With the rise of the Internet as the most powerful business tool created, there has never been such a need for words. Regardless of developments in Internet video, the World Wide Web is still a text-driven medium. With blogs, articles, advertising and website text all needing words, copywriting has taken on a new importance in the battle for online presence. Words have always had great power, now they’ve taken on a vital significance for all companies that do business on the web.
But copywriting for the web is not like copywriting in the traditional sense. The requirements of Internet copy and the psychology of the Internet readership are very different from those involved in print copywriting. What’s more, SEO copywriting, the craft of creating copy that appeals both to human readers but also exploits SEO principles to attract higher Search Engine Rankings (SERPS) is an entirely different game.
The SEO copywriter needs to constantly balance the needs of their human reader with the need to maintain strong connections to Google and the other Search Engines. Writing for the Search Engines requires an awareness of what they are looking for. Ensuring that the article is topical, entirely original and contains the important keywords at an appropriate density is only the starting point of SEO copywriting.
The trouble is that even inserting the keywords is enough to flummox the average amateur copywriter. Sentences stuffed with keywords make little sense and the human reader clicks away to another page immediately.
Instead, SEO copy needs to appear like any other form of copy, well written, informative and engaging whilst retaining the highest possible optimisation factor. This requires expert writing skills to blend the SEO into the already tight copy.
Web copywriting is about grabbing the attention of the human reader who is already distracted by images, offers and enticements. Maintaining their interest with relevant and topical content known as ‘web copy’ is the next essential element of successful web copywriting. Web copy should differ from traditional written English because it is more accessible, less formal, and closer to the way that we speak.
The next stage is to lead the reader to the point of making a decision. The original meaning of the word ‘decision’ means to cut oneself off from all other options and choices. The persuasive copywriter invisibly removes all objections and concerns whilst leading the reader to the point of making the decision to click.
The aim of good web copywriting is to hook the human reader into staying at the website long enough to make that all-important click, to compel them to take action. This is the final stage of web copywriting.
Above all things, SEO copywriting creates crisp, attractive text that moves the reader towards the point of action. At the same time, it blends in optimisation techniques that ensure that the copy gets read. Without the SEO element, no matter how good the copy, if no one can find it, they cannot read it.
Excellent website copy is the correctly judged balance between highly compelling copy and expertly optimised text. If you need SEO copy, use SEO copywriting services.
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