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The guide to what is copywriting and how SEO plays its part

Writer's picture: SerpSuccessSerpSuccess

Updated: Oct 27, 2024


what is a seo copywriter

This guide aims to help you understand what copywriting is and how SEO plays its part.


Long story short, SEO optimises a website, and copywriting is the content creation process. To optimise on-page content, the copy must be tweaked to insert keywords without hindering the content's meaning.


This is when SEO specialists and copywriters must work together to optimise content.


What is a copywriter?


Copywriting is writing text for ads and marketing. It's meant to persuade people to take action, like buying something or signing up. Good copy grabs attention, clearly explains a message, and convinces readers to engage with what's being promoted. It mixes creativity with marketing strategy to use language that persuades and appeals to the right audience.


What does a copywriter do? 


Copywriters create written content for advertisements and marketing materials. Our job is to write compelling text that persuades people to take action, such as buying a product, signing up for a service, or clicking on a link.


Copywriters work closely with clients or marketing teams to understand the target audience and the campaign's goals. We craft clear, engaging, and persuasive messages, using language and tone appropriate for the intended audience.


Copywriters often research the product or service they promote and stay updated on industry trends to create effective and impactful content.


What is freelance copywriting? 


Freelance copywriting is when independent writers offer their services to businesses and clients on a project-by-project basis.


They work remotely, creating various types of content like website copy, blogs, ads, and emails tailored to each client's needs.


Freelancers manage their schedules and client relationships, ensuring every piece of content is persuasive and aligns with the client's brand. This career demands strong writing skills, creativity, and flexibility to adapt to different industries and client preferences.


Search engine optimisation (SEO) and copywriting

Search engine optimisation and copywriting are different marketing disciplines. But they work closely together to optimise websites and attract new customers. 


SEO (Search Engine Optimisation): SEO refers to optimising web pages and content to improve their visibility and ranking in search engine results pages (SERPs). SEO aims to increase organic traffic to a website by making it more relevant to search engine algorithms.


Copywriting: Copywriting is the art and science of writing persuasive and engaging text for advertisements, marketing materials, websites, and more. Copywriting aims to attract and persuade the audience to take a specific action, such as purchasing, signing up for a newsletter, or clicking on a link.


In short, SEO is essential for marketers to optimise websites for search results, while copywriting is vital for users to convert into customers. Both disciplines must work together to rank on search engines such as Google and Bing and to attract customers. 

SEO and copywriting venn diagram

How SEO and Content Writing Work Together:


Content Creation: Copywriters create engaging content that is benefit-led. The copy explains to customers what problems your product or service solves. This involves writing informative, valuable content that satisfies user intent. 


Keyword Optimisation: SEO uses keyword research to understand users' search terms. After the copywriter writes the content, the SEO specialist naturally includes the keywords in the content to help pages rank higher in search results.


User Experience: Both SEO and copywriting focus on enhancing the user experience. SEO ensures that pages load quickly, are mobile-friendly, and provide valuable information.


Copywriting contributes by crafting compelling headlines, clear calls to action, and informative content that engages users.


Link Building: SEO includes strategies to build links from other websites to improve authority and ranking. Copywriters create content that attracts natural backlinks through its quality and relevance. Excellent informative copy should naturally attract backlinks. 


Analytics and Optimisation: SEO involves analysing metrics such as traffic, bounce, and conversion rates to optimise content and improve performance over time.


Copywriters use these insights to refine content strategies and improve engagement and conversion rates.


What is an SEO copywriter? 


Sometimes, when marketing departments are tiny, or if you're working with a freelancer, an SEO specialist will also write copy.  


Typically, an SEO specialist has experience with SEO writing that caters to different types of user intent. Below is a diagram of the user journey from Semrush.

Semrush marketing funnel

Top-of-the-funnel users will be doing basic research to solve a problem they have. Your users may still need to learn that your products or services exist.


For top-of-the-funnel searches, SEO specialists will write and target blogs with informational keywords. Informational keywords often have huge search volumes but low purchase intent. 


Then, mid-funnel users will better understand what products and services they need to solve their problems and start researching brands.


SEO copywriters will write service pages or product pages and target those with commercial intent. If your website is optimised, your products and services will appear in the search results.


During the mid-funnel stage, users may need more time to be ready to convert as they are still researching brands, but some users do convert. 


Lastly, we have the bottom of the funnel. These users are ready to convert and know what product or service they want to purchase to solve their problem.


SEO specialists will use transactional and commercial keywords to target service pages. In an ideal situation, SEO specialists would only target service pages with transactional keywords.


Still, sometimes, there are low volumes for transactional keywords, and users in the mid-funnel stage have the potential to convert. 


Sometimes, it's more efficient and effective if an experienced SEO specialist writes and optimises the content simultaneously.


When conducting SEO content writing, keyword research is often completed first with an intent in mind. 


SEO specialists work closely with clients to understand their goals, whether gaining more leads or turning users into customers.


By getting to know each other, the SEO specialist will understand and learn the client's products or services, making SEO web writing much more accessible. 


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