The Art of SEO Copywriting

The leading chapter of the influential text “The Art of SEO” by Enge, Stricchiola, and Spencer is titled “Search: Reflecting Consciousness and Connecting Commerce.” The authors posit that connecting your commerce with the collective digital consciousness requires a blend of art and science. 

SEO copywriting emerges as a harmonious blend of art and science. At its core, copywriting is an art—a craft that requires finesse, creativity, and a deep understanding of the audience. It’s about weaving words into compelling narratives that captivate readers and drive them to take action. Yet, in the digital age, this art is meticulously balanced by the science of keyword research and placement. SEO, or Search Engine Optimization, ensures that these beautifully crafted messages are also discoverable by search engines, reaching the right audience at the right time. 

In this piece, we’ll take a look at the art and science of SEO copywriting, touching on the following key points: 

• The Art and Science of SEO Copywriting in B2B
• The Three Components of SEO Copywriting
• B2B SaaS Brands Mastering the Art of SEO Copywriting
• Learn from the Masters of Brand and Content in B2B SaaS

As we delve deeper into the nuances of SEO copywriting, we’ll look at how this delicate balance between artistic expression and scientific precision can elevate content, making it both engaging for readers and optimized for search engines. 

Let’s dive in.

The Art and Science of SEO Copywriting in B2B

We live in the era of content. From the moment we wake up to the moment we go to sleep, we’re bombarded by information. Widespread access to technology, social media platforms, and the creator economy fuel historic amounts of text, image, and video creation. Whether it’s from your best friend or an enterprise software company, the majority of this now falls under the ethereal category of content. 

Content versus Copy

Lost in all the focus on creation is the action-oriented copy that dominated the advertising industry for years. It hasn’t gone anywhere; you see it countless times a day in the form of paid ads, emails, and key landing pages. 

But the copy is now struggling to stand out against an exponentially increasing mountain of content. For those struggling to tell the difference, here are a few key ways that written copy differs from written content:

• Copy is created to sell something, and content is created to educate, entertain, engage, or empower.
• Copy is typically short and punchy, while content runs longer and takes on a variety of styles.
• Copy is used near the bottom of the funnel, while content is used at the top.

One easy way to remember the distinction—copy sells, content tells. 

Where these two different forms of writing overlap is reliance on search engine optimization for visibility. Without targeting the right keywords, neither your copy nor your content gets in front of the right audience. The Foundation Lab is content and case studies on the latter, so today, we’ll focus on the former. 

The Art—Copywriting

At its heart, copywriting is an art form. There’s a reason there’s such lore and mystique around names like David Ogilvy and Don Draper or even famous writers like Stephen King and Cormac McCarthy. At their best, these famous writers are so adept at manipulating words that they make you forget you’re actually reading something. They tap into passions, fears, and interests to spark something greater. 

The ability to affect people with language can be a superpower. This is especially true when you’re trying to sell things to people. Unfortunately, this is often lost in the content era. 

David Ogilvy captures the greatest trap and ultimate goal of copywriting in this one quote: 

“When I write an advertisement, I don’t want you to tell me that you find it ‘creative.’ I want you to find it so interesting that you buy the product.” 

Many marketers (myself definitely included) get caught up in the art form and forget that this type of writing is a means to an end. Guiding customers towards a sale or helping them use your product better is much more important than how they feel about, or whether they enjoy, your writing. 

To produce action with your copy, you need a strong understanding of people’s needs, desires, and fears and the ability to address them in as few characters as possible. You only need the right mix of psychology, sales tactics, and storytelling. 

But even the marketers who have mastered both content and copywriting face an even greater challenge: getting their writing in front of the people who need it, when they need it. It’s no longer just a question about placing your ad in a magazine, billboard, or TV spot; you need to master the search engine as well.

As reported by Ahrefs, there are over 3.5 billion Google searches made daily, and 90.63% of these pages get no organic search traffic. It’s clear that just writing well isn’t enough.

When you’re not just writing for fun or passion—for instance, when the success of your company relies on it—you need more than just the art of copywriting. This is where the science of SEO comes in. 

The Science—SEO

As a digital marketer, you know the important role search engine optimization plays in achieving your company goals. With the top three Google search results getting 54.4% of all clicks, the importance of ranking high cannot be overstated. In the vast majority of cases, it’s no longer possible to achieve these top positions through traditional copywriting alone. 

