SEO copywriting poses more challenges to content writers than other types of professional writing. It has to be easy to read and interesting, and comply with keyword optimisation rules imposed by Google. Some copywriters miss their mark because their texts, although judiciously crafted to respect keyword density and placement rules, do not make a pleasant read. For this reason, there is a recent piece of advice for copywriters stating: “write for people, not search engines”.
This means that your text must not read as a keyword-promoting piece of content. People should not stop in the middle of reading and say “Aha! They are promoting X keyword!” Yes, it is hard to create a pleasant article built around a challenging keyword. But it is not impossible. And you are not alone in your quest.
There are many online tools which you can use to test your content for readability, find suggestions for long tail keywords and reduce redundancy in the words and phrases you are using too frequently. Today we will give you a helping hand: we compared several such tools and picked the top 5 most helpful ones to share with you.
- Hemingway Editor
Everybody knows Ernest Hemingway and his easily recognisable writing style: short and clear sentences, simple words creating a natural flow to the storyline. So much so, that while reading his novels, everyone believes they could write like that.
Hemingway Editor will probably not make you a Nobel Prize winner, but it will check the readability of your sentences, point out those sentences which are too long and difficult to read and those which could be improved by shortening. It is a very useful tool if your writing style is perceived as too complex and difficult for the everyday reader.
- Live Keyword Analysis
Most copywriters agree that checking the keyword density of their texts takes too much time and distracts them from the creative part of writing. The free tool Live Keyword Analysis is here to help you save time and focus on improving the quality of your writing. This tool will quickly give you the density for up to three focus keywords before you publish the text. All you have to do is copy and paste your article in the online form and specify the keywords you used.
- Google Keyword Planner
Sometimes, as a SEO copywriter, you do not only have to write content promoting a specific keyword, but also search for keywords. Even if you do not have specific training in search engine optimisation, your work is made simple by the free Keyword Planner tool offered by Google.
All you have to do is input the main keyword, and the tool will generate a list of related phrases which are most likely to be used in Google searches for the respective topic.
- Word2Clean
This is a very helpful tool for the last phase of your SEO copywriting – that is, uploading the content you created into a content management platform to be published on the website. Word2Clean helps you convert your article from plain text to HTML with just one click. You do not have to worry anymore about inserting codes for paragraphs, bold, bullet lists, and so on.
- Spider Test Tool
Do you wonder how search engines view your published content? There is no need to guess anymore. The free Spider Test Tool will analyse any URL and display the way search engines index it: percentage of most frequently used words in your copy, inbound and outbound links, overall structure of your website, etc. By using it frequently, you will learn to understand how Google is looking at your website and you will be able to improve and optimise it both for your readers and for search engines.