But in reality, this is not entirely true. Today we are going to figure out the differences between a "regular" copywriter and an SEO copywriter and what are the latest trends in this profession."
What do copywriters do
In short, they are text writers. That is why this is usually the first online job for beginners, as it does not require learning any special programming languages or other disciplines, or studying, for example, at design courses. You just need to be able to write competently and interestingly.
To do this, you need to be a bit of a philologist, a bit of a psychologist, a bit of a marketer, because the text is created for a specific purpose for a specific audience.
The task of a professional copywriter is to convey the right idea to the reader in the most accessible form possible. Whether it's in the form of a joke on social media or a boring but clear manual depends on the field of activity.
There are many different areas of copywriting, but they are all tied to the creation of various texts. That is why those who are engaged in SEO copywriting make only a separate segment of what copywriters do in general.
What are the types of copywriters
The following areas of work can be distinguished:
- SMM copywriter writes texts for social networks. As a rule, these are short (up to 2 thousand characters) "commercial" or image posts that are published on corporate pages.
- SEO copywriter works in an informational style, writes articles for blogs, product descriptions for commercial sites and optimises them for the requirements of search engines. Therefore, texts should contain keywords for promotion.
For SEO copywriting, it is important that the text is unique, proves the company's competence and at the same time increases the site's ranking in search results. SEO texts are oriented both to the reader and to search algorithms. - A copywriter of advertising texts creates slogans, texts for landing pages, email newsletters, banners, and booklets. His "trick" is that he knows how to sell with one catchy phrase.
- Copywriter-screenwriter, respectively, creates competitive scripts for various types of video content. Texts that are not read, but perceived by ear, have their own specifics.
- Technical writer (technical writer) writes technical documentation. An option for those who want to "enter IT". It is important to know English at Advanced or Fluent level, think logically, be able to collect and analyse information, and express your thoughts clearly.
- UX copywriter is responsible for the text content of the interface: texts of buttons, tooltips, PUSH messages, and more. This profession is not yet popular enough in Ukraine, but the situation is likely to change in the near future.
- Re-writer rewrites someone else's text in their own words so as not to violate copyright or fall under the sanctions of search engines for plagiarism.
In some ways, it's similar to the work of a copywriter, but you work with a ready-made text and need to change it with minimal loss of quality. Very often, copywriters combine their own writing and rewriting in their work."
SEO copywriting as a job for online students
It seems that everything is simple at first glance. Once upon a time, it was an ideal option for an easy and small part-time job online. There is a list of keywords that need to be placed more or less evenly across the headlines and text, and thus bring the text to the first "pages" in the search engine results.
This led to thousands of texts literally spammed with search queries. It looked terrible, we won't give you examples, but when you find a "keyword stuffed" fragment in almost every sentence, and it is rather weakly connected to the rest of the text, it looks very funny.
The creators of search engine algorithms have noticed this as well. Now it's not enough to just spam the text with keywords, and it doesn't work. Because, on the one hand, key queries are usually not unique at all, and there are already enough texts with them, so it is very problematic to reach the top.
On the other hand, search engines themselves now give priority to texts written with higher quality and more informative content. In the English-speaking Internet, the expertise and reliability of the material plays a big role, while in the case of Ukrainian-language content, there are no such strict requirements, but this is temporary.
Warning about problems in copywriting
In short, if you are given an inadequate task in advance, for example, to put 30 keywords in a 1500-character text, it is better to refuse immediately and do not try to "hit this rock", because you will most likely fail.
Small examples of "red flags" for a beginner copywriter:
- "We need to post 100 texts on the site, and as soon as possible."
- "What difference does it make what equipment we have in the clinic, what treatment methods we use. Just write something, there's plenty of information on the Internet."
- "Here's a link to a competitor's website, you can just rewrite it from them, just do it quickly."
- "It's nothing complicated, 30 hryvnias per 1000 characters is a reasonable price for this. No need to be clever, just write faster."
- "No one will read it, we need these texts purely for promotion."
