SEO copywriting: 5 tips to skyrocket your conversions

Today, few companies are satisfied with their conversion rates. And the Covid crisis did not help: according to several studies on the subject, including Neil Patel’s analysis, conversion rates in certain sectors only dropped. In the travel sector alone, the decline was around 50%!

Indeed, the pandemic caused a drastic drop in revenue across many sectors such as tourism, events, and even construction and real estate.

It also increased online competition: more and more companies started selling on the internet and producing content, reducing their chances of being visible to their audience.

It is therefore increasingly crucial to know how to capture your targets’ attention by pulling the levers that work and that help you stand out.

To do this, there is an effective way to boost your conversions: combining SEO writing and copywriting. You produce content that ranks on Google AND you convert your traffic!

In this article, you’ll discover the tips of Nina Ramen, copywriter and founder of the Manufacture du Copywriting, as well as our advice on how to integrate them into SEO writing.

We explain in 5 key steps how to combine copywriting and SEO writing to better target your prospects and give your conversions a boost.

What is the difference between copywriting and SEO writing?

Even though copywriting can sometimes be confused with SEO writing, the two disciplines are not exactly identical.

On one hand, web writing consists of producing content designed to rank on search engines by applying a certain number of rules and best practices.

On the other hand, copywriting is a practice that consists of generating engagement (sign-ups, clicks, purchases, etc.) through the power of words. It can also be called persuasive writing.

Copywriting relies on the reader’s emotions, which become levers for action. It applies anywhere you want to spark engagement: emails, wording of web pages or landing pages, etc.

Why is copywriting valuable for SEO?

The most common bias in web writing is not focusing enough on the targets and not taking emotions and the user experience into account.

By contrast, copywriting requires intense research on the audience in order to perfectly understand their emotions, doubts, and expectations. The results of this research provide a significant advantage for getting started with SEO content writing.

Today, we therefore talk more about SEO copywriting: the combination of SEO best practices and the marketing techniques of copywriting.

Do you need guidance in writing and optimizing your SEO content? Semji is THE solution to help you design content that is relevant to your audience from start to finish. Request a personalized demo of Semji! You’ll discover how to create higher-performing content in less time.

The many copywriting techniques

Depending on your objectives or what you want to sell, you can rely on several types of frameworks. Here are the ones most commonly found in copywriting:

AIDA, or Awareness – Interest – Desire – Action

Undoubtedly the best known of all.

• Awareness: capture the reader’s attention.
• Interest: spark their interest.
• Desire: create the desire to learn more about a product or service by presenting the benefits it can bring.
• Action: prompt the reader to act or react.

PAS, or Problem – Agitate – Solve

A double-edged model that plays on the reader’s unpleasant feelings, which are also the most impactful.

• Problem: state and describe a problem the reader is facing.
• Agitate: show how much this problem is a real pain for them.
• Solve: propose one or more solutions to address it.

ACCA, or Awareness – Comprehension – Conviction – Action

A framework inspired by the scientific field that appeals to rationality while playing on frustrations.

• Awareness: bring a problem or situation to the reader’s attention.
• Comprehension: show the reader how it affects them.
• Conviction: create the desire or conviction in the reader that they must use your solution to solve their problem.
• Action: invite your reader to take action.

BAB, or Before – After – Bridge

Perfect for quick, concise presentations.

• Before: describe the world or a situation as it is today, with the problems the reader is facing.
• After: describe the ideal world or situation, as it could be without the reader’s problems.
• Bridge: show how it is possible to move from today’s world to the world the reader wishes for and dreams of.

FAB, or Features – Advantages – Benefits

Simple, effective, and suited to quick presentations.

• Features: present the characteristics of the product or service.
• Advantages: describe the advantages inherent to these characteristics.
• Benefits: finish with the benefits your reader can gain from them.

4 P’s, or Picture – Promise – Prove – Push // Problem – Promise – Proof – Proposal.

Perfect for long articles and pitches.

