because they simply aren’t going anywhere!
Visitors were coming there to learn about bonsais, so they didn’t have any intention of buying them as gifts.
As visitors came to the page, they were looking for information on bonsais. This taught me an important lesson about understanding your audience before writing any content.
When you’re building your blog, remember that you need to understand your goals and know who your target audience is before you write any content.
This taught me an important lesson about understanding your audience before writing any content.
You’re probably wondering what this has to do with SEO. Well, constantly focusing on writing content that I wanted to read led me to write a lot of articles about topics that weren’t particularly interesting. I didn’t know my audience well enough at the time, so I just wrote about things that seemed interesting and assumed people would like them as well.
I learned an important lesson about understanding your audience before writing any content. You can have all the best intentions in the world when it comes to producing quality content for your readers, but if they don’t care or understand what you’re saying then it won’t matter!
Knowing how your target audience thinks helps you craft better content because it allows you to anticipate their questions and concerns more accurately than if you were just guessing based on personal preferences alone (which is what happened when I started).
This is why you need to understand your goals before you write any content.
A well-written piece of content is never just a piece of writing. It’s a tool.
But before you can use it, you need to understand your goals and how your audience will interact with your content.
So, let’s talk about the goals first: Are you trying to grow your business? Optimize for search engines? Drive traffic from social media? Get leads from email marketing campaigns? A good rule of thumb is that if you want to achieve any of these things (and I assume we all do), then your goal should always be increasing conversions. That’s why understanding how each piece of content will contribute toward those goals is so important.
Conclusion
I hope that you’ve learned something from my experience. When it comes to SEO, there is a lot more to it than just putting keywords on your website and hoping for the best. You need to know what your audience wants from you before even thinking about writing any content. I also learned how important it is to understand who your audience is and what their goals are when visiting your site, because this will help identify areas where your site needs improvement so that visitors will convert into customers.
