Twitter Facebook LinkedIn Flipboard 0 Google receives over 3.3 billion searches every day, from people who want answers to questions and problems that they have. But rather than just any old answers search engines need to provide the most relevant, useful, and trustworthy answers. To do this they use spiders to crawl web pages and figure out what is each page is about and then rank them. And that’s why having a good knowledge of SEO is crucial when it comes to copywriting for web pages and blog posts. Below are 10 tips to help you improve your SEO copywriting. They don’t cover every tip under the sun and nor do they provide a silver bullet but they will help you start to improve your search engine ranking. 1. Write for humans, but optimise for search engines Web pages are ranked based on the popularity and authority of the results the search engine spiders get, so the more visits a website gets, the higher it will rank. To get visits you need real-life people to understand what you are writing about so write for a human first and then optimise your page around a primary keyword. 2. Be specific with your keywords Getting a high ranking for a keyword such as “running shoes” is difficult as it is too broad and there is a lot of competition for it. Also people don’t search that way, they tend to be more specific, for example when looking for running shoes I search for, “adidas boston boost”. As a result I get more relevant results and I’m more likely to visit the websites that come up. 3. Focus on one or two long-tail keywords When thinking about your keywords it’s best to choose a long-tail keywords. Long-tail keywords, are primary keywords, such as “London Marathon t-shirt” that are expanded upon with additional context, such as “women’s London marathon t-shirt size medium”. Focus on just one or two of these long-tail keywords to optimise your content around 4. Add your keyword to the page title and URL The page title appears as the link to the page in search results which will improve your SEO ranking and click throughs. Make sure your keyword appears early on in your page title and also include it in your URL with dashes to separate words. For example: yourcompanyname.com/long-tail-keyword. 5. Forget about keyword density Remember it’s about writing for human beings first and foremost, so don’t stuff your content with your keywords. Google and other search engines now penalise web pages that are stuffed with keywords, instead use them naturally within your SEO copywriting. 6. Don’t forget your meta description Meta descriptions don’t by themselves improve your search engine ranking, but what they do is improve the numbers of people clicking through to your page which in turn improves your popularity and authority. To optimise for both humans and search engines your meta description should be no longer than 140 characters (including spaces) and include your primary keyword. 7. Write quality, in-depth content When people go online to search they are looking for answers to their questions and solutions to their problems. Remember you are writing for them so answer their questions and be helpful by giving them quality, in-depth content. This will build trust in you and your website, and they may even share your web page with helps build your authority with search engines. 8. Remember the Alt text in your images Add your keyword to the Alt tag in your images so that the spiders indexing your web pages know what the image is about. As well as helping your on-page SEO this can also help the image get found in image searches. 9. Use internal links Internal links work in two ways, firstly they drive visitors and traffic to your other content and secondly by including other relevant links within your content you can improve your authority. Include keywords in the link that tell the reader about the article it links to, but don’t go overboard with your links – you don’t want to look like you’re spamming your reader. 10. Optimise for mobile Over 80% of internet users own a smartphone and most are on it searching online more than their computer. So make sure your website is optimised for mobile devices or has a responsive design so your content can be viewed on devices of any size. Bonus tip! Edit your page to give your visitor a good experience. As well as making it easy for visitors to read your content, download an eBook or subscribe to your blogs search engines take into account the experience that people have on your site when determining how to rank you. So follow good copywriting practices and use white space, sub-headings and clear calls to action. Which of these tips do you find most useful? Do you have any SEO tips that aren’t included in this infographic? Share your thoughts in the comments section below. Twitter Tweet Facebook Share Email This article originally appeared on Spindle Tree Copywriting Blog and has been republished with permission.Find out how to syndicate your content with B2C Author: Kassia Gardner Follow @spindletreecopy Kassia Gardner is the owner of Spindle Tree and a copywriting, content marketing and blogging expert. She helps micro business owners just like you find their voice and stand out from the crowd. Kassia also loves running and blogging about running. You can find her on Twitter, Facebook … View full profile ›More by this author:How to Use the Golden Circle in Content MarketingFascinating Aida: Translating AIDA Theory Into Practice10 Ways to Get More People to Read Your Content