Compelling sales copy, and any content for that matter, needs to strategically incorporate keywords that consumers search for across web and social platforms.  

Enterprise-level search engine optimization consists of three main pillars: on-page, off-page, and technical. These pillars cover common SEO practices and strategies like keyword research and placement, link-building, and improving page performance. On-page SEO is the pillar that copywriters must familiarize themselves with to win key digital real estate for their brands. 

Google and other search engines constantly optimize algorithms for a better user experience. These refinements typically shake up the SERPs to prioritize pages and ads that most align with the intent. This means content creators and copywriters need to constantly update and implement keyword research, strategically incorporating keywords so messaging reaches the intended audience. 

Mastering the art of SEO copywriting in the B2B context lies in the integration of keyword selection, placement, and high-quality copy. This requires not just creativity in writing but a strategic approach to content creation.

The Three Components of SEO Copywriting

The blend of artistic ability and scientific rigor makes SEO copywriting a unique and essential skill for marketers. It’s not just about writing good content but increasing the likelihood that it’s both seen and acted upon.

To produce top-notch copy optimized for search engines, you need three simple components: keyword selection, placement, and good copy.  

1) Keyword Selection 

Keyword selection is where you identify the terms and phrases that are both relevant to your product and frequently searched by your target audience. This stage involves thorough SEO and market research before the writing process begins.

Depending on the size of your company and resources, the keywords for your copy may be provided by another team in the marketing department, or you’ll have to conduct the research yourself. If it’s the latter, we’ve got you covered with lots of content like this, this, and this. 

2) Keyword Placement 

Once the target keywords are identified, they must be strategically placed within the content. Considering context is important here: Throwing your target and secondary keywords in every other sentence isn’t giving you an edge (and is likely annoying your readers). There are plenty of opportunities to include keywords in alt tags, titles, and meta descriptions; there’s no need to be trigger-happy. 

It’s not just about frequency. You need to place your keywords in a way that feels natural and enhances the reader’s experience. The structure of the content should follow a logical flow, integrating keywords in a way that supports the overall message and goals of the piece. 

For product and landing pages where word counts are reduced, including your keywords in the title and subheadings might even be enough.

3) Good Copy

The definition of ‘good copy’ varies depending on the nature of the asset, your customer’s intent, and many other factors. For instance, the style, tone, and word count for bottom-of-funnel sales content, like product pages or emails, will be quite different than a long-form lead magnet like a whitepaper. 

All variables aside, there are some copywriting practices to keep in mind in all marketing contexts. The experts over at Copyblogger have an entire guide full of them, including: 

• Write the way you speak—ditch the fancy words and hyperbole.
• Put the reader at the center of everything: Always write to “you.”
• Headlines should be useful, urgent, unique, or ultra-specific.
• Keep things short—avoid lengthy explanations whenever possible.

Remember, the context of the copy will vary, but the core objective remains the same: drive action.

B2B SaaS Brands Mastering the Art of SEO Copywriting

Identifying and learning from brands that have successfully implemented SEO copywriting can provide valuable insights. These companies have managed to strike the perfect balance between engaging content and strategic SEO, allowing them to rank for key terms and engage their audience effectively.

Toast 

Point-of-service company Toast is, in my opinion, one of the most well-versed SaaS brands in the art of copywriting and content creation. It used these skills to prop up its traffic in the dog days of the pandemic and hasn’t looked back since, becoming one of the most prolific publishers in tech. 

Toast brings in over 3.1 million visitors to its website every month—and that’s just in the United States. The Toast website has nearly 500,000 pages, helping it target millions of keywords and rank in a top-three SERP position for over 35,000 of them. 

While a significant portion of its pages are dedicated to local restaurant menus from across the United States, the company invests heavily in content as well. From support pages and blog content to key landing pages and industry analysis, the Toast team covers the full spectrum of effective writing. Its substantial SEO moat is built on copy and content. 

This prowess is on full display when looking at the Toast homepage, where the team incorporates concise, compelling copy like “Built for Restaurants. Built for You.” with this punchy poetry: 

“Powering juice bars, Michelin stars, and everything in between.”

Looking at one of Toast’s best-performing product pages, you can see how the brand effectively weaves primary and secondary keywords into product copy. 

