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SEO copywriting has evolved. Simply targeting the right keywords and creating relevant content isn’t enough. You now need to take a strategic SEO copywriting approach. One that focuses on creating the best content for your industry and then distributing it to the people that can help its popularity and your rankings grow.
Have you spent months, or even years, creating ‘great content’ and not getting any results? For years the advice has been ‘build it and they will come’. But the bitter truth is that you can have the juiciest, most fact packed and revolutionary content ever to grace the web, but if nobody reads it then it counts for diddly.
An seo copywriting strategy based on keywords alone is like building an uber modern shopping complex and then failing to build any roads to it or signposts to let customers know it’s there. In other words, you have to promote and distribute your SEO copywriting if it’s going to be successful at generating better rankings, traffic and leads.
Today’s SEO copywriting goes beyond ‘post and hope’ to focus on building ‘skyscraper content’. This is info packed, priceless content that stands out tall and proud in your industry for its depth of research and comprehensive answer to a customer’s problem. It’s content that compels people to take notice and reward you with links.
What is Skyscraper SEO Copywriting?
Skyscraper content is a new SEO copywriting methodology that goes beyond just keywords. It’s a three step strategy:
- Find popular articles in your industry that get a lot of links and traffic
- Create a new improved version, where you build another 20 floors on top of what your competitor has already done
- Reach out to website owners and social media influencers that will be interested in it
Step 1 – Find a popular article to replicate
Three tools you can use to find the most popular content that attracts links and traffic are:
Open Site Explorer – Pop in the website of a competitor who has a lot of popular articles. Click on ‘Top Pages’ and note down those with at least 25 links from root domains.
Topsy – Put in your keyword to find the most popular relevant article in social media of all time.
Google – Find articles on page 1 for competitive industry terms which have at least 25 referring domains.
Step 2 – Build your skyscraper SEO content
You now need to create your own version of a popular article you found in step one. But instead of just regurgitating another version in your own words, you need to add another 20 floors on top of what they’ve already built. You need to improve what are the most popular posts in your industry so your version stands tall and deserves to be recognised as the superior and most valuable post on that topic.
A few ways of doing this:
- Make it longer – If there’s a popular article you want to replicate that covers ‘10 Forex Trading Tips’ make yours 20 tips long.
- Improve its design – Add better graphics, more attractive fonts and create your own custom header that gives it that extra mark of quality.
- More detail – Is there anything you can expand on, or are there vital details they’ve missed out? Adding a layer of complexity is a great way of giving the impression of superior quality, as long as your points add genuine value.
- Update it – Check when the article was published. What new developments can you add that makes it more relevant to today’s audience?
A combination of these, or better yet all four, will help to add those extra layers to create a solid, carefully structured skyscraper and a link worthy asset for your website.
Step 3 – Promote it
Your remarkable piece of skyscraper SEO content is published and ready to receive visitors. Now you have to get links and social media shares to build roads and signposts so you can attract traffic.
Getting backlinks the smart way
Getting links isnt a straight numbers game. It’s about trying to get the most relevant and valuable links possible. This is why it’s wise to target specific website owners that have already shown an interest in your article’s topic. To find out who they are, enter the address of the article you identified in stage one into your backlink checker tool of choice. Then export all the backlinks into a spreadsheet.
This next step is time consuming, but worth it. You now need to email all the site owners in your spreadsheet with a simple message saying you noticed they linked to article xxx and that you’ve got a new improved version they might want to check out. Briefly mention why your version is better and ask whether they’d consider linking to it on their website for the benefit of their readers.
You may have to email 100 people and only get 10 links. But remember that in today’s SEO copywriting game, it’s about quality not quantity. Just a few links from high PR sites relevant to your industry are going to be far more solid and powerful than 100s of spammy links generated on the cheap from low value article directories.
Getting social media shares
Using tools like SocialBro, Kissmetrics or Klout it’s easy to find people in your industry with a lot of influence in social media. It’s wise to start sharing their Tweets and posts in the runup to publishing your skyscraper content. This will help to build rapport and familiarity so that when you send them a direct message about your fantastic new post it’s going to at least earn their consideration, and not just another spammer to be blocked.
Traffic from forums
This is a criminally underused yet very powerful tactic. Find popular forums in your industry and start to contribute in a helpful way, answering questions, sharing your insights and being a standup member of the community. After publishing your new post you can then create a thread about the topic posing a question, with a subtle link to your post at the bottom. This tactic alone can generate huge amounts of traffic and exposure when done in a smart way.
We can build SEO copywriting skyscrapers for you
SEO copywriting has changed forever. If you want your SEO strategy to be successful you can’t just keep pushing content out into the void and hope someone finds it. To get the best return on your investment, you need to make sure you’re publishing posts that will attract people because of their superior value and you promote them to the right people.
Over the years we’ve produced blogs for companies in many different sectors to improve their rankings and traffic. This includes companies in the restaurant industry, high end furniture manufacturers and marketing agencies.
So if you’re ready to start building skyscrapers and running your SEO copywriting campaign the smart way, get in touch for a free proposal on how The Copywriter’s Crucible can build and promote them for you:
Read samples of articles and blog posts in my copywriting portfolio
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