When clients or tradeshow attendees ask me questions like “Is this SEO copy” or “Can you write SEO copy”, I don’t get annoyed. I use this as an opportunity to help them improve the user experience of their websites.
My response is normally “If the page is solving the users problem without hiding the solution below the fold of the page, then it is SEO content.” If the person seems engaged I’ll follow up with “If you’d like we can look at some of the technical aspects that will help the page gain more visibility in the search engines.”
This normally opens the door to be invited into design and branding meetings, as well as the IT team workflows for QA checks. But that is for another post because this post is about what SEO copy is. So let’s start with the definitions we use in our agency, and then I’ll share examples.
SEO copy is content that provides a solution or answers a question and solves a problem. Most importantly, SEO copy lets the content consumer leave the page without having to visit another page or do more research. The content can be created in multiple formats including text, infographics, images, widgets, videos, sound clips, lead forms and products for sale.
SEO copy is not keyword heavy content with a million headers, written to reach a minimum word count, and is created to show up in a search engine for a specific keyword phrase. SEO copy does not need to include FAQs or other features just because you want to hit a word count, or the person might be interested in the the subtopic.
If these features are needed to answer the initial query, then add them. If they do not directly support the original topic, put them into a different post and use internal links so the person can click if they want to learn more.
SEO copy comes in multiple forms, it’s not…
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