• Picture / problem: describe a situation in which your reader can easily see themselves.
• Promise: show how your offer can end or improve the situation described earlier.
• Proof: provide evidence that your offer does indeed deliver the expected result.
• Push / proposal: encourage the reader to act.

In short, there are many writing methods to convince your audience. But you still need to know your targets inside out in order to address their needs. Here’s everything you need to know!

The 5 golden rules of SEO copywriting to boost your conversions

Rule #1: Get inside your customers’ heads (Nina Ramen’s tips)

Nina Ramen has been a copywriting expert since 2016 and is the founder of the Manufacture du Copywriting. She currently publishes several newsletters, including one followed by more than 20,000 people. In her webinar, she details her method for conducting audience research.

Copywriting: Getting inside your customers’ heads - YouTube

Tap to unmute

Copywriting: Getting inside your customers’ heads Semji

Semji 926 subscribers

Watch on

Indeed, the job of any good copywriter is to get inside their targets’ heads in order to speak to them with the right message. A deep knowledge of your audience (pains, fears, desires, expectations, needs, etc.) allows you to develop the arguments and levers needed to trigger action.

Adopt the right mindset

Beware of the classic bias when studying targets: people are not other “yous”! Nina Ramen recommends three essential principles for adopting the right mindset:

• Start from a blank page, and therefore assume that you know nothing about your targets.
• Be empathetic and set aside your own emotions and preconceptions.
• Don’t filter the information you collect. You’ll do that in a second step.

By doing all this, you’ll discover other fears and difficulties in your targets that you never suspected.

Pay attention to persona criteria

When you build a persona, pay attention to the criteria, especially demographic ones. These do not allow you to build your prospects’ emotional profile. For that, it’s better to rely on your targets’ expectations and desires.

For example, if you want to sell spirulina, you’ll need to focus on what motivates potential buyers:

• strengthening the immune system,
• lowering cholesterol levels,
• gaining protein and iron,
• etc.

Observe your prospects carefully

Don’t hesitate to gather information about your customers:

• comments left by customers on product pages (including your competitors’),
• Facebook groups,
• forums, etc.

All of this helps you understand your prospects’ questions, fears, dissatisfactions, and desires.

Run surveys

Surveys are also an excellent way to learn more about your audience.

• Select a representative sample of your target from your email list.
• Don’t use multiple-choice questions; instead, opt for open-ended questions so respondents can fully express themselves.
• Don’t ask too many questions.
• Analyze the responses by creating a word cloud of the terms used by respondents.

It is precisely the way they phrase their answers that will help you get to know your targets better.

Conduct one-on-one interviews

Finally, to obtain high-quality information about your targets, nothing beats one-on-one interviews. In 20 minutes, try to gather as much information as possible by building trust and letting the interviewees talk.

Examples of questions to ask during these interviews

• What is your main problem in this area?
• What would your life look like if you could solve this problem?
• What will your life look like in 5 years if you can’t solve this problem?

Don’t hesitate to dig deeper into the answers if needed.

Want to develop your copywriting knowledge? Feel free to check out Nina Ramen’s free online courses.

In summary

All this preparatory work to get inside your customers’ heads will make keyword research considerably easier. No more guesswork. You know your targets’ challenges perfectly.

To learn Nina Ramen’s copywriting tips in detail, feel free to watch our webinar or subscribe to her newsletter.

Rule #2: Position yourself on the right keywords

To go after qualified traffic, the first step is to rank on the RIGHT keywords. What exactly does that mean?

The right keywords are the most strategic queries for your website. Ideally, this is a keyword with an interesting search volume relative to your market, your sector, and your target, and which therefore has the potential to bring you traffic.

It’s also a keyword that represents your business or a topic on which you are an expert and that you want to talk about.

So don’t limit yourself to the keyword’s volume, but also focus on the quality of the potential traffic.

Example:

You are a site specializing in dietary supplements and you want to sell spirulina.

With Semji, you can start from the main topic “spirulina” or a generic keyword to identify all the queries and content ideas to produce.

