SEO Copywriting Best Practices Writing For Users Not Search Engines

For years the strategy has been to target “money” keywords for seo.  These would be terms with high search volume and usually high on the level of competitiveness.  Marketers would shove as many variations of the keyword as possible into the piece of content, as well as many times having a high frequency of exact match keywords.  Keywords were put in headings, anchors for internal links, titles, descriptions, alt tags, along with many other elements in the hopes of showing up on the first page in search engine results pages.  These instead are outdated techniques which leave a visitor without a rich experience.  Instead of focusing how am I going to rank, look at what you can do to give a potential visitor a valuable experience.

Instead of focusing on keywords focus on general topics and teams which casts a wider net in both possible phrase variation you can show up for as well as providing a visitor. Another reason being with the introduction of the Hummingbird Algorithm the intent of search terms are in question.  Why did someone just search for Nike? Are they looking for information about the brand, information about a specific product, or are they trying to make a purpose. Figuring out how to better target phrases and topics based on user intent will help you refine the type of traffic you’re getting from organic as well as drive a higher level of desired actions on your site.

3 types of intent driven searches

• Navigation: Users directly looking for your brand or aspects of it.
• Information: A search which the primary purpose is learning more information.
• Transactional: A search has a specific action in mind such as a product purchase. 

So instead of targeting simply just keywords, target general content themes which should be built with more in depth topical focuses.  Not only do keyword phrase research, but also research things that are being searched for around those phrases. What type of media can achieve this as well? Images, videos, info graphics, and other types of media.  Try using tools like social mention to see what types of content are popular for your content focus areas.  And one of the easiest ways of discovery is to search for phrases and topics you want to rank for, and see what is showing up highly for competitors.