Creative SEO Copy for Your Business
Table of Contents
A basic understanding of how SEO and SEM works is very helpful for growing your business and increasing your website traffic. I'll also share why I'm partial to creative content-driven SEO services.
Let’s jump in!
What is SEO & SEM?
Search Engine Optimization (SEO) and Search Engine Marketing (SEM) are similar in the sense that both focus on driving traffic to your website or landing page. The primary difference between SEO and SEM is money.
Search Engine Marketing requires you to invest money in an ad campaign such as Pay-Per-Click (PPC), Display Ads, Banner Ads, and Remarketing. When you search for a string of terms such as “copywriter near me” Google is doing a million things at once. The two actions you need to care about, though, are organic and paid search.
When you type in that keyword phrase “lawn mowing service near me” you’ll see 3 things pop up (in this order, unless you’ve configured your Google Search display differently:
- Ads, as indicated by the small “Ad” + link (in purple)
- A Map listing (in green) also known as a GMB - I'll be writing a post about GMBs soon!
- Organic Search Results (everything underneath the ads)
New I use a Chrome Extension called Keyword Surfer which quickly shows me the monthly searches (18,100) and Cost-per-Click ($9.24).
Google Ads aka PPC
The Ads are a part of SEM, while the Google My Business listing is a part of SEO (although you can pay for GMB ranking as well), and the organic search ranking falls under SEO. So, each time angi.com gets a click to their ad, it costs them about $9.24. If they’re trying to get 100 clicks a week, that’s $924, or about $3,696 a month. And a click, of course, doesn’t mean a conversion. So angi.com needs to be getting at least $4,000 of business each month from their ad campaign, just to break even on ad spend.
Google My Business Map Listings
Map listings are a handy way to find out where the closest business is located that’s relevant to your keyword search. In my case, I live in central O’ahu, so Roys Lawn Mowing & Yard Services shows up #1 for me. If I lived in a different region of the island, California, Idaho, or New York, my search results would change.
Under that, we have the organically ranking websites. These websites have excellent SEO, so Google chooses to display them to you.
Google’s primary objectives are to:
- Make money off advertisements
- Provide the most relevant information for a user
Websites that rank well for keywords and keyword phrases generally possess:
- Optimized meta-data
- Image alt text descriptions
- Frequently updated content
- H1, H2, and H3 headings
- Internal (inbound) links
- External (outbound) links
- Backlinks
These factors (and others I haven’t listed) work together to show Google why YOUR website is the authority. There are hundreds of data points that Google uses to determine organic ranking for a website, but those 7 data points are some of the best current indicators for ranking.
Benefits of SEM
Search Engine Marketing creates immediate results. Because everything is trackable, you can easily and quickly calculate your ROI. People who click on a Google Ad are generally bottom of the funnel and ready to buy. Plus, you’ll hire an agency to run your campaigns, meaning you can focus solely on converting those callers and clickers.
Benefits of SEO
Everyone is wary of advertisements these days. One of the benefits of ranking organically rather than paying for ads is trust. According to highervisibility.com, “Organic search drives 53% of website traffic, while paid search drives only 27%”. Oftentimes, searchers tend to click on the organically ranking websites over the advertised ones.
Increasing your organic ranking over time also doesn’t cost as much. You’re not paying for those individual clicks like you would in an SEM campaign.
Challenges of SEM
Budgetary concerns immediately come to mind with SEM. If your business is in a competitive niche like tech, housing, law, or insurance, you may not have the budget to contend with larger companies.
A post on ppcprotect.com shows just how expensive some clicks can get. For example, a click on “offshore accident lawyer” would cost you a whopping $815 per click. While your keywords and phrases won’t cost nearly that much, it’s easy to rack up an ads bill in the hundreds or even thousands if you’re getting 100s of clicks a month.
Converting Pay-Per-Click Visitors
Another common struggle with PPC is conversion. You might get them to click on your link, but if you don’t have an informative landing page, you’ll lose the visitor to a more helpful link. Creating copy that converts those clicks is imperative for generating a solid ROI.
Challenges of SEO
SEM is instantaneous. You’ll see your Ads showing up almost right away. Using SEO, however, takes a minimum of about 3 months to see results. Google is a virtual giant, which means it’s not as agile when it comes to SEO. The ranking process includes indexing of your website pages, crawling of your website by bots, and the work of your competitors. Google is managing, indexing, ranking, and reviewing BILLIONS of sites at any given time.
If you keep this in mind, then the 4 to 6-month timeframe to see results (6-12 for lasting results) is actually quite fast. But 6-12 months doesn’t feel fast when you’re hungry for business and ready to start working with new clients ASAP. An SEO strategy is not ideal for businesses looking to generate sales quickly.
Consistency & Search Engine Optimization
Remember those competitors who are also doing SEO? One challenge with SEO is that once you hit that coveted #1 SERP (Search Engine Results Page) spot, you’re not guaranteed to stay there. Optimizing for organic rank is an ongoing process that requires diligence, patience, and a wealth of research so you can keep creating new, optimized content.
Optimize with Creative SEO Copy
In another post, I talked about the differences between Copy versus Content, emphasizing the subtle differences between them. Creative SEO copy is copy in the sense that ranking your site is a form of active marketing. On the other hand, providing educational content is also a form of content marketing.
That’s why I LOVE Creative SEO Copy for websites, blog posts, guest-posting, ghostwriting, and Social Media Strategy: it’s a 2-for-1 strategy to support your Brand and Business through education for Branding, content for SEO, and consistent engagement for all around benefits.
SEO on Your Own
There are 2 overarching components of SEO: on-page and off-page. Everything within your website that can be optimized falls under on-page SEO. Everything outside of your websites falls under off-page SEO—pretty self-explanatory, right?
On-Page Optimization
Optimizing your website copy for readers and SEO means balancing keyword-rich content with unique and engaging copy. Start with Keyword Research using tools like the ones in this post.
If you’ve got a WordPress website, be sure to download Yoast, a fantastic plugin for optimizing your WordPress website. If you’re using Wix, Squarespace, or one of the other Best Website Builders for 2021, there’s tons of additional information, tutorials, and YouTube videos about on-page optimizing your site.
Blog Content for SEO
Content is Queen / King for Google Ranking. On average, top-ranking websites have a homepage with between 1k-2k words. All that content can start to look messy and cluttered, though, particularly on mobile, which is what almost half of your website visitors are using to scroll. Have you ever read 1-2k words on your iPhone? It’s not terribly pleasant.
That’s why blog posts are an excellent way to consistently add new content to your website, increase your ranking, boost your Brand, and keep your website’s design clean, readable, and user-friendly. As you can see, I practice what I preach, saving the high word count (about 1,000+ words per post) for my blog instead of my website.
Off-Page Optimization
You probably know that people buy Instagram followers, but did you know that people also buy links? Backlinking is the core of off-page SEO. Put simply, backlinking is a form of “votes” for your website. The more votes (links) your website has, the better. A common practice for acquiring backlinks (as with Instagram) is purchasing tons of low-quality links to increase off-page SEO. Google has gotten smarter, though, and penalizes your website for lower quality links.
Creative SEO Copy with Beach Bum Creative
Beach Bum Creative specializes in Search Engine Optimized website copy and Blog posts to help you increase your Google Ranking over time. By developing content that’s on-brand, relevant, and strategically written, Beach Bum Creative supports your digital marketing efforts for the long haul.
Have you paid for PPC, done SEO on your own, or run a different kind of digital ads campaign? Share in the comments how it went!
