Today on the blog, I’m excited to share a guest post from Robyn with Digital Butter that’s ALL about helping you optimize your website copy for search. Robyn will breakdown why search engine optimization (SEO) matters to your business and provide you with five helpful tips you can apply to your writing in no time. Because at the end of the day, you’re not just writing for humans; you’re also writing for Google. And if you want your customers to discover your business, you’ve got to be able to write for humans and bots alike.

But what is SEO exactly, and why does it matter to my business?

Great question! In a nutshell, SEO is the process of making your web pages and content more likely to be found by search engines (such as Google, Bing, and Yahoo) when users search for specific words or phrases online. And if you’re not sure why this is relevant to your business, just think about how you usually find the information you need to know about a product or service.

For example, what do you do when you want to find a new restaurant or coffee shop nearby or purchase a new work desk? If you’re like most people, chances are you reach for your phone or computer and type the phrase that best describes what you’re looking for, like “good coffee shops in Duluth, Minnesota.”

Before you know it, Google is showing you restaurants, coffee shops, or desks that are most related to the keywords you used. In other words, the companies you see at the top of your search engine didn’t just magically get there. Instead, those companies strategically wrote their content to include some of the the same keywords that you used when searching so that they could be found by you.

In other words, if you want your customers to find your business online, let alone buy whatever you’re selling, you’ve got to be able to write for both humans and search engines like Google. So, before you write this off under “… but I don’t have time to rewrite all of my content for SEO,” here are five small changes you can easily take on in order to make your website copy SEO-friendly.

5 easy ways to make your copy SEO-friendly

1. Get credible links to and from your site

Did you use another source or article while writing a recent blog post? Great! Find a way to hyperlink this piece of information into your blog post with descriptive links. Descriptive links means instead of having “click here” links throughout your blog post, you can link the actual text that describes where you’re trying to drive the reader. Linking text within your copy will demonstrate that your information is credible because it’s cited from another source, while also adding more value for your readers.

Linking text within your copy can also work in your favor if the site you’re connecting to is willing to link to your piece of content. The more “linking in” from other sites, the better your ranking becomes across search engines.

2. Use relevant keywords

Keywords are words or phrases that best describe what your content is about. For example, an excellent phrase to drive to this blog post is “how to improve your website copy for search engine optimization.” By using relevant phrases or keywords, search engines are more likely to pick up the topic you’re writing about and then serve that piece of content in related search results. To find potential keywords for the topic you’re writing about, you can check out Google’s free keyword tool.

3. Optimize your headlines and URLs

Integrate phrases and keywords in the URLs of your website, as well as in the headings of your website pages. For example, this blog post has keywords like “how to improve your website copy for search engine optimization” listed in the URL and the blog post’s title.  

4. Make your content shareable

The best way to get your content read by others is by making it easier to share your content with a “share” button at the bottom of each blog post. Of course, the share button is only useful if you take the time to create quality content that others actually want to read and share.

5. Always keep your customer top of mind when writing

Writing with SEO in mind doesn’t mean your content should sound robotic. Overly-optimized content will most likely turn off your customers and can even be penalized by search engines – causing your content to rank lower once it’s all said and done. The best way to avoid this is to keep your customer top of mind every time you write so that you can find a healthy balance of writing for humans and search engine bots.

Want more helpful copywriting tips you can easily apply to your website? Then, check out more ways you can energize your website copy so that you can connect with your customers and grow your business.