The page below is for its self-ordering kiosk hardware—an upsell from its main point-of-service offering that benefits both restaurant customers and staff.  It currently brings in 2,440 visitors organically by incorporating nearly 400 keywords and ranks first in the SERPs for “self order kiosk.”

In addition to the standard marketing pages you’d expect a SaaS brand to use—top-of-funnel blogs, product pages, and customer support pages—Toast created an online publication called On the Line. This hospitality-centered blog subfolder lets the brand focus on various topics that build up its authority and build out its SEO moat simultaneously.

Carta

In a previous case study, I covered how Carta’s approach to SEO content investment paid off in the form of a massive organic traffic spike. By creating top-of-funnel, introductory content targeting key financial terms like “special purpose vehicle,” “stock options,” and “409a valuation,” Carta’s marketing team increased traffic from 100,000 to 200,000 in just over six months.  

As is often the case with SaaS brands that perform well in organic search, the SEO prowess carries over from educational content to the copy on key product pages. In this case, Carta’s cap table management landing page. 

Carta’s cap table management product page currently brings in 623 high-intent leads per month—traffic that would cost over $90,000 in digital ad spend over the course of a year. The vanity metrics may not look great, but the product page is undeniably valuable to Carta. 

Interestingly, the page only ranks for 76 keywords and only incorporates the full keyphrase “cap table management” twice in the page copy (according to Control+F). The Carta marketing team picked its shots wisely and reaped the benefits.

It’s a good reminder that you don’t need to layer your copy with primary keywords for it to be effective; factors like brand strength and the EAT score may be more impactful. 

Looking at the copy itself, the Carta team leads off with a simple yet deceptively powerful subheader: “Trusted by over 40,000 private companies and counting.” Leads are then hit with three key benefits of the product, each of which will be filtered through the context of “everyone’s using it, so should I.”

The page goes on to both show and tell readers about the functionality of the product, with clear explanatory copy and simplified screenshots. Despite having only about 300 words of copy, a handful of images and links, and two a few CTA modules, this page consistently brings in high-value traffic and moves potential users further down the funnel. 

If you have a strong brand and industry presence, don’t be afraid to keep it simple. 

LaunchDarkly

LaunchDarkly is more on the technical side of the SaaS company spectrum. Its platform empowers other tech brands to “build products customers love” with de-risked feature rollouts. The LaunchDarkly team is taking the feature management industry by storm through a combination of brand and content excellence alongside its superior product. 

Many of the brand’s key organic traffic contributors are top-of-funnel blog posts. That said, LaunchDarkly’s product pages provide a great example of how marketers can approach SEO copywriting in technical niches. 

Leading the way is its feature flag page. 

The page brings in over 750 visitors each month from across the globe, saving LaunchDarkly about $3,5000 a month in paid ads. 

Interestingly, the page actually doesn’t rank first for the core keyword “feature flags.” That seems like a major oversight until you realize that the company already dominates the term with an introductory blog post on the same topic. To make sure that all IT decision-makers are fully aware of what its feature flag platform does, LaunchDarkly funnels site visitors through an educational post that has plenty of references and links to the platform itself. 

Once these visitors are product-aware, they can easily navigate the site to find the key product page. Alternatively, those who are already product aware can reach the page through keywords like “feature flag service,” “launch darkly,” and “feature flag tools.” 

Regardless of how leads get there, the feature flag product page is full of compelling, SEO-rich copy that guides readers further down the funnel and closer to that final sale with the following copy elements: 

• Evocative, empowering taglines about the general benefits of using feature flags 
• Specific technical use cases where feature flags improve results, including screenshots
• Clear explanations of how LaunchDarkly users achieve these results through the product

In the case of technical niches like feature management, it’s critical that marketers are fluent in the language of the field. You need to write and speak like a developer to communicate clearly and effectively. The copy on LaunchDarkly’s feature flag page demonstrates this perfectly.  

Learn from the Masters of Brand and Content in B2B SaaS

The art and science of SEO copywriting is an underappreciated practice in digital marketing today. A focus on content means marketers and creators often focus on winning and maintaining consumer attention with long, in-depth content. But it’s crucial that you don’t forget about the sales-oriented copy that inspires action. 

See how copy, content, and other digital marketing pillars are applied by leading brands like Asana, Miro, and Snowflake in our premium case studies and industry analysis.