Talk the Talk: Optimized Web Copy

What does it mean to optimize your web copy? Well, it relates to several things at once. Of course, you want your copy to be engaging in both style and format, but when we talk about optimization, that mostly refers to relevance (keyword usage), authority (link building), and search engine optimization (SEO) in general.

Relevance and Authority

The majority of your website’s traffic is funneled in via search engines, like Google. To understand, first, you have to ask yourself how people use search engines. As you well know from the last time you looked up a place to eat near you, people type their query into the search bar in a specific way. For example, “best seafood restaurant close by.” In this case, words like “seafood” and “restaurant” are keywords, and longer phrases, like “best seafood restaurant close by,” are examples of long-tail keywords. By taking into account how users are actually searching, and using specific keywords in your own copy, you’ll be able to direct the appropriately interested web users to your page. 

While relevant copy is important, search engines also take your authority into account, and they measure that by the number of inbound links you receive. Are third-party sites linking back to your content? If so, how many? Are they relevant and authoritative themselves? You can optimize your copy to show expertise and relevance through keywords, that way when the right pair of eyes reads your copy (something we can control to some degree), they want to link to it.

The combination of relevance (keywords) and authority (links) can determine your rank on the results page of a Google search, giving you more traffic and a better chance of being read and linked to again. Remember, relevance feeds into authority and vice versa. 

When You Work With Cosmitto

So, web copy optimization is the practice of creating and optimizing web copy that gives a search engine two of the things it measures –– relevance and authority. If you work with Cosmitto, we’ll perform keyword research, analysis, and selection. Then, we’ll strategically use top-performing keywords (without keyword-stuffing, that’s very bad) in the body copy and metadata –– including page title, description tags, image captions, and alt tags. We’ll also create effective landing pages that can tie to ads and social media campaigns. 

To build up your inbound links, we create a link-building strategy that often includes action items like keyword optimization, guest blogging, reputation management, and ad creation. Ultimately, our goal is to use optimized web copy as a single puzzle piece that makes up the larger picture of digital marketing.