Semji’s Content Ideas module surfaces all the competing articles on the topic that rank first on Google.

The advantage: you save time on your benchmark by filtering articles by category, informational or transactional. You also directly identify the search intent behind your keyword: are users looking for information or to buy?

You can thus design an editorial strategy based on the type of query.

Semji allows you to:

• find new traffic opportunities by identifying new keywords you don’t yet rank on.
• gain or maintain your positions on strategic queries by identifying content that needs optimization.

Following our example, you can view the best content on the keyword “spirulina” as well as related queries such as:

• “spirulina benefits”,
• “spirulina hair”,
• or even “phycocyanin benefits” (one of the components of spirulina).

You can see that on “spirulina benefits”, you are poorly ranked even though the keyword difficulty is very low. The keyword is not subject to a seasonal effect.

The search volume is estimated at 10 monthly visits; however, we see that the estimated traffic for the competitor in the TOP 1 spot is more like 170 visits per month. So it’s time to optimize your content for this query.

Thanks to the Content Ideas module, you know the topics that interest your audience and the keywords to target. You can then add them to your editorial calendar in just a few clicks.

Here, you opt for a foolproof technique to boost your website’s visibility: creating semantic cocoons. This is a set of pages covering the same topic and interlinked with one another, from the most general to the most specific on the subject.

By making your site as comprehensive as possible on the topic of your choice, you strengthen the semantic authority of your pages in Google’s eyes, you gain visibility, and you increase your chances of conversion.

To learn more about the Content Ideas module, head over to our dedicated article.

Rule #3: Build a relevant content structure

Once the keywords are selected, it’s time to move on to writing. An element not to be neglected: the content structure. It is essential to ensure the page’s visibility.

First, it ensures readability for readers, who can quickly grasp the page’s content.

The Hn headings are also crawled by Google’s bots and help rank the content better based on the topics covered.

The best practice is to include your audience’s search intents (we cover this in rule #4). 👇

To work on your content’s structure, you first need to prepare a clear, precise brief that must include:

1. the topic to work on,
2. the optimal length,
3. the title or h1,
4. the structure or outline of the article,
5. the vocabulary to use,
6. the sources,
7. the internal linking to set up with the other content on your site.

The Semji platform helps you design it and lets you save up to 6 times more time, because it generates a brief that includes all of these elements.

For example, let’s look at what Semji recommends for the structure of content around the query “spirulina benefits”.

Ideas for punchy titles, H1, … Semji surfaces the 3 main competitors. From the various titles on the subject found on the web, Semji automatically generates impactful and unique H1 ideas, as shown here for example.

The same principle applies to the various Hn headings that structure the content. Based on the different search intents detected by the Semji algorithm, the solution suggests an article outline and subheading ideas (Hn), as shown below.

Users expect you to cover the characteristics of organic spirulina, a description of its benefits, or the difference from conventional spirulina.

Another important point: knowing which terms you should use in your argument. You immediately get suggestions for those covered by the top content displayed in the SERP.

In the example above, you’ll need to include paragraphs on iron, dietary supplements, etc.

Semji’s “brief” feature lets you quickly obtain a relevant outline, and therefore content that has every chance of ranking. It meets both Google’s SEO requirements and your audience’s search intent. What exactly is that? Read on to find out!

Rule #4: Answer the search intent

Search intent is the information a user wants to find when they enter a query into a search engine.

It is therefore essential to identify and integrate these different search intents into the article’s structure (for example, in the Hn headings) to optimize conversions.

Example: for the query “spirulina”, some users may be looking for information on the benefits, the dangers, etc., while others want to find a shop to buy it.

Search intents are therefore both informational and transactional. To identify them, it is essential to carefully analyze the results pages (SERP) for each keyword.

Example of a mostly informational SERP for the term “spirulina benefits”:

There, you’ll find articles but also the most frequently asked questions on the subject (People Also Ask) and recipes. On other topics, you may also find images or videos.

