This is part two in a three part series on optimizing your website to generate more traffic and convert them to more sales than you are doing now. If you read Part I, you already understand the importance of professional copywriting in order to boost Internet marketing success. If you didn’t, here’s a very brief refresher.
Importance of Professional Copywriting
“Content is King” in the Internet marketing world, meaning that at its core, the ability of your website to generate traffic and convert that traffic into sales is dependent upon having quality content. Quality content means content written by a professional copywriter, so that it is highly readable, full of energy, marketing-oriented and has optimal SEO. This last part will be the topic of this optimal conversions discussion.
The Value of SEO
SEO is of course, Search Engine Optimization, and it means editing your website content so that it will appear more attractive to search engines and make it more likely that your site will appear on the first page of a Search engine query. These SERP (Search Engine Result Page) rankings are your life as someone who relies on Internet marketing, as better search engine results means more traffic and more traffic means more potential conversions.
SEO Breakdown
The soul of SEO is keyword phrasing, seeding your content with phrases likely to be typed into search engines by those who might be interested in purchasing your product or service, but SEO also includes proper title tags and meta tags that make the purpose of your website and its content even clearer to search engines, as well as image and design elements that are more likely to be attractive to search engines due to their relevance to the topic or the way they are structured on the page. The other key element to good SEO is a solid link campaign. If the content created by your professional copywriter is the nucleus of your Internet neuron, the links are the dendrites, the branches that reach out and connect your site with other sites, creating a flow that search engines cannot help but notice.
Content Pitfalls of SEO
With each area of SEO, there are potential missteps, which is just one of the reasons why having professional copywriters create your content is so important. When it comes to keyword phrasing, it’s important to recognize not only the keywords and phrases that are most likely to be typed in by your potential customers, but those keywords that are more rarely used but still relevant, so you can catch all of that traffic that is slipping through your competitors’ fingers. The wrong keywords, or using them in the wrong distribution, can really sink your results. In addition, poorly integrated keywords can hurt you. If traffic comes to a page that is just an ill-fitting conglomeration of keywords, they’ll be gone just as fast.
Signs of Quality SEO Copywriting
Keyword Optimization
In contrast, a good SEO copywriter knows how to blend keyword phrases with readable, useful content. If the copywriter is doing his job, those reading the content don’t even realize that they are reading an article stuffed with keywords, or if they do, the content is so readable and interesting that they don’t care. Also, when optimizing a page’s content, be cognizant of your anchor text, the words that someone clicks on to get to a linked page. Search engines pay special attention to this text.
Calls to Action
Once your SEO has drawn visitors to your site, you need to convert them, meaning you need them to do whatever you brought them to your website to do, click on a paid link, fill out a lead form, buy something, whatever. If your SEO content doesn’t tell your visitors what to do, there’s a much lower likelihood they will do it. A good SEO content page includes a call to action letting visitors know what you want from them. Good SEO also means lots of links to the conversion page and lots of keywords and good title tags and meta on that page or the direct links to that page.
Blended Content
The hot new trend in SEO is all about blended content. Blended content means content that finds shortcuts to the top of the SERPs by ranking with multiple search engine types. In other words, if you go to Google, you’ll notice links to several search engines, one for images, one for news, blogs, etc., in addition to the main search page. The main search page offers blended results, meaning the top results from all of these engines. However, the main engine ranks according to how well the results of each engine do relative to other results on that engine, not how well they do overall. For example, the images that go on the main results page have done well relative to other images, not necessarily relative to all content on the main results page. However, they rank on the page as if they were being compared to all content. A good SEO site has content that will rank high, but also images, news articles and blog posts that will rank as well.
Results
The best way to know if you’ve got quality SEO copywriting is the results. Are you getting the traffic that you expect? Are you converting that traffic at the rate you expect? If the answer to either of these questions is no, fine tuning the SEO and analyzing the content should be your first step. It’s not the only reason why you might be falling short in conversions, but the right SEO and content adjustments can make a massive difference, one that can turn your whole business around. Give it the attention it deserves.
