Tips & Tools for SEO Copywriting

Over the last few years, Amplify has worked on hundreds of SEO projects for our partners including optimizing product names, content marketing assets, and websites for discoverability and sales. Whether the goal is to increase awareness on Google or Amazon, the steps of our process and the tools we use are similar.

There is certainly an art and science to writing compelling copy that also checks all the SEO boxes. So, when you can afford it, an experienced copywriter is often worth the expense.

However, since many organizations haven’t budgeted for an agency’s help with SEO, this article contains tips and tools from our experience in this important marketing area.

First, we’ll share a basic outline of the process and steps that we take when starting a copywriting task that needs to factor in SEO. Then, we’ll share ten tools used throughout this process.

The Process of SEO Copywriting

1) Brainstorming

Before using any software or diving into any data, the first thing we do is brainstorm a list of related keywords and terms. This can be done by one person, but it is often better to compile a list with a group of people closest to the project.

This fresh, unbiased exercise is a helpful kickoff that will guide and inform the rest of the steps.

2) Platform Audit

Some of the most accurate data to start with is what you already have readily available. Tap into your sales reports, analytics, and historical data to provide context to the results of your brainstorming session.

3) Competitor Analysis

The third step in the process typically expands your list of available SEO keywords beyond what you discovered in steps one and two. Diving into which keywords are driving traffic to your competitors’ sites and products will reveal terms that might not have been on your radar. The same is true for the terms that your competitors are bidding on via Google Search ads or Amazon PPC ads.

4) Consumer Research

This step adds an even broader range of relevant keywords to consider for your project. Using software tools that provide consumer search volume, you will be able to see terms that your audience cares about that are not currently driving traffic to your site or your competitors.

5) Fine-Tuning

The final step of the SEO copywriting process is to compile all available options and fine-tune the list. This is when a handful of terms are chosen for a final round of editing and review. Things like reviewing synonyms, considering various tenses of verbs, and factoring in character limits will help you land the plane on a strong, optimized project.

Here are ten tools that we use during the five steps in the SEO copywriting process above.

Ten Tools for SEO Copywriting

Tools for Auditing Your Platform

1) Google Search Console

The first place to gather accurate data about your own digital platform is to see which search terms on Google are currently resulting in traffic to your site. Check what the impressions are for those terms, where your site ranks for them organically, and what the click-through rate is.

After your brainstorm is complete, this is an excellent way to fill out your list of keyword options.

2) Google Analytics

Next, we turn to Google Analytics, specifically the Site Search report. These are the words that your website visitors are entering in the search field on your website. There may be similarities with what you see in Google Search Console, but Site Search data is valuable because it tells you what your current audience wants to see once they land on your site.

3) Amazon Vendor Central Top Search Terms Report

If you have products on Amazon and are concerned about brand names or the name of a particular product, we recommend adding more data to the mix, this time from Amazon’s own internal reporting.

Amazon’s Top Search Terms report lets you enter your products’ ASINs to see which searches have led to their sales. We recommend adjusting the timeframe to include the fourth quarter of the previous year because, for most sectors, that is when searches are at their highest volume.

Although the specific number of searches isn’t provided by Amazon, the search rank is just as valuable. The lower the number the better. Ignore most terms that are over 100k rank since the volume gets small at that point.

4) Helium10

Helium10 is another fantastic tool for Amazon keyword research. One of their tools is called Cerebro. You enter an ASIN or a list of ASINs and it reports on which searches led to sales of those products.

Once you’ve completed a brainstorm and pulled data about your own digital platform, it’s time to look to competitors for inspiration.

Tools for Competitor Analysis

5) SEMrush

Our preferred tool for competitor research related to Google searches is SEMrush. Simply enter the URL of your competitors and it will give you a relatively accurate list of searches that are driving traffic to their site. You can also easily check which keywords they are bidding on via Google Search.

This data will typically expand the list of potential keywords to consider for your project to include some you hadn’t considered before.

We also use Helium10 for competitor analysis. The Cerebro tool mentioned before isn’t limited to your ASINs. You can enter any competitor’s ASIN or combination of ASINs and it will tell you which searches are resulting in sales for their products.

Amazon Vendor Central Top Search Terms Report is also used a second time at this stage. Like Helium10, the Search Term Report isn’t limited to your ASINs. Study the competition and see which phrases are driving discoverability and sales.

There is one other use of the Top Search Terms Report that is helpful for competitor research. Instead of starting with an ASIN filter, enter a keyword and it will show you the top 3 products purchased when that term is entered.