Example of a mostly transactional SERP for the term “organic spirulina”:

There, you’ll find links to online shop product pages, one of which is highlighted directly in the results page. You’ll also notice the presence of a map to find the nearest store, as well as suggestions for similar products.

By analyzing the results provided, you therefore get a good idea of the information and content types (articles, product pages, etc.) expected by users… but also by Google!

To learn more about search intents and how to interpret results pages, we detail a 3-step methodology as well as a free template to download.

If you want to save time, you can use Semji. For the query “spirulina benefits”, the solution shows you users’ main search intents.

Example:

Here, we can see that it would be worthwhile to address these different search intents and integrate them into the Hn headings for content on the query “spirulina benefits”.

Examples of H2 headings based on Semji’s recommendations:

• “Should you buy organic spirulina?”
• “Does spirulina have any dangers?”
• “All the effects of spirulina on the body”
• “3 reviews from regular spirulina consumers”

The heatmap lets you visualize the search intents covered by your competitors and the number of occurrences in the content.

The heatmap shows the search intents present in competing content and how frequently they appear.

In the example above, you can see that it’s worth addressing the dangers and effects of spirulina, but also the properties of this algae and its iron content.

But above all, you’ll notice that the query “organic spirulina” is barely covered even though it has a high search volume. It may be worth integrating this topic into your article’s structure.

Do you have a topic to cover but don’t know which keywords to target? Do you want to be the most relevant on this topic and outrank the top content displayed in the SERP? Request a personalized demo of Semji!

Rule #5: Write the best article and show your expertise

Your article must stand out from your competitors and position you as an expert on the targeted topic.

To do this, you can rely on the E-E-A-T criteria (Experience/Expertise/Authoritativeness/Trustworthiness). These are a set of recommendations that signal to Google that your page is trustworthy:

• informative and comprehensive content,
• the presence of reliable sources,
• rich vocabulary,
• excellent syntax and impeccable spelling,
• consistent, thematic internal linking between the site’s different pieces of content,
• crediting content authors and having dedicated presentation pages for them,
• quality backlinks that prove the authors’ expertise and legitimacy,
• transaction security,
• personal data management,
• the presence of verified reviews, etc.

The E-E-A-T criteria are an important SEO lever, since a site that meets these various requirements is rewarded in the results pages. It is also a reassurance factor for the reader.

To make things easier for you, we’ve created a checklist to integrate these various criteria into your content.

Now, how do you create unique content and be sure it’s 100% optimized? By pairing your expertise and editorial know-how with the Semji solution.

The platform shows you your content’s SEO performance in real time, thanks to the Content Score. This score incorporates Semji’s recommendations regarding text length, outline, etc., based on the analysis of competitors.

Example for the keyword “spirulina benefits”:

After getting all the recommendations, you can start writing. Semji’s AI Writing is there to help you get started quickly. This feature automatically generates titles, Hn headings, and text to give you ideas for structures and hooks.

Thanks to this inspiration, you can focus on producing unique, high-quality content.

In summary

You have everything to gain by integrating copywriting into your SEO strategy. It’s the perfect match to sustainably boost your conversions. Here are the 5 best practices to remember:

1. Get inside your customers’ heads: learn everything you need to know about them, their needs, their doubts, their frustrations. Use every means at your disposal to form a very precise picture of their present or future expectations regarding your offer.
2. Adopt the keywords that will hit the mark, the ones used by your targets in their searches and that have an interesting volume.
3. Structure your content wisely to make it easier to read and improve its ranking on Google.
4. Uncover the search intent behind your keywords. Does your audience want information about a product, a comparison, product pages, addresses, videos? A careful analysis of the results pages will help you answer these questions and adapt your content accordingly.
5. Be the best on the subject; show your expertise with impeccable, comprehensive, well-sourced content that preferably meets Google’s E-E-A-T criteria.

Want to convert quickly with high-quality, SEO-friendly content? Request a personalized demo of Semji and discover how to produce higher-performing content (in less time 😇 ).