SEO Copywriting

By James Atkinson, LLB and Sarah Jamieson

The goal of all SEO copywriting is to send traffic and prospects to a sales format. Good web copywriting can create reciprocal relationships that ultimately lead to sales.

Buyers and sellers are simply two sides of the same coin and the 'points' at which sales relationships are created are illustrated by the green dots in the image below. With search engine and social networks your goal must always be to send your prospects to a "sales letter" (represented below as “SL” ) or other sales mechanism:

As I have stated: Online buyers and sellers usually meet when searchers, seeking a solution to a perceived need, use the search engines or the social networks for information, connection, or immediate sale.

That is, searchers go online to:

• Investigate online educative content

• Create “connection” with others in social networks

• Or, if they want to immediately solve a problem, they’ll view ads on say Google Adwords.

Thus, it remains for seo copywriters to be present at all the places where online prospects are looking for information, connection, or purchase. It is here that you start your reciprocal relationship with prospects. You give them something of value - content - and they'll eventually reciprocate by buying products from you.

Web Content and Long Tail Niches

The term “long tail” refers to a business that can be profitable in a relatively small niche “enthusiast” or specialized market.

The internet creates wonderful opportunities for specialist niche businesses that wouldn’t normally survive offline - because offline merchants cannot get enough customers in their local area. Global reach lets you build an online business in specialized niches, because you can cheaply and effectively target a WORLDWIDE audience.

In long tail niche markets, it’s difficult or impossible for an offline business to compete with an online business. An online business can “connect” with a niche market in a very focused way.

These markets are mostly ignored by big brand producers who of course can’t be all things to all people.

Niche markets are often hungry for content and information and actively seek online experiences and relationships specifically directed at them.

Thus, the scene is set for you, as an online entrepreneur, to take advantage of the many benefits the internet enables.

Web copywriting needs a fair bit of preparation. For a start, it's helpful to understand the buyer “mindset” of your market so that you always remain relevant for your prospects. Put another way: you should understand how buyers think and feel at every point of the buying cycle. See: Consumer Psychology.

This in turn allows you to focus your seo copywriting and persuasion marketing in tandem with your buyers’ mind-set. See for example the articles at Step 6 of internet marketing strategies.

In this series of articles I show the following:

Persuasive Content Writing - Online buyers expect YOU the seller to be their advocate – the person from whom they obtain information, guidance, advice, and products. If you cannot be your buyers’ activist, counselor, advocate, in whatever subject, the online buying soon stops.

Trust and Web Copywriting - Trust is crucial goal in SEO and web copywriting. As searchers associate you with quality content that they see again and again, they will start to trust you. Trust is a key component that creates sales.

Building Relationships with Web Content - I suggest you create at least one but preferably both an Educative and an online Social Relationship with your prospects before referring them to your sales material.

The Web Content Spokesperson - Searchers respond to people much better than they do to faceless, formless company web sites. It helps to have a spokesperson who features prominently on your web site.

Building Web Content Funnels - Web content funnels are a good way to pull your prospects down a sales pathway that eventually leads to online sales. I provide an image that illustrates the different types of web content you should be thinking about.

Your web content must have a PURPOSE other than just trying achieve search engine ranking. I provide ten ways to get ideas designed to give you inspiration for content. They should give you a snapshot of your prospects’ mindset, desires, problems, and beliefs.

Web Content and Meta Narratives - Now you can deliver your message straight into the buyer’s mindset – accessing their emotional needs. People seem to be hardwired to be interested in stories and take their messages to heart. Stories reflect how we see ourselves and the world.

7 Step Blog Narratives - Human beings love to hear stories and a properly structured narrative resonates in a reader’s mind as being “correct” or “right”. I show how you can use Joseph Campbell's mythology studies to build seven step blog naratives.

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