Got SEO Questions? I’ve got Answers #AskAnSEOCopywriter

SEO Copywriting is the skill of writing highly persuasive copy that also ranks well in search engines like Google and Bing. An SEO copywriter will carry out keyword research and make sure that their content best satisfies the search intent of the user. An SEO copywriter will also be familiar with concepts like how Google uses Natural Language Processing (NLP) to understand language.

For me, SEO copywriting is the perfect alignment of the creative “left” brain and the analytical “right” brain. To paraphrase David Oligvy, an SEO copywriter needs to be both a killer and a poet.

SEO copy needs to be particularly crisp and clear. An SEO copywriter should try, as much as possible, to reduce things like semantic distance between different parts of a sentence.

When writing SEO copy you also need to consider all the different ways different keywords can be interpreted and make it clear what your content is about. Apart from the more technical side, the most important SEO copywriting tip is to honestly write amazing content.

Write clearly, write something your audience will love, and make sure you’ve properly understood the search intent of the keyword you’ve targeted for your content.

You can find SEO copywriters by reaching out to your own network and getting some referrals. If you can’t find anyone, checking out LinkedIn, Twitter or even Instagram might be a good shout.

What I’m going to say might surprise you, but you might not find a talented SEO copywriter just by searching Google. For a start, I know so many very talented SEOs who rank for very little (because they’re busy ranking their clients and don’t leave much time to do their own stuff). However, I would suggest you try hitting Google first and see what you find, but if you don’t like the SEO copywriter’s own copy, then I probably wouldn’t hire them.

You could try sites like Fiverr etc, but I found that these websites tend to be a race to the bottom and most talented SEO copywriters won’t be on there.

You could always just check out my SEO copywriting services too 😉

It really depends on what you’re selling. I’ve found course sales pages a waste of SEO to be honest, mostly because the SERP is full of ads, aggregate review articles or courses pulled from huge sites like Udemy. All of this decreases your chances of showing up with a single course sales page.

However, I have also seen people have success with SEO on their course sales pages, but I wonder how much of that traffic really converts. I say, instead of stressing too much with SEO on your course sales page, leverage SEO to fill your funnel.

This could be via an article that’s highly related to your offer (eg “How to Become a UX Designer”), offer some type of freebie to get someone on your email list (like a free module of your course, guide etc) and nurture them towards a sale with a great email sequence.

It’s very hard to convert cold traffic to a high-ticket offer, so I think SEO works best in this case to pull in qualified leads to your email list where you can nurture them for a sale later.

SEO Copywriting is an umbrella term for any type of copy/content written in a way that is designed to rank higher in search engines (and delight readers of course).

However, SEO copywriting usually refers specifically to web copy (homepage, about page, product pages etc) and SEO content/article writing usually refers to writing blog content.

I would class SEO copywriting and SEO content writing as the same thing.

Smart people 😉

Okay, but really, basically any business with an online presence hires SEO copywriters. A business will hire an SEO copywriter if they want to increase both targeted traffic to their website and conversions.

Here is a list of just some of the businesses that would hire an SEO copywriter: online course creators, agencies, local businesses, huge multinational companies, law firms, influencers, hospitals, rehab centres, chain stores, freelancers and many more.

Yes, yes a thousand times yes!

SEO copywriting blends my love of writing, linguistics and search marketing all under one roof. Getting my clients wins like saving them hundreds of $$ on what they would have paid for PPC just lights up my day.

It’s tough, SEO copywriting is demanding and forces you to think like both an artist and a machine, but therein lies the joy.

A junior SEO copywriter may charge within the range of $45-60 an hour, a mid-level SEO copywriter may charge around $75-120 an hour and a senior SEO Copywriter would charge around $130-210 an hour.

SEO Copywriting is not cheap, and if it is cheap, then you’re probably not going to get any return on investment. Within the SEO world in general, there are a lot of snake-oil salesmen out there so please be very careful.

An SEO (search engine optimizer) will be involved in much broader applications of SEO such as link building, technical SEO and even social media marketing.

An SEO Copywriter, however, will focus on producing high quality content that ranks and converts, keyword research and may fulfil other SEO roles as they relate to content, such as: image sourcing/optimization, content marketing strategy and tracking and measuring the success of their content and making any adjustments as necessary.

A good SEO copywriter will usually be deeply involved in content marketing strategy, unless they only focus on SEO webcopy.

SEO Copywriters can fulfil other SEO roles, but it really depends on the individual copywriter.

SEMrush and Keywords Everywhere.

SEMrush is overkill for most people and way too expensive a software if you aren’t doing SEO professionally (and for multiple people). So I always recommend Keywords Everywhere. It’s a free chrome extension, but you should really consider buying $10 worth of credits because it’s worth every penny.