Why You Need SEO Copywriting for Your Business

This blog is written by Kim Fischer, CEO, and founder of 13 Emeralds Marketing, an SEO agency based in Allen, TX.

What is SEO?

Search Engine Optimization is a strategy that helps search engines, like Google, understand the content on a web page to push the best content to its users. Google wants its top results to answer the user’s queries, load fast, and have high authority. 

There are many SEO tactics, which can make the topic feel overwhelming to many business owners! In this blog, I’m breaking down the different types of SEO tactics, what they do, and how you can use them in your business. 

On-Site SEO

On-Site SEO is the tactic we use to optimize everything on the front end of a website. We ensure the target keyword is in the title and headings and sprinkled throughout the copy. Some less apparent on-site SEO would ensure you fully answer your audience’s questions. For example, Google’s Helpful Content Update has focused on the user and search intent. Remember, you are always writing for your audience first, search engines second.

Off-Site SEO

Off-Site SEO is the exact opposite of on-site SEO. Here we’re talking about everything off of your website. Think, Google Business Profile and Backlinks. Backlinking is one of the most popular off-site SEO strategies because it’s a great way to build authority. When your website is linked on another website with a high domain authority, it helps your authority grow. Backlinks are giving your website votes of confidence to Google.

Local SEO

This tactic is strictly for businesses that want clients and customers local. We’re talking about your hair stylists, roofers, brick & mortar store owners, and lawyers. Local SEO focuses on your Google Business Profile and location-based keywords. Your Google Business Profile accounts for 35% of all ranking signals for local businesses.

Technical SEO

Tech SEO ensures your website’s backend is up to code with Google’s requirements. We’re talking page speed, schema markup, mobile friendliness, and the overall crawlability of your website. Why is all of this important? Technical SEO ensures that your website is user-friendly for real people and crawlers. Nobody wants to wait for a website to load or get lost while trying to find the correct info.

What do you need before starting SEO?

SEO can be complicated for those who are new to the strategy. So whether you are going to DIY or hire a search engine optimization expert, you need to know a few things before jumping into the strategy.

Ideal Audience

Who do you want to attract to your site? Remember, your competition is probably all online. They are also trying to rank on Google. So, the more niche and targeted we get, the more likely you will rank (especially if you are just starting!). To properly do our keyword research, we have to know your ideal client so well that we can guess their search history! That means that you need to be able to help your SEO understand who your ideal audience is on a deep level, not just their demographics.

Specific Goals

What do you want SEO to do? Of course, we want it to drive traffic and revenue, but are you hoping to build a library of resources, or are you hoping to grow a lifestyle blog that everyone wants to read? Your SEO and copywriter need to know your goals to ensure that our strategy is going in the right direction.

Clear Understanding of SEO

Do you need to know what schema markup or FCP stands for? No, of course not! But you need to understand that SEO is more than just incorporating a few keywords and that SEO takes time. SEO is a strategy that typically takes at least 6 months to see results. So, you have to be patient. It takes time for Google to understand your website and your audience, to put out enough content, and for the traffic to grow. But, when it starts to work, it starts to have a snowball effect on your business.

Why you should have SEO copy

So, you’ve written your copy (or had it written for you) and have a beautifully designed website. Now what? Who’s going to see it? Sure, you’re posting on Instagram and maybe even TikTok and driving some leads to your site that way, but wouldn’t it make sense to have an optimized website driving traffic to your site without you even realizing it?

That’s what having SEO-optimized copy does. It creates the foundation for you to be able to rank on Google. Without SEO, you’re only marketing to an audience that exists with your current marketing strategies, but with SEO, you’re using your website as a way to drive new leads.

When should I invest in an SEO strategy?

SEO should be the first thing you outsource when building a new website or starting a blog strategy. Many copywriters (and web designers) have an SEO on their team so that you can invest in them together, but SEO comes first in the process. SEO forces you to deep dive into your ideal client or customer and ask all the hard questions about who you want to attract. Then as an SEO, we take all that information (plus our competitor and market research) and do our keyword research. We figure out what your ideal audience is already searching for, what they want to know, what they want to compare, what they want to find, and what they want to buy.

Once we have done our keyword research, we pass it back to the copywriter with insights and suggestions on target keywords for each page and each blog. And then they naturally incorporate that into the copy. The keywords are not an afterthought or awkwardly implemented into something, but the page is built with them in mind. It makes for better SEO, better copy, and more conversions.

To learn more about SEO and what I do for my clients, head to my website!