We recommend using the fourth quarter of the previous year as the date range for this report since the data is largest at that time for most sectors.

Combine your own data with competitor data and then it’s time to round it out with consumer data.

Tools for Consumer Research

This step in the process brings Amazon’s Top Search Terms Report back into play a third time. Enter a root word into the keyword field to filter the results by searches that include that exact word. The additional terms added to it, along with the search volume rank will help you see into the mind of the majority of consumers (again set this for the fourth quarter of the previous year for the most data).

There is a limitation to Amazon’s Top Search Terms Report and that is that currently (this could change and I hope it does soon), the report will only pull variations that include the exact wording you entered.

For example, if you enter “bike,” it will show you “bike seats” but not “seat for bikes" because “bikes” is a different word than “bike.”

6) Ahrefs

This is where Ahrefs comes into play. It offers similar competitor analysis tools as SEMrush, but my favorite use of Ahrefs is for consumer keyword research.

In Ahrefs’ Keywords Explorer tool, you start by selecting the search platform you are interested in researching (Google, YouTube, Amazon, Bing, Yahoo, and more), and then you can enter a term, phrase, or series of terms and phrases.

The report will initially be limited to the exact wording you selected, but you can also choose keyword ideas, matching terms, and search suggestions. Each of these options goes broader than the previous one to give you variations that wouldn’t normally appear in Amazon or Google Keyword Planner.

Using the previous example, if you select “Search Suggestions” for the word “Bike,” it will include many variations like “bicycle,” “cyclists,” or “bikes.”

Note: We have learned not to trust the search volume or cost-per-click projections of this tool, but its ability to round out a list of alternate options for keywords and phrases is unparalleled.

7) Google Keyword Planner

Next, we take the best keywords pulled from Amazon’s Top Search Terms Report and Ahrefs and we load them into Google’s free Keyword Planner tool.

This is a part of everyone’s Google Ads account. If you skipped the Ahrefs step and just started with some high-volume terms, you might get enough from Google Keyword Planner to make a strong SEO decision, but we’ve found that, like Amazon’s Top Search Terms Report, Google’s data doesn’t cover some important variations.

Once a strong list of keywords is compiled from your brainstorming, analysis of your first-party data, competitor data, and consumer research, it’s time to refine your best options so that the art and science of this entire process are factored in.

Tools for Fine-Tuning Copy

8) AI

One of the most common uses that we have for AI is to refine our best options for SEO copywriting. For example, go to ChatGPT and ask it to give you 10 variations using a combination of the most relevant, high-volume search terms.

The “art” component of the art and science of SEO copywriting comes into play at this fine-tuning stage. It isn’t enough to have the highest-volume terms on your site or in your product name. If it is clunky or boring, it won’t perform as well as it could.

In addition to being SEO-driven, your copy needs to be clear and compelling.

There are many approaches to copywriting that can result in clear and compelling copy. For example, alliteration in a headline, blog post title, or product name can make it stand out from the competition.

Another method of copywriting is to use a play on words or apply terms that rhyme.

With AI, we don’t have to try to come up with alliteration options or rhyming words on our own. ask ChatGPT to give you 10 or 20 variations of your terms with one query being that they are alliterated and another being that it rhymes. You can even provide a word count or character count limitation.

9) Thesaurus.com and 10) RhymeZone.com

The ninth and tenth tools to which we often turn are related so we’ll group them here. Although AI can do what Thesaurus.com and RhymeZone.com can do (and often better), we still find it valuable to tap into these resources from time to time.

Thesaurus.com is especially helpful if you identified some excellent phrases in your competitor research, but you don’t want to come across as a copycat (or their taglines are copyrighted). Enter those words and find other ways of saying the same thing. You might even discover a better, clearer, and higher-volume phrase that is more compelling than the competition!

RhymeZone.com comes in handy when you want to integrate rhyming words but AI didn’t produce strong options. Since this tool is very simple and quick to use, I even find myself turning to it before going to an AI tool.

Conclusion

SEO copywriting is an important part of successful marketing.

When you land on a clear and compelling title that is optimized for SEO, it will not only help with organic discoverability, it will also increase the ROI of your PPC ads (whether on Google or Amazon).

We don’t have time to go too deep into this here, but relevance and authority are the two requirements for earning trust with Google and Amazon. Trust equals more impressions, clicks, and sales at a lower cost.

Relevance is established when your site, product, brand name, or marketing tagline contains the same words used in high-volume searches. Authority is established when your link gets clicks and conversions because it is clear and compelling to your intended audience.

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