If you agree to something like this, you will have to fight for the relevance of the text (because it is over-spammed with queries that reduce uniqueness in themselves), as well as constant attempts to meet the requirements for "cloying" and "water", which are also very critical in such cases.
Sickeningness means the ratio of key queries to the total number of techniques, and you probably already guessed about the "water", this is the part of the text that can be removed from it and the meaning will not suffer at all.
Lately, with the advent of AI-based word processors, an additional check has appeared - is the text written by some ChatGPT? And here is another trap for a beginner, even if he or she has honestly written everything himself or herself, because AI content detectors often recognise key queries as "machine text." When there are many such queries, don't be surprised if your text is recognised as machine text.
Pros and cons of the work of an SEO specialist
So, we have figured out that the main task of an SEO specialist is to optimise content for promotion in search results. For this purpose, keywords and queries are selected, which should then be organically incorporated into the text. What are the other pros and cons of this profession?
The following aspects can be distinguished from the profits:
- First of all, a quick start. It is enough to understand how to write texts for business and delve into the basics of SEO. This is different from some of the above-mentioned types of copywriting, which may require specialised knowledge.
- SEO is always relevant. There is no shortage of vacancies and projects on the market. Even beginners usually find their first online jobs for remote work easily.
- Visible results of work. You can easily track both the quality of your own texts and show statistics on them for a future employer, which is useful for a portfolio.
And now for the cons:
- Not too high a salary. In SEO copywriting, a fee per 1000 characters is common, sometimes it is very low. But we will gladly tell you that this is not the case everywhere. Many companies want high-quality texts written for them and offer an adequate rate.
- Large competition at the initial stage. There are not so many really good writers on the market, but there are a lot of beginners. In the struggle for projects, they dump and reduce prices for their services. And now artificial intelligence has also appeared...
- Relative monotony of work. An SEO copywriter writes a regular article, but with an adjustment to the terms of reference, and also checks for compliance with the parameters. Some may find this part of the process boring."
How to learn to write better
So, no matter what direction you choose, you will have to write quality texts, and to be competitive in the market and get a good part-time job online, you must either have your own style or some other zest that will make you stand out among other applicants.
Of course, there are a lot of different courses and trainings, but if you haven't chosen your direction yet, we don't really recommend buying them, unless you have a clear example of the effectiveness of such a course.
Start by reading books and your own experience of writing at least small articles. You can start by doing some light work at home on texts to hone your skills.
If you have a humanities degree, it will also be easier. And if you already have it, it's all the more worth trying. After all, it is in the "university" that you will certainly acquire the ability to quickly find information, fact-checking skills, and strict compliance with the requirements for document execution. After all, if you have passed the requirements for plagiarism when writing a term paper or diploma, then you are already a bit of a copywriter and can try to look for copywriting jobs for remote work.
Recent trends in SEO copywriting
In general, the method of writing texts in such a way that the expectations of users and search engines coincide is now increasingly being used.
This way, the search engine will display the most useful articles for the user in the top. When writing texts using this method, synonyms, specialised terminology and slang are actively used, and much attention is paid to the content of the texts. This approach has several advantages:
- Minimal risk of being penalised by search engines. It is ensured by the fact that since there is no concentration on keywords when using this method, the risk of having too many of them in the text is reduced.
- High attractiveness of the article for the user.
- Since the copywriter focuses on the content when writing the text, he conveys information more fully and dives deeper into the topic. As a result, the reader's chances of getting answers to the questions in the article are higher, he can stay on the site and go to its other pages and even send the article to his friends.
- You can get to the top of the search results. Since texts contain a lot of low-frequency queries that are not found in texts according to the old standards, the number of likely conversions can be much higher.
The use of artificial intelligence is also gaining popularity. It can offer you plans and terms of reference for texts (although it is still not very good at it), as well as write certain texts or fragments of them.
Recently, there has been a trend that machine-generated text is written first, and then a copywriter is engaged in its "ordering". However, online vacancies in Ukraine are still mostly given to those who do not abuse the "exploitation" of various word processors.
