Search engine optimization (SEO) is essential to online success. Google favours high quality, relevant content when returning search results. Optimized content is more likely to appear at the top of search results, and poor content will be seen by very few users. SEO has come a long way since the early days of the internet, requiring more effort, thought and research than ever before in order to be done effectively.

Ultimately, the results are more than worth the time and effort it takes to craft effective SEO content. From website copy and blogs to your digital storefront, every element of your website needs to be optimized in order to stand out on Google – attracting the attention of new audiences and creating potential customers.

How does SEO work?

In short, SEO makes your website visible to those who are looking for content similar to yours, or products and services offered by your business. Google and other popular search platforms crawl each website’s content, evaluating content based on overall quality and the presence or lack of key phrases. Google then determines whether or not your content is relevant to what users are searching for. Websites with content considered to be relevant and high quality will appear higher in search rankings, increasing the chances of the right people seeing your content. Without SEO, your website is essentially lost in the noise. About half of SEO work is technical in nature. This includes ensuring that backlinks aren’t toxic, digital security certificates are in place, and there aren’t a bunch of broken links on the site. The other half is all about seo-optimized content, and it is something many SEO agencies ignore because they are focused on the technical stuff. With many agencies, the buck stops at sprinkling a few key phrases into top-level content and meta tags and ending it there. While this is helpful, this isn’t a fulsome approach and that means if you know the secret, you have a good opportunity to own your competitors in Google. 

The importance of keyword research and analytics

Keyword research is vitally important. In order to optimize your website’s content, you need access to the right keywords, tools, and analytics that will help to inform your content. Before writing optimized content, SEO copywriters perform keyword research to determine what users are searching for, at what volume they’re searching for these terms, and how competitive these keywords are. This allows copywriters to write high quality content based around these keywords, rather than simply stuffing keywords into content they’ve written. Keyword research is an important step in writing optimized content, allowing copywriters to write content that is more likely to be seen by searchers and find keyword niches that aren’t currently being used by competitors in order to stand out from the crowd.

Professionals also make use of specialized tools to determine the optimization of website copy, using it to identify opportunities for improving SEO and using appropriate keywords. Analytics, too, are used by SEO copywriters to determine the effectiveness of content over time, allowing your business to determine when something just isn’t working, or when your content is using keywords that are too competitive to stand out. Using analytics allows your business to easily make changes to content with the goal of improving optimization, and stands as one of the most significant ways in which SEO copywriters are superior to freelance writers.

The case for using SEO copywriters

When looking to optimize your digital content, you’ll have two choices – hire an experienced SEO copywriter or a freelance writer. This is the most important choice you’ll make, as it will determine how effective your SEO content will be, and ultimately, how successful your website is at attracting new audiences and converting potential customers. SEO copywriters will use keyword research, analytics, and SEO tools when writing content, and will take into account the tone of voice used, reading level, and other important factors that are used by Google and other search engines in ranking your website in search results.

While freelance writers might often be the more affordable choice for your business, they often don’t take into account the nuances that go into writing SEO content. Whether it’s repeating key phrases or words too often, writing in a tone that doesn’t match the rest of your content, or writing in a more difficult or simple manner than the rest of your content, freelance writers generally don’t have the experience needed to effectively optimize content.

SEO is essential to your businesses success on the internet – without it, you’re invisible to the masses and are guaranteed to lose sales and views to competitors. Properly optimized content can go a long way in getting your website noticed by brand new audiences and potential customers, but should be crafted by an experienced SEO copywriter for maximum effectiveness.

ion8 is an all-in-one business consultancy with a skilled team of digital marketing experts who have the experience needed to craft SEO content for websites and blogs that will increase traffic to your website, get your brand noticed by new audiences, and elevate your business to new heights. To find out more about everything that ion8 can do for your business, get in